Debating the Roots of Poor Academic Performance in the West African Subregion: The Perspective of a Philosopher

Abstract

Recent nationalistic arguments have tended to blame the use of foreign language as responsible for poor academic performance and even underdevelopment. Although I theoretically agree with the mother tongue (MT) proposal concerning early elementary education, I identify some narrowness in the meaning of MT that drives the nationalistic school. A correction of this connotative inaccuracy would mean that the importance of the MT proposal to education is not as all embracing as nationalists would love to see. Even presuming theoretical correctness, I also see a number of grave practical problems with the MT initiative, including the unwillingness to develop local languages in terms of equiping them with the lexical power to serve as medium for modern research, academics, science, and technology. I also see a potential of the MT idea to sustain ethnicity, a political problem that ultimately undermines the quality of education itself. I conclude that the most critically determining factor for academic performance in this region is not the use (or lack of use) of MT but the political handling of education. I discuss, and tentatively suggest solutions to (a) the monopoly of salary fixing by politicians and (2) the extremely low budget percentage allocated to the educational sector. © 2017, © The Author(s) 2017.