L’ICONOGRAPHIE DANS LES MANUELS SCOLAIRES FRANCOPHONES AU CAMEROUN: 1951-2009

The present reflection relates Iconography in French school books in Cameroon. It is
an inventory, a classification, an interpretation and a commentary constructed around the
pictorial and thematic taxonomy of the different images contained in the French government
primary cycle textbooks in Cameroon (1951-2009). The data collected has enabled us to
organise the reflection into two different parts. The first part was based on the presentation of
textbooks, the images contained in textbook, the readers of the images, the identification and
the function of images in the aforementioned textbook. As for the second part, it has tackled
the different pictorial thematic contained in the textbook. The different influences that those
images can have on the mental building or better still on the personality of the Cameroonian
pupil have also been apprehended. They contribute to place Africa in general in an inferiority
position compared with the Occident. The study needed a précised inventory of the French
primary cycle textbooks; the medium of the study materials which are images. In order to
successfully carry out this research we resorted to other disciplines like Arts, the History of
Art, Education, Child Psychology, Sociology of Education, Social History and Historical
Imagology. The written and oral sources used have enabled us not only to understand the
presence and the purpose of images in the textbooks but also the consequences that they can
generate.