“Intercultural Education in Multicultural Cameroon: Pathway to Breaking Barriers and Building Bridges”

One main way of engendering peaceful co-existence and national development in a multicultural setting is by implanting intercultural education. Multiculturalism is one of the most contested and controversial concepts. On the cozy side it entails accommodation, acceptance, and tolerance that implies provision of space in terms of language and other socio-cultural aspects where citizens are not subjugated of their inalienable rights, identity, dignity, and self- determination. The Multicultural drive of a country is fostered not only by individuals, but also its institutions through policy. Cameroon is a highly multicultural country, but it consented to a policy that adopted English and French as official languages used in education to the detriment of indigenous languages and cultures which result in the lack of trust, social cohesion, self-esteem and national identity. The study thus aimed at getting ways of spawning the co-existence of Cameroon cultures for greater mutual understanding.

Research Questions

1) What are the challenges of achieving intercultural education in Cameroon?

2) How can such challenges be achieved?

Theoretical Framework

• Krystyna Bleszynska’s (2008) Four basic paradigms for intercultural education.
• JamesBanks’ (1998, 2001) ‘Five dimensions of Multicultural Education’.

Methodology It adopted a Mixed-Methods Research Design whereby 300 Manyu participants, purposively selected from urban and rural areas were subjected to questionnaire, focus-group discussions and in depth interviews following Seidman (1998). Questionnaire items were coded and entered into Microsoft Excel Spread Sheet. Data were then run into SPSS Version 21. Data from interviews were done under thematic categories by using ATLAS ti. Analysis made use of Content Analysis wherein themes were selected according to research questions.

Results

Challenges and prospects of achieving intercultural education were advanced.

The study has implication for integration, equity, justice, policy implementation and national development.