LOST IN TRANSLATION: RECLAIMING LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL INDEPENDENCE IN SENEGAL BY EXPLORING THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF TEACHERS IN MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION

Abstract

The process of “colonial alienation,” which actively dissociates students from their culture, language, and history, reduces education quality across Sub-Saharan Africa. This research project explores how teachers, as the primary agents of the school system, perceive the degree to which they are affected by and respond to the colonial legacy in Senegal's formal education system in their daily pedagogy (their teaching practices and beliefs about education). The findings demonstrate that teachers feel they have lost their ability to “educate” in the classroom due to institutional limitations and cultural influence from France, which began during colonization and has been perpetuated by international organizations providing foreign aid today. For Senegalese teachers, education (“l'éducation”) encompasses more than the profession of teaching (“l'enseignement”). Education includes the teaching of values, culture, and identity, whereas teaching focuses on subject matter. This separation in the formal education system has perpetuated the process of “colonial alienation” in the classroom, despite teachers' desires to foster cultural identity in their students. As a result, teachers resist multilingual education policy because they feel it will not be efficient in helping students perform on State exams. The research findings suggest a need for pedagogical reforms based on teachers' experiences, and for the State to empower teachers to do more than teach, but to be educators once again. Once teachers feel this agency, they will more readily accept the multilingual education program. Keywords: education quality, colonial alienation, decolonizing the classroom, social mobility, cultural independence, economic independence, teacher pedagogy, monolingual education policy, multilingual education policy, multilingual education (MLE) programs