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“The Gospel Of Work Does Not Save Souls”: Conceptions Of Industrial And Agricultural Education For Africans In the Cape Colony, 1890–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Andrew Paterson
Andrew Paterson*
Affiliation:
Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa
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Extract

Charles T. Loram was an important proponent of fashioning African education in ways that would best meet the needs of the colonial system. In the 1920s, Loram championed adapting the colonial curriculum away from “bookishness” towards a manual and agricultural orientation in order to meet the “needs” of rural Africans, as white settlers defined them. As his ideas on adaptation matured, Loram wrote an influential book, The Education of the South African Native in 1917, in which he stated: “On the necessity of industrial training for the Natives of South Africa there is remarkable unanimity. Government commissions and officials, missionaries and students of the Native Question, and the general public all agree that industrial training should be made the chief end of Native education.” What is interesting about this statement is the certainty with which Loram attributed consensus on the question of industrial training to all white colonial interest groups. Loram claimed “unanimity” in order to strengthen his argument for the particular form of industrial education that he favored. Yet, even though colonial actors ostensibly agreed on the need for “industrial education,” they lacked a common definition of “industrial education” which raises the question: were they agreeing to the same thing?

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Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , Fall 2005 , pp. 377 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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