Burkina Faso reviewing school curriculum to `decolonise` students

Burkina Faso's government said it is overhauling its history, geography, and civic education classes for the new school year to "decolonise" what students are taught.

"We have decided to review these curricula, remove words that treat us like children or animals, and add chapters that promote our values," Higher Education Minister Moumouni Zoungrana said at a government event.

"When you open our textbooks, we are portrayed as mere objects. Our victories were never highlighted; on the contrary, the focus was on our defeats and our negative traits," Zoungrana lamented.

The country was a colony until 1960.

School textbooks have not yet been revised, according to a history and geography teacher in the capital, Ouagadougou, but the ministry has distributed a booklet for teachers specifying which expressions to avoid and which chapters to remove or add.

"We will no longer speak of explorers...but of invaders. We will rehabilitate the African resistance fighters who were portrayed as tyrants or barbarians in old textbooks," the teacher said.