Education in Senegal

I've been learning a lot about the education system here because I'm taking an education class, and also volunteering in a school teaching English. This video above was taken at the school I'm volunteering at. These kids get pretty excited about their team winning counting to ten in English!

In the Senegalese constitution, everyone has the right to an education, but it is not required. You can either choose to send your children to the Quranic schools, the colonial schools, or private schools. Sometimes parents who want their kids to have both a religious education and a Western based education attend both the Koranic school and the colonial schools.

Despite the fact that Senegal's official language is French, only 10% of the population speaks it. All public schools are instructed in French, even in the rural areas where people speak their local languages. There are dozens of different languages spoken throughout this country but Wolof is the language that is most widely spoken. I'm seeing here that language definitely gives power but it also has the potential to take away power. If you don’t speak French, then you’re not likely to get the best jobs here and your connection to the rest of the world is very limited. But at the same time, I wonder what it must be like for people here who have Wolof or Serer heritage, and go to French Schools and receive a western education, and learn a language that they don't even speak in their homes. A lot of times the kids who don’t speak French will end up falling behind. Since most of the local languages are oral languages, this means that people who speak only Wolof for instance, are not literate. Only about 50% of Senegalese people are literate, and illiteracy is a huge obstacle when it comes to development.

Being in Senegal is like being in a mixture of two very different worlds at once. Two worlds that view the world completely differently. Senegal is a really interesting place because you have all these traditional African cultures mixed with French culture and lots of Western influence, especially in the urban areas like Dakar. People in Dakar are like hybrids of a bunch of different cultures mixed together,  and when you go to the rural areas it's even more removed from Western culture. I wonder how these cultures can stay preserved with all this French influence and in such a globalized world. I'm going to be posting a lot more on aspects of the education system later so stay tuned! 

Senegalese kids are obsessed with taking pictures, which is perfect because they're so photogenic and fun to photograph!