Scroll down to find some links to pages about the origin, the history, etc. about Cape Verde. Delta Cultura works in the education area in Cape Verde and therefore wants to give a short overview over this sector and its problems in Cape Verde.
Although schooling in Cape Verde is compulsory the education level is very low in Cape Verde.
Reasons amongst others are:
- Badly trained teachers
- Alphabetization of the children is not happening in their mother tongue (Creole) but in Portuguese.
- This has different bad consequences for the children, which are described in many different studies:
- Creoles and Minority Dialects in Education (by Jeff Siegel)
- The rocky road to education in Creole (Angela Bartens – University of Helsinki)
- Very often the education of the guardians is not sufficient to help their children to do their homework.
- The public school in Cape Verde use ex-cathedra teaching as main way of transmitting knowledge.
At the same time other important aspects like development of cognitive capacity or personality do not get the necessary focus. Also with graduation from high school, which would allow the adolescents to go study at a university in the capital of Praia or Portugal, they have hardly any opportunities. Only a privileged social stratum has the means to go to study (high university fees) and there is hardly any work around.
Here are some internet pages with useful information about the 15 volcanic islands in the Atlantic on the west coast of Africa: