Educology

International Journal of Educology, 2005 African Special Issue

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Philosophy and its Teaching in Guinea1

Introduction by Co-Editors

Introduction by Author

Nowadays, almost all African countries are disarticulated by blatant inequalities, more and

more unbearable injustices, in the grip of social, political, ethnic and inter-religious conflicts,

ravaged and assailed by serious economic difficulties and not mastering their destiny. This

situation is the result of a crisis in society itself subsequent to a serious crisis in cultural and

civilization. This cultural crisis is also that of philosophy which, as a taught subject matter, as

well as a view and an activity, has always been for culture both a mirror and a tribunal.

In our present societies, philosophy undergoes a double crisis: a crisis of identity with regard

to cultures that always sheltered it, and a crisis of efficiency and relevance in the society.

Thus, from Plato who tried to solve the problems of the Greek city to Hegel who wrote

history in the light of the French Revolution, passing by Saint Augustine who gave a thought

1 - A West African State located in the south of Sénégal with Conakry as Capital City. To distinguish it from

Guinea Bissau, it is generally called Guinea Conakry.

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to relations between Christians and pagans, Kant who meditated on the future of the

individual within modernity, philosophy is a permanent search of efficiency and relevance.

In the Republic of Guinea, philosophy does not feel well. It undergoes a deep crisis shown by

an obvious degeneration of the teaching and the practice of philosophy. The understanding of

this crisis necessitates an analysis of factors which found it and justify it. My purpose in this

paper is to identify and question these factors in order to put forward suggestions which

would not cure the evil but which would inspire actions capable of remedying some present

difficulties.

Parts of the Paper

This paper is comprised of three parts. The first will attempt making a brief historical recall

to situate the impact of political regimes on the education system in general and on

philosophy and its teaching in particular. The second will base itself on the teaching of

philosophy analyzing pedagogical methods implemented and pointing out difficulties and

deficiencies. The third will develop, on the one hand, perspectives of philosophy and its

teaching in Guinea and, on the other hand, it will give suggestions from the analysis made.

I. Historical recall

Philosophy and above all its teaching in Guinea could not be understood without taking into

account the Guinean education system, itself a tributary of the type of political management

of the society. The socio political and cultural dynamics of Guinea is characterized by the

succession of two diametrically opposed political regimes: socialism and liberalism. Each of

these regimes built and implemented its education system.

Thus, from 1958 to 1984, Guinean education developed in conformity with the general

political doctrine of the Parti Démocratique de Guinée (PDG) (Democratic Party of Guinea).

It was marked by dirigisme and the enforcement of the Party policy and that of the State and

later the Party-State over the school pedagogy. The first crisis of this system started back in

1961 with the boycott of the right of teachers and the refusal of the then government to

revalorise the teaching profession. It resulted in a depreciation of teaching and a massive

exodus of Guinean teachers not only towards neighbouring countries, but also towards more

lucrative professions with less daily charges and obligations.

The Socialist Cultural Revolution was launched on August 08, 1968. Thus, a new education

policy was developed and implemented with a basic political strategy referred to as the line of

the masses, whose very generous principle in itself was unfortunately applied to the whole

education system without any distinction. At the same time and as if to add to this situation,

teaching in national languages is systematised when these were not well codified and worse,

teachers were not prepared to it.

In this context, human sciences in general and philosophy in particular were reduced to being

only instruments of political indoctrination and ideological imprisonment. In secondary

education philosophy had the same status as ideology to which it was mixed purposely if not

simply substituted. Philosophy lost its value and its place in the general system of training

became less important.

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As it was reduced to insuring the promotion of an ideology, philosophy was led astray in the

practice of its teaching. From reform to reform curricula are emptied from their philosophical

quintessence judged useless if not idealistic for the benefit of a strong ideological dosage.

Philosophy classes changed name to simply become philosophy- ideology classes. With the

increasing number of students in secondary schools due to the practice of masses teaching,

classes were taught in majority by primary school teachers or mere political leaders of the

Party.

In higher education institutions philosophy-ideology classes were taught to all students except

those from the philosophy department. At the beginning, the latter benefited from a high

standard philosophy class which became considerably less and less important. Curricula gave

a large place to theoreticians of socialism and to the study of the PDG doctrine. At this level

we are obliged to acknowledge that the lack of prerequisites at the level of learners worsened

the degeneration of philosophy due to the content which was more ideological than

philosophical and not the mastery of French by learners, itself poor because of the practice

of the teaching of National Languages up to lower/junior secondary school.

On April 03, 1984, the Military Committee of National Recovery took over power and

decided to break with this education system and therefore initiate its total change. Thus, from

May 24 to June 03 a National Conference was called to reform education followed some

months later by workshops on the development of new programmes. Ideology as a subject

was cancelled, the return of French as a language for teaching was proclaimed. Philosophy

programmes for secondary and university education stemmed from these workshops and were

implemented. They were largely inspired from those in force in the West African sub-region.

However, we naively thought that developing good programmes were sufficient to improve

the education system as with a magic stroke.

It is only few years later that it became obvious that neither the devotion of teachers, the

development of new programmes, the improvement of infrastructure, nor the return to French

language were not sufficient by themselves to improve the quality of the education system. In

addition to these factors which are already important, one has to motivate the actors of the

reform and change the pedagogical practice which remained always the same. It is on this

pedagogical practice that I want to put an emphasis, for, as far as I am concerned, the evil is in

the teaching itself.

II. Critical Examination of Philosophy Teaching

The present crisis of philosophy in Guinea and the disaffection and interest behaviours against

this subject, which the clinical signs indicate, are in a great extent due to the methodology of

its teaching, for if reforms and revision of curricula have been carried out we have not cared

looking for an explicit methodology of teaching likely to confer to this subject its true

meaning.

“ The pedagogical practice in force since the First Republic confines students in a situation of

passive listeners and makes teachers distributors of knowledge from the pulpit ”2. It is as if an

unlined pouring of knowledge according to the scheme donor-receiver, teacher-student,

producer-consumer, learned-quasi ignorant. In this manner the teaching of philosophy has

2 - Sadialiou BARRY, A propos de l’enseignement de la philosophie au secondaire, In l’Educateur, n° 5 octdécembre,

1986, p

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become an intellectual exhibitionist though it should enable “to fabricate” people who are able

to think.

“This negative practice reinforced by habit and often defended by those who are the actors,

prevents learners from participating in the pedagogical process. The philosophy teacher

offering himself as an absolute possessor of knowledge, exposes, analyses, criticizes and

draws conclusions alone. He involves learners only through rare questions which sometimes

complicate more knowledge given more than they making it clear”3

Moreover, such a pedagogical practice contributes in training inefficient people because they

become unable to resolve the least practical problems. The practice does not abide by the

general objectives of philosophy teaching in secondary schools defined in the programmes in

force to wit:

§ “To enable a reflection on the main problems which preoccupy the trends of

human thought;

§ To favour the birth of the spirit of abstraction, generalisation, analysis and

synthesis necessary for the understanding of reasoning forms in force in

philosophy and in other sciences;

§ To cultivate the critic spirit and the sense of the relative in order to avoid both

hermetism and dogmatism;

§ To facilitate wide spirit opening on some philosophical issues ”4.

The present pedagogical practice, which was more focused on the teacher than the learner,

was incapable of reaching the above mentioned objectives. It led to a wrong perception of

philosophy by students who, most often, think that philosophy is too theoretical, too difficult,

and even unapproachable.

One has to admit that that such an opinion is not groundless when we know that the level of

French of these students is sometimes poor. Besides, inquiries recently carried out at the level

of some secondary school teachers show that new programmes are excessively long and in

some places above the level of some young teachers who have difficulties in executing some

chapters of curricula of 12th and terminal social sciences classes.

When we know that since the implementation of these programmes no seminar was organised

for philosophy teachers, the least we can say is that the factors of change have been neglected.

The breadth of the change and the fact that programmes are new are sufficient by themselves

to justify the necessity of the organisation of seminars to update the level of teachers’

knowledge in charge of implementing them. The organisation of such seminars is also

justified by the lack of documents suffered by the country in general and in particular by

remote prefectures compared to the capital city.

In addition to the pedagogical practice confining learners to a situation of passive listening, in

the University, teachers still rely on dictation of lessons. The lack of documents explains such

3 - Ibid. p. 13

4 - Cfr Programme de Philosophie, IPN, Août 1989.

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a practice which not only wastes time, but also nurtures obvious laziness in students who

therefore wait until the teacher gives them everything . This practice, based on the passive

method, embodies a real danger of killing in learners both the spirit of initiative and research.

Lastly, the weak coefficient accorded to philosophy as a subject is demotivating even in the

social sciences stream where it is indeed a subject of specialisation.

All these factors explain the depreciation of philosophy teaching and its sister the

undermining of the subject’s value.

To remedy this situation it is both urgent and necessary to introduce innovating approaches

and steps in the teaching of philosophy.

Any way, the teaching of philosophy might be achieved as suggested by François Galichet5,

in following the four moves accounted for below.

- An instruction move which consists of making students get rid of the preconception,

the view (doxa), i.e. to make him get at rationalizations of his thoughts and his act,

thus to something similar to citizenship.

- A genealogic move i.e. a consequence of the one above non exclusive but which on

the contrary completes it. It consists of accounting for the mechanisms and processes

which generate these views and preconceptions. From these views and preconceptions

the genealogic move goes as far as their unconscious foundation backed essentially to

that end by human sciences. On the one hand the normativity determined as view is

overrun in the upward direction until a rational apprehension of the world is achieved.

On the other hand it is overwhelmed in the downward direction to its objective

condition of production. Overflowing which in fact rightly leads to the criticism and

the rational overrun. One will find with Spinoza the paradigm of this double move

which defines a first field, a political one which is both rational and able to explain

phenomena. Explanation leads to a rational command and that one create the distance

and the wrench all leading to the explanation move.

- A methodological move- Normativity can also be determined not as a view but as a

representation. Therefore all it is about is to, through a learning didactic move design,

transform and process representation until they are given their features of rigour

coherent or of systematicity which will get these representations move from

spontaneity stage to that of philosophical reflexivity. This third dimension implies a

predominance of the concept of method over any other. Its articulation with

genealogic move defines a second field that could be called an epistemological move

because it is clearly dominated by concerns of intellectual and methodological

competences.

- A metaphysical move- At this level, the original normativity initially determined as

(simple) representation steadily slip out of towards a radical exclusivity dimension

which subtracts it from the norms of the determining judgement to make it appear as

judgement based on thinking. Correlatively it transforms gradually the argument into

discussion (both terms been used according to the meaning Kant give them). This slip

is only achieved by the correlative path of the didactics focussed on learning problems

5 - Quel fondement pour une didactique de la philosophie ? In « Enseigner la philosophie : pourquoi et

comment ? » sous la direction de François Galichet CIRID/CRDF d’Alsace- Strasbourg, 1997

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to the pedagogy focussed on the implementation (and on the stage) of the normativity

as such. It is this slip that defines the field I shall call the metaphysical field.

The philosophy professor does not have to choose among these four dimensions of his

practice. They are to define the limits and possibilities that are his. For getting or

concealing one the other will be mutilating without any remedy its teaching and therefore

philosophy. But in any case it is still the normativity which is the starting point and the

constant reference thus the student speech not as simple expression, which is subjective

and individual, but as bearing a universalising requirement even its most unsophisticated

forms and apparently the most rudimentary. Getting the speech of the student both at the

starting point and at the centre is an imperative.

All in all learning to philosophize in our secondary schools nowadays should enable the

student to acquire the three competences defined by Michel Tozzi: to conceptualize, to set

the problem and to argue6.

III. Perspectives and suggestions

The Higher Education institutions of our country have been undergoing, for some years

now a crisis jeopardizing both the management system of students and the efficiency and

relevance of the training system. This situation has led the concerned authorities to taking

the restructuring measurements, and even to renewing the Higher education system. It is

in this framework that with the help of the French Cooperation and the Sectorial

Adjustment Program (PASE) of education have been set up the First Level in the Sciences

Faculty, and then one year and a half later the Faculty of Arts.

The First Level “Arts”, based on the failure of the pedagogical practice in force to date has

opted for a new pedagogical strategy. This latter simply cancels dictating classes and

establishes the active method based on text study which in some ways constitutes the

framework of teaching.

Moreover, this new pedagogical approach is based on an important work to be done under

a heading called “means of communication and expression” and allocated sufficient

hourly load. The aim of this method is fold; first of all it seeks the training of the mind of

the learner by making him aware of the existence of logics as “Science of thought” and by

making him discover the structuring of the thought materials in their connections with the

ontology and mainly with psychology in the one hand and with the mathematics, social

sciences and humanities on the other hand.

Next, it aims, through inputs carefully identified and sufficiently simple, at progressively

stuffing the learners intellectual potential. This approach shows indirectly the principle so

dear to Emmanuel Kant “Don’t teach thoughts, but teach how to think not directly take the

student or the learner to where he should go but guide him so that he can discover where

to go and how to go”.

It is obvious that the attainment of the above- mentioned objectives, likewise the efficient

implementation of this pedagogical approach, supposes that the teachers prove a high

command of their field and constantly show an easiness in their overall service the content

6 - Refer to the book of Michel Tozzi : « Apprendre à philosopher dans les Lycées d’aujourd’hui »- Hachette-

CNDP, 1992, Paris

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of which, by and large, goes beyond mere teaching; in other words the teachers should see

to it that they are trainers in the full sense of the word to transcend the dangers teaching

through texts, namely the restriction of the thought, in the long run, kills the philosophy.

To that end a quantitatively and qualitatively good and sufficient documentation, as well

as a minimum working material, are required.

At the first level of “Human Sciences” two more pedagogical innovations have been

brought in with regard to the new teaching system and in the aim of efficiently carrying

out: the practice of tutorials and the institutionalisation of the dossier.

A half-way assessment of teaching at the First Level “Human Sciences” has put into

evidence the necessity of filling the gaps faced by the students in French Language. That

is why right at the beginning of the academic year 1992-1993 there was set up a module of

six weeks for beginners bearing on documentation, lexicography, note-taking, reading and

language practice. For the years to come and taking into account the disparity of student’s

levels it is planned that a beginner test will be organised in favour of the new comers, a

welcome test and a support module for the weaker ones.

Of course it would be adventurous to jump into prognostics about the results of this new

practice, or to envisage its generalization. However one could already feel its positive

effects on students who are making real progress.

As for me, what is being done at the First level “Human Sciences” should have been done

right at the secondary school. That is why to make the philosophy subject better regain its

place so as to efficiently play its role in the training of the mind by bringing to it all the

knowledge necessary for its constitution and its structuring while ensuring it a wide

opening, we deem it necessary to bring into the present pedagogical practice the following

corrective measures:

- Undertake the reviewing of the curricula in force in order to rid them of their present

shells;

- Revert to an active method of teaching liable to getting the learners out of the situation

of passive listening in which they are still confined, unfortunately. For this end I

would suggest that an inversion be undertaken so that the teaching of philosophy at the

secondary school be based on texts, while that destined to university students be given,

like anywhere else through magisterial lectures.

- Incept a process of refresher courses for the teachers of philosophy by beginning with

those who encounter more difficulties. The National Pedagogical Institute could

ensure such refresher courses in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts of Gamal Abdel

Nasser University of Conakry;

- Incept the periodic organisation of workshops in favour of teachers of philosophy at

the secondary level. These workshops which could be held during the long vacations

could deal not only with pedagogical issues tied to the teaching of philosophy, but also

with certain chapters of the programs deemed difficult by the teachers or for which

they encounter difficulties linked with documentation;