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Zaire EDUCATION
Statistically, education would appear to be one of the
healthiest institutions in contemporary Zaire. Though
precise
numbers vary among sources, the overall growth trend has
been
unmistakable. The number of illiterates over fifteen years
of age,
both absolute and as a percentage of population, has
continued to
decrease, from 68.7 percent in 1962 to 38.8 percent in
1985. By
1992 the rate of illiteracy was estimated at just 28
percent (16
percent for males over age fifteen and 39 percent for
females).
Numbers of schools, teachers, and pupils have grown (see
table 8,
Appendix). According to UN estimates, however, enrollment
ratios
(the percentage of the school-age population enrolled in
school)
remain relatively low--79 percent for primary school in
1990 (89
percent for males and 67 percent for females), up from 70
percent
in 1965; and 23 percent for secondary school (16 percent
for
females). Moreover, only 56 percent of primary school-aged
children
reach the fourth grade.
In higher education, the nation boasts three
universities, a
network of teacher training, technical, and agricultural
institutes; and several university-affiliated research
institutes--
this in a country that began its independent existence in
1960 with
a total of thirty Congolese university graduates among its
population of more than 16 million.
Quantitative growth, unfortunately, has served to mask
a
pervasive and accelerating decline in quality at all
levels. The
causes of this decline may be found in shifting and
inconsistent
state policies, in church-state conflicts, in problems
within the
schools, and in the economic impoverishment suffered by
the country
as a whole.
Despite the deficiencies of the education system, most
Zairians
share a faith in the value of education and a belief that
their
children might have, through schooling, a better future.
This hope
has been cited as one of the major factors behind the
citizenry's
disinclination to political activism in the face of a
pervasive and
continuing decline in living standards. Some analysts,
however,
have noted a progressive narrowing of access to the
education
system. For example, Schatzberg has argued that the
perceived
openness of the system to all children is a myth. Access
to
education has increasingly been denied to those who are
not part of
the state bureaucracy and its class.
Data as of December 1993
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