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Western Education and Rural Productivity in Tropical Africa1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

P. C. C. Evans
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Extract

For many years British administrators and others concerned with the developing countries of tropical Africa have criticized Western-type schooling introduced there for what they believe to have been its bad effects on the life of rural peoples. They have complained that such schooling is prejudicial to rural life, since it produces a distaste for agriculture and leads to a drift from the land. They say it promotes in schoolchildren a desire to be clerks or white-collar workers and, because of their schooling, they develop a strong dislike for manual work and a reluctance to soil their hands with physical labour. They assert that these values inculcated by Western schooling lead finally to an almost complete rejection of rural life, a contempt for agriculture, and therefore to a decrease in rural productivity. Finally, they maintain that this is particularly serious in view of the fact that, as far as we can see at present, many African countries will have to depend on agriculture and the land for a long time to come, for it is only through such dependence that it seems likely that they will achieve economic viability which will be an important factor in making a success of political independence.

Résumé

L'ENSEIGNEMENT OCCIDENTAL ET LA PRODUCTIVITÉ RURALE EN AFRIQUE TROPICALE

L'enseignement occidental a été blâmé en Afrique tropicale comme étant nuisible à la vie rurale et à l'agriculture. On l'a rendu responsable de l'aversion des élèves pour le travail manuel, d'encourager parmi eux le desir d'être uniquement des employés de bureau, de provoquer un mouvement progressif de la population rurale vers les centres urbains et le mépris de l'agriculture. Il sera probablement nécessaire bientôt de formuler des politiques nouvelles d'enseignement dans les pays indépendants de l'Afrique actuellement en cours de développement et, par conséquent, il faudrait examiner le bien-fondé de ces accusations.

Le reproche contre l'instruction occidentale paraît s'appuyer sur certaines hypothèses qui sont examinées successivement. La première de ces suppositions est que cette instruction est, par sa nature même, antipathique à l'agriculture et à la vie agraire. Il est démontré quʼune instruction de ce genre nʼest quʼun moyen parmi plusieurs pour la propagation des valeurs humanistiques de l'Europe Occidentale qui, avec leur respect pour la personnalité humaine et le droit à un niveau de vie amélioré, engendrent inévitablement le mécontentement des conditions sociales et économiques appauvries, qui sont associées à la terre en Afrique tropicale. Les mêmes valeurs humanistiques transmises inconsciemment aux peuples africains conduisent aussi inévitablement à la demande de l'indépendance politique. L'instruction occidentale, par contre, nʼa pas conduit à une aversion pour l'agriculture et la vie agraire en Amérique, au Canada, en Nouvelle Zélande ou en Australie, car ces pays offraient aux émigrants vers le nouveau monde un moyen d'échapper aux mauvaises conditions urbaines et industrielles qui existaient en Europe. Donc, l'enseignement occidental nʼest pas anti-rural par sa nature. D'ailleurs, l'école n'est pas entièrement responsable de la transmission des valeurs europeennes — le contact européen tout entier en est responsable. La deuxième hypothèse est que l'école constitue un agent tout-puissant de changement social. Il est démontré que cette supposition est erronée; l'homme blanc sur les lieux était le modèle par excellence des valeurs européennes et du niveau de vie européen. Les peuples africains cherchaient à les imiter; ils employaient les écoles occidentales comme instruments pour y parvenir, car ils croyaient que c'était au moyen de ses écoles que l'homme blanc avait remporté son succès. Pourtant l'école, à moins de canaliser les aspirations d'un peuple dans son ensemble, est incapable d'accomplir un changement social de grande envergure. Selon la troisième hypothèse, si l'école a joué un rôle malfaisant, elle est néanmoins susceptible d'être transformée en influence salutaire pour des changements sociaux, conduisant à l'enseignement du point de vue professionnel des problèmes agraires pressants. La justesse de cette conclusion est réfutée.

Il est suggéré dans la deuxième partie de cette communication que les écoles en Afrique tropicale sont capables de contribuer à la productivité rurale. Une manière pragmatique d'aborder les problèmes d'enseignement est justifiée pour des raisons pédagogiques et économiques. Un appel est lancé pour une ’attitude rurale’ ou une tendance rurale véritablement intégrée et des suggestions sont émises concernant les moyens d'y parvenir. On insiste sur la nécessité, en cas de réussite, d'une intervention par l'Etat en vue de formuler des politiques agricoles appropriées, de sorte que le travail effectué par l'école puisse être poursuivi avec succès lorsque les enfants la quittent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , October 1962 , pp. 313 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1962

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References

page 314 note 1 Cf. Mayhew, A., The Education of India, London, 1926, p. 246.Google Scholar

page 314 note 2 Special Reports of the Board of Education, London, H.M.S.O. vol. iv (1901), pp. 579Google Scholar, 661, and 669–76, vol. xiv (1905), pp. 330 seq. respectively.

page 314 note 3 Report, Phelps-Stokes, Education in Africa, London, 1922, pp. 16–21Google Scholar; and Education in East Africa, London, 1925, pp. 35–37.

page 314 note 4 Furnivall, J. S., Educational Progress in South-East Asia, New York, 1943, p. 61.Google Scholar

page 314 note 5 Ibid., quoting Campbell, Report of the Vernacular and Vocational Reorganisation Committee, 1936, p. 2.

page 314 note 6 African Education: A Study of Educational Policy in British Tropical Africa, London, H.M.S.O., 1953, p. 5.Google Scholar

page 314 note 7 Investment in Education: The Report of the Commission on Post-School Certificate and Higher Education in Nigeria, Federal Ministry of Education, Nigeria, 1960, p. 5.Google Scholar

page 314 note 8 Final Report of the Conference of African States on the Development of Education in Africa, Addis Ababa, 1961, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

page 314 note 9 Second Commonwealth Education Conference,Delhi,1962. Preliminary papers—not as yet published.Google Scholar

page 315 note 1 Boyd, W., The History of Western Education, London, 1932, p. 403.Google Scholar

page 315 note 2 Mayhew, A., Education in the Colonial Empire, London, 1938, pp. 11–12Google Scholar. See also Wint, G., The British in Asia, London, 1947, pp. 61–62.Google Scholar

page 315 note 3 Cf. Kitto, H. D. F., The Greeks, Penguin Books, London, 1951, p. 9.Google Scholar

page 315 note 4 Cf. Marrou, H. I., A History of Education in Antiquity, London, 1956, pp. xi–xii.Google Scholar ‘The history of education in antiquity is not without relevance to our modern culture, for in it we can trace the direct ancestry of our own educational tradition. We are heirs to the Graeco-Latins and everything of importance in our own civilisation derives from theirs. Most of all this is true of our education. …; Above all, it was the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which left its mark on our education by its conscious, intentional return to the strict classical tradition. Today, to a much greater extent than is commonly realised, we are still living on the humanist tradition ….’

page 316 note 1 Marrou, p. 319, uses the term ‘cultural osmosis ’ for the way in which ‘the current (Western) civilisation is like a life-giving fluid, surrounding men and institutions and permeating them even when they are unaware of it, even against their will ’. In other words, he emphasizes the unconscious transmission of Western values in their own cultural context. How much more so must their transmission at an unlisation conscious level obtain when they are transferred overseas.

page 316 note 2 Cf. Frankel, S. H., The Economic Impact on Underdeveloped Societies, London, 1953, pp. 134–8.Google Scholar

page 317 note 1 In the past it has, of course, done this in Britain also. See Country and Town: A Summary of the Scott and Uthwatt Reports, Penguin Special, 1943, pp. 26–35, for a good discussion of the factors causing a drift from the land in Britain.

page 317 note 2 Hailey, Lord, African Survey, London, 1938, p. 1207.Google Scholar

page 317 note 3 Cf. Keesing, M. F., Education in Pacific Countries, London, 1937, p. 73.Google Scholar

page 318 note 1 It is possible that these humanistic values may also have been a major factor in producing in many European countries the strongly upwardly mobile type of society such as today obtains there, particularly in Britain and Western Germany. In Roman Catholic countries such as Spain, for example, where the ‘good life ’ tends to be interpreted more in terms of an ‘after-life ’, this strong upward mobility is not so evident, since it serves no purpose. By the same argument, upward mobility in European Protestant countries has tended to become materialistic. Moreover, the impact of such a strongly upwardly mobile culture-pattern as ours on what were essentially the static and traditional cultures of tropical Africa has tended to accentuate social disintegration, even some-times to the point of ‘anomie ’. African cultures have therefore tended to polarize around two clearly distinct value-systems—one African and the other European—which are not often reconciled except with difficulty. The association of the land with social structure in tropical Africa has inevitably meant its rejection by anyone strongly assimilating European values, the more so when that person has himself failed to achieve a personal synthesis between African and European values.

page 320 note 1 Particularly American Quaker Missions such as those active in Kenya since the 1930's.

page 320 note 2 This need not always be so. Resentment amongst parents has recently been aroused in Ghana and Nigeria by official attempts to introduce an agricultural bias in education.

page 321 note 1 See Chaundy, G. H., ‘The West Suk of Kenya: Teaching a Primitive Tribe to be Better Farmers ’, in Canadian Geographical Journal, xxxvi, no. 2, Feb. 1948.Google Scholar Also by the same author, ‘The Agricultural Education of a Primitive Tribe’, in East African Agricultural Journal, Apr. 1943.

page 321 note 2 See Prior, K., ‘African Diocese Accepts a Rural Programme ’, in International Review of Missions, xxxvi, July 1947, pp. 370–8.Google Scholar

page 321 note 3 Herington, G. N., ‘Relating the Curriculum of Village Schools in Nigeria to both Rural and Urban Needs ’, in Rural Life, v, no. 2, 1960, pp. 18–21.Google Scholar

page 321 note 4 See Gaitskell, Arthur, Gezira: A. Story of Development in the Sudan, London, 1959.Google Scholar