Linguistic politics and education in Cape Verde: two structural silences
Cape Verde finds itself, once again, on the brink of a sovereign decision. In the heat of the election campaigns, promises multiply, slogans grow louder and politics, so often reduced to a battle for power, tends to overlook the fundamental pillars that give substance to the nation. Among these, two remain both central and overlooked: language and the quality of education.
Recently, I presented a Proposal of Framework Law on Linguistic Policy. I did so as an exercise in academic citizenship, not as an act of partisan intervention, but as an attempt to restore the language to its rightful place: in law, science and fundamental public policy. The Cape Verdean language — our Berdiánu, in all its variations — cannot remain confined to identity-based rhetoric or sporadic debates. It requires a legal framework that recognises its internal diversity, incorporates Cape Verdean Sign Language and organises national bilingualism in a responsible manner.
However, when a technical contribution emerges from academic research and seeks to build bridges towards an intergenerational political compromise, what is often encountered is a reticent pragmatism, where the response to the essential is diluted in the management of the immediate. Language, as an emotional, cognitive and cultural heritage, continues to be invoked in discourse, but is rarely treated as the subject of a structured state policy.
Who is prepared to acknowledge, with institutional seriousness, that language is not merely a symbol, but also a system? Who is prepared to accept that science should inform language policy, and not the other way round? The invitation remains open, but silence is often more eloquent than the answer.
This silence on language finds a troubling parallel in another structural domain: education.
In the last two decades, Cape Verde implemented a series of educational reforms with the stated aim of improving the quality of learning. Between 2006 and 2016, the so-called Competency-Based Approach introduced an innovative pedagogical vision, centred on problem-solving and the integrated application of knowledge. However, its implementation revealed structural weaknesses: a lack of consistent operational tools, the continuation of traditional assessment practices, and insufficient support for the didactic translation of the model.
Between 2016 and 2021, the government programme itself recognised the need to reform the assessment system. However, the subsequent curriculum reform opted for a methodological break, returning to an objective-centred approach, accompanied by a complete rewrite of syllabuses and the production of new textbooks. This move introduced a structural tension between two incompatible logics: the fragmentation of objectives and the integration of competences.
The coexistence of these two paradigms — objectives and competencies — produced a hybrid system, theoretically inconsistent and pedagogically difficult to implement. Without clearly structured core learning outcomes, competence-based evaluation becomes a normative framework lacking a solid curricular foundation.
The result, in practice, is the continuation of a system where the teacher remains the primary mediator of knowledge, assessment remains heavily centred on written tests, and students’ autonomy remains limited. Reforms come and go, but the underlying structure of the education system remains surprisingly stable.
More recently, the publication of the learning outcomes for secondary school students introduces a new layer of complexity. Although this document sets out desirable competences, it appears as a belated instrument in the curriculum process, reversing the basic logic of educational planning, in which the learning outcomes should constitute the starting point and not the final result of an already defined pathway.
What emerges from this twenty-year journey is not a lack of reform, but rather a persistent misalignment between policy intent, curriculum design and teaching practices. Much has been reformed, but little has changed.
The parallel with linguistic policy is clear. In both language and education, a recurring pattern can be observed: the production of policy documents without proper systemic coordination between science, practice and political decision-making. The consequence is the perpetuation of a system that moves through cycles of reform without achieving structural transformation.
In an electoral context, one would expect these issues to be at the centre of public debate. However, the quality of learning and language policy often remain on the periphery, subsumed within generic discourses on education, culture and identity.
The problem lies not in a lack of proposals, but in the absence of coherence between them. The language still lacks a framework law that establishes it as a structural public policy. Education remains marked by successive reforms that fail to resolve the problem of the system’s internal alignment.
Perhaps Cape Verde’s real challenge is not to reform further, but to align better: to align language, schools and public policy within the same state rationale. Without this, we will continue to accumulate reforms that change the discourse but do not alter the structure.
In the end, the language remains a commitment yet to be made, and the school a problem yet to be solved. Between one and the other lies the true test of a nation’s institutional maturity.
Because political parties come and go, and reforms are given new names, but it is the coherence between language, education and public policy that determines the quality of our collective future.
