About the Work
This book is a comprehensive study of education in British tropical Africa, produced from the collaborative work of study groups and conference proceedings in the early 1950s. The text draws together findings from two major regional investigations—one focused on West Africa and another on East and Central Africa—and synthesizes them into a unified examination of educational policy, practice, and philosophy across the continent. The work is structured as a formal report, complete with numbered recommendations, yet it is written with a degree of reflection and human concern that lifts it above the level of a mere administrative document.
The book emerges from a particular historical moment: the period after the Second World War when colonial powers were beginning to reckon seriously with the future of their African territories, and when African voices were increasingly being heard in discussions of policy. The conference proceedings recorded in the latter portion of the book, held at King’s College, Cambridge, in September 1952 and chaired by Sir Philip Morris, Vice-Chancellor of Bristol University, bring together European administrators, educators, and a significant number of African participants to debate the findings and recommendations of the study groups. This structure gives the work a dialogic quality—it is not a single author’s pronouncement but a collective attempt to think through the immense educational challenges facing Africa at a moment of rapid and often bewildering change.
The book is notable for its insistence on looking at education in the round. It is not merely concerned with classrooms, curricula, and examinations, though these receive detailed attention. It is equally concerned with the education of adults, the role of women, the relationship between schooling and the land, the place of vernacular languages, and the deeper question of what kind of society education should be trying to build. Throughout, there runs a tension between the universal principles of good education and the particular circumstances of African life—a tension the authors refuse to resolve too easily, insisting instead that African education must be rooted in African realities even as it draws on the best of European experience.
Context
The book must be understood against the backdrop of the late colonial period in Africa, a time of profound transition. The territories under discussion—stretching from the Gambia and the Gold Coast in the west to Kenya, Tanganyika, and Nyasaland in the east—were all under British administration, but the certainties of colonial rule were already beginning to fray. The Second World War had accelerated social and economic change across the continent. Motor transport, bicycles, and the spread of a cash economy were reaching into rural areas that had previously been relatively isolated. The coastal belts of West Africa, in particular, were experiencing something like the early Industrial Revolution in England, with all its attendant dislocations and miseries.
The book is also situated within a specific educational tradition. It follows in the wake of earlier inquiries, most notably the Phelps-Stokes Report and the declaration of Educational Policy for British Tropical Africa, both of which had set the terms of debate for African education in the interwar years. By the early 1950s, however, it was clear that those earlier frameworks were no longer adequate. The pace of change had accelerated; African demands for education had intensified; and the old assumptions about the limited role of schooling in colonial society were being questioned from many directions.
The conference format itself is significant. The book records not just the findings of study groups but the live debates of a gathering at which African participants spoke with increasing confidence and authority. The chairman’s epilogue reflects on the significance of these exchanges. The presence of seven African speakers endorsing the call for a “quite novel concentration of energy and resources upon the tasks of informal education” suggests a shifting balance of voices. The book captures a moment when the future of African education was genuinely open, when policies had not yet hardened into the forms they would take in the late colonial and early independence periods.
Economically, the context was one of ambitious development schemes that required educated manpower. The book repeatedly returns to the problem of deploying Africa’s human resources effectively, warning that progress plans would fail without trained personnel. Yet it also recognizes the limits of purely economic prescriptions. The deeper question, as the authors frame it, is one of motive and character: whether the mainspring of action should be self-interest or the desire to serve. This is not a question that can be answered by raising pay scales, however necessary those may be.
Socially, the context was one of extraordinary diversity and rapid transformation. The book catalogs the variety of African life: large Yoruba townships with their mission, Native Authority, and Muslim schools; the railway terminus being prepared at Berekum in the Gold Coast; pagan labourers in the tin-mines of the Jos plateau; model villages around Tarkwa; hill-top pagan villages in Northern Nigeria, some fenced with poisonous cactus; walled compounds with beehive huts in the Gambia and Tiv country. Everywhere, the extended family—the traditional basis of social structure—was being disrupted by population movements, by the spread of Islam and Christianity, and by education itself. New classes were emerging, created by wealth and schooling. The book is acutely aware that education is both a response to these changes and a cause of them.
Structure of the Book
The book is organized into five major parts, moving from general principles to specific problems. Part I provides the background, establishing the varied scene of African life and the rapid changes sweeping through it. Part II addresses initial problems—the fundamental questions of purpose, resources, and the relationship between education and society that any educational system must confront. Part III, the longest and most detailed section, examines the schools themselves: primary, middle, secondary, and technical institutions, with their curricula, examinations, staffing, and accommodation. Part IV widens the lens to consider aspects of education that extend beyond formal schooling, including adult education, the education of women and girls, and the role of libraries, mass media, and community development. Part V takes up special problems that cut across the earlier divisions, including the education of particular groups and the administrative structures needed to support the whole enterprise.
Within this overarching structure, the book moves between two geographical foci. The West African material, drawn from the first study group, tends to dominate the earlier sections, while the East and Central African material becomes more prominent later. The conference proceedings at the end of the book draw the threads together, with group reports on different aspects of the educational enterprise and a final epilogue by the chairman.
The book is also structured by its recommendations. Numbered sequentially throughout, these recommendations cover everything from the teaching of English and vernacular languages to the size of training colleges, from the provision of school transport to the establishment of library services. They are interspersed through the text rather than gathered at the end, giving the work the character of a working document designed to guide policy. Yet the book is not merely a list of prescriptions. It repeatedly pauses to reflect on deeper questions—the nature of character, the meaning of community, the purpose of education itself—in a way that transcends the immediate policy context.
The final portion of the book records the conference discussions in some detail, including the debates over who should control informal education and the striking endorsement of a “quite novel concentration of energy and resources” on this front. The chairman’s epilogue closes the work with reflections on the significance of the conference and the challenges ahead.
Inside the Book
The Purpose of Education in a Changing Society
The discussion turns to the practical challenges of building an education system with limited means. With scarce finance and too few teachers, the argument is made that it is far better to offer a five-year primary course for children aged seven to twelve—one that most pupils will actually complete—than a seven-year course starting at age five that ends with many dropouts. If resources are so tight that only a four-year course is possible, then a two-stage primary system may be an unavoidable temporary measure. Yet the passage is clear that such a short course cannot truly fulfill the aims of primary education, and it would be a genuine misfortune if this abbreviated structure were to become a permanent feature of the system.
The notes then turn to the relationship between schools and the futures of their pupils. In the complex social structures developing on the Coast, schools have become the decisive force in determining a child’s career. The simple inheritance of a father’s trade, which was the natural path in simpler times, has been broken by organized schooling and social complexity. A school, by its nature, tends to isolate itself from the outside world, and unless this tendency is actively resisted, pupils will either choose their careers blindly or leave school with no formed idea at all, drifting into a rootless adolescent crowd. The school’s responsibility, therefore, is to take a genuine interest in the world beyond its walls. It must make pupils familiar with local work through description, observation, and direct participation, while inside the school, varied activities should help children discover their own aptitudes and preferences. The top classes often hold strong and snobbish opinions about the prestige of different kinds of work, and a wise teacher must work to destroy these false values, giving due honor to each form of work based on its real demands and its service to society. The final choice of a career is an act of character, and the grounds and quality of these decisions are the supreme test of a school’s worth.
A nation is happy, the passage contends, when individuals do work they enjoy and believe is worthwhile while also meeting the needs of the community. These two requirements may conflict, but neither can be escaped. West Africa must deploy its manpower effectively or its progress schemes will fail. The usual prescription is purely economic—raise pay to attract workers—but this works only temporarily. While economic maladjustments should be corrected, as a long-term policy this method is difficult because manpower cannot be inflated like money, and it creates other shortages. The deeper question is one of motive: should the mainspring of action be self-interest or the desire to serve? Both are balanced in human nature, and calling on one weakens the other. Africans, the passage notes, have a strong sense of kinship and brotherhood, a characteristically African trait that could either be weakened or become the foundation of a truly African national life. Character is the balancing item between free service and social need. A man of character values work needed by his fellows and says, in effect, ‘Show me the job that I can do and that most needs doing, and I will do it.’ Building this character is the work of education. Training must be given for all varied forms of work and to the right number of pupils—men for improved agriculture, skilled tradesmen for buildings, transport, and industry, and young Africans with the right skills for development schemes. Educators must work in close contact with those concerned with development. Education, in conclusion, is the united concern of a people for the right upbringing of its children and the improvement of national life, and its success depends on the co-operation of parents, teachers, administrators, and leaders. There is hope on the West Coast, where interest in education is widespread and efforts have been made by missionaries, administrators, and local communities, and where African peoples are determined to overcome the immense difficulties.
The Varied West African Scene
Applying these general principles to the West African situation is difficult because of the great variety of circumstances within and between territories. There are many tribes with differing cultures, languages, dialects, customs, and traditional laws. The notes offer a series of contrasting images: a large Yoruba township with three primary schools—mission, Native Authority, and Muslim—longing for a secondary school; Berekum in the Gold Coast being prepared as a railway terminus for the cocoa trade; pagan labourers working in the tin-mines of the Jos plateau; model villages built for workers around Tarkwa. In contrast, pagan villages in Northern Nigeria are built on hill-tops like medieval towns, some fenced with poisonous cactus, while in the Gambia and Tiv country, villages have walled compounds with beehive huts. Development depends on roads, power, and health services, and in the larger towns there are fine modern buildings and African judges, surgeons, and business men. Everything is changing rapidly. Rural areas are being affected by motor transport, bicycles, and a cash economy, while less isolated areas are plunging from an agrarian society into an industrial revolution. The coastal belt faces problems reminiscent of the early Industrial Revolution in England. The varying scenes show the danger of generalized statements, but there is also a danger of a too parochial approach, for peoples are growing together into a common nationhood and wish to learn about their country. The extended family remains the basis of the social structure, but population movements are disrupting it, and the spread of Islam, Christianity, and education have all played their parts in these changes. Education and wealth have resulted in the emergence of strong, powerful classes, while the introduction of ground-nuts and cocoa farming has led to a decline in older economic patterns.
The Education of Girls and the Conditions of Schooling
The passage questions whether the current curriculum beyond the “three R’s” is useful or attractive to African girls. Domestic science centres, where they exist, are good with first-rate teaching, but equipment based on “native conditions” is too often restricted to traditional items. Girls are seldom introduced to modern equipment that could be used in native conditions, save labour, and encourage greater dietary variety. Sewing is well taught but within such narrow limits that it becomes dull. Lessons in child care, home craft, and hygiene are even more dull and bookish, overly concerned with theories and first principles answering “Why?” when African girls need answers to “How?” They need practical first aid and home nursing—how to treat a baby who has rolled into a fire rather than distinguishing between gonorrhoea and syphilis. The passage also criticizes the assumption that formal class instruction is the natural and best teaching method for any subject. This leads to theoretical treatment and endless transcription of notes, creating an attitude that sees nothing incongruous in identical lessons on the climate of Italy or care of the feet given to old or young, European or African, in England or Nigeria. This accounts for the theoretical teaching of practical subjects and the ready acceptance of syllabuses imported without modification from abroad, such as physical training.
Boarding accommodation presents another set of problems. At best—as at Adisadel Boys’ and Wesley Girls’ Schools at Cape Coast—conditions are reasonably good, but the average is depressingly low and the worst conditions are appallingly grim and squalid. The best accommodation costs greatly, and insisting on only the best would limit provision, but satisfactory minimum standards should be possible without excessive cost. An honest attempt not to “unsettle” children has led Government and missions to provide such bare minimum equipment that children cannot learn to raise standards in their own homes. With the changeover to a cash economy, many Africans have money to spend and need help with ideas. A growing minority of boarding children are grandchildren of educated Africans accustomed to better standards at home. The risk of “unsettling” children by accustoming them to unattainable conditions is not one West Coast schools seriously face; the more immediate danger is missing the opportunity to raise standards of hygiene and civilized living. Classrooms are generally satisfactory, but furniture is inconvenient and cumbersome. Science accommodation has improved, though not all schools have art rooms, workshops, or special accommodation for practical work, and many workshops are little more than dilapidated sheds. Some recent practical accommodation is first-rate, as at the secondary technical school at Takoradi and trade training centres in the Gold Coast and Nigeria. New handicraft centres in Nigeria for senior primary schools are well built but have oversized benches causing overcrowding and lack storage space. The importance of relating room size and shape to function and furniture is not generally recognized. English information exists, but climatic differences make English accommodation unsuitable for Africa. Libraries are essential; many West Coast schools have good libraries but many do not, and library facilities need wide extension. Lack of special accommodation should not delay increased money for reference and general reading books, and investigation is needed into costs of materials and equipment and dividing costs between parent and school.
The Development of Sixth Forms and the Examination System
Developing sixth-form work in secondary grammar schools is attracting attention. English sixth forms developed through generous staffing and established main school courses with traditions of culture and scholarship. West Coast schools should eventually develop sixth forms, but most lack enough qualified teachers for sound main school courses, and attempting sixth-form work would weaken main school staff disastrously. The demand for sixth forms may be harmful: it may encourage driving pupils through Higher School Certificate as they were driven through School Certificate, or over-emphasize differences between sixth-form and earlier work, making School Certificate a “rigid barrier.” The real problem is substituting pupil-learning for teacher-instruction in upper forms. Universities should influence upper-form work, but this influence can become too powerful, as in England. West Coast grammar schools should retain control of their development and may have to fight for freedom against university pressure and “attempted university dictatorship” in curriculum matters.
The Cambridge School Certificate is the aim of ordinary courses in all West Coast grammar schools and meets needs reasonably well. Only a tiny minority of schoolchildren are concerned with it, but all children are excessively examined. Three main examination types exist: competitive selection examinations for admission to senior primary, middle, and secondary schools; certificate examinations marking educational standards; and internal school examinations, reinforced by monthly, fortnightly, or weekly tests. The average child may spend a third of school life being examined or revising. Many African teachers would be shocked that examinations are “at best necessary evils.” Internal examining could be easily reduced. Standard examinations are part of the administrative machine—Government departments are the largest employers of literate labour, and entry terms control the curriculum. Many examinations have lost educational justification and are retained as “convenient pegs” for Government employment qualifications. Examinations demand maximum factual knowledge but no real understanding—they are tests of memory rather than thinking, and this should be reversed. The most important selective examination is for secondary grammar schools. These are exceptionally difficult to set and mark accurately, and most on the West Coast are “quite unreliable.” They assume fallaciously that harder questions increase selective power. One particular examination consists of a combined English and arithmetic paper, separate English and arithmetic papers, and an interview, with all candidates taking all three papers the same day. The combined paper eliminates candidates—only about 25 percent have separate papers marked.
The Teaching of English and the Primary School
In secondary school, more emphasis should be placed on spoken English, as the graduate must equal Europeans in his work. The lack of an oral examination in English at the School Certificate level is a pity; it should be no more difficult to organize than practical exams in biology or needlework and should be instituted. Its absence may cause the low standard of spoken English. Replacing the focus on grammar and nineteenth-century literature with contemporary and dramatic literature might assist teachers. In primary school, English should be taught mainly for good reading ability, but middle and secondary schools should give increasing attention to spoken English. An oral exam should be part of the School Certificate Examination, and literature papers should help raise spoken English standards. This view of English teaching is functional rather than academic, but Africans will still appreciate it, as they have a strong practical element keeping them close to reality, despite being attracted to the false lure of the seeming academic. Without English, a teacher is shut off from educational literature that enlivens training and allows flexibility. The lack of professional literature in the vernacular means teachers depend on a limited supply of textbooks. In some training colleges, English is not even a compulsory examination subject. Great stress should be laid on teaching English in all training colleges, both for the student’s general education and to enable him to play a part in a language policy giving new importance to selected vernaculars and English. Assisting Africans to become proficient in English is not exclusive to schools; all English-speaking people in Africa have a responsibility as teachers. The passage pays tribute to the British Council and Information Services for spreading English knowledge outside schools, impressed by the amount and quality of their work, hoping no false economy curtails it.
The recommendations for language policy include selecting a few vernaculars in each territory for systematic training in a standardized orthography in all schools and colleges, paying particular attention to teaching a selected vernacular in primary school through speech, discussion, drama, and composition to root the child in his environment, and continuing vernacular study in middle and secondary schools where teachers and groups are available, potentially up to School Certificate level. A policy should lead to the eventual elimination of Swahili from schools where taught as a lingua franca, with Kenya following gradual elimination while Tanganyika uses a piecemeal policy. English should begin in the second year of school life once competent teachers are available, aiming for reading ability in three years, with English as the medium of instruction in one or two subjects by the fourth class. A qualified English teacher should teach English down to Class II, and unqualified teachers passing an English test should receive a special increment. Reading books and aids for primary schools should be produced cheaply and in bulk.
Primary education is the first eight years with a break after four. The primary system has roots in the past, linked with mission evangelistic work that provided it all initially, affecting its purpose, supervision, and curriculum. It has been hard to adapt to education as a public social service. Primary education trains children to live in society, observe their environment, develop curiosity, and acquire basic learning tools. The passage considers applying the European two-cycle organization of ‘Infant’ and ‘Junior’ education. A period in a good infant school between ages four or five to seven or eight is immensely valuable, allowing mental and emotional development and pre-reading and pre-number activities. Research shows time may be wasted starting formal teaching too early. Infant schools should be recommended where difficulties can be overcome, though scattered population and recruiting skilled teachers are difficulties. Wrong methods at this age are worse than no education. Only a minority get more than four years of primary course, so the four-year course must be complete in itself and a preparation for higher education. Children completing the first four-year course achieve literacy in their vernacular and a basic conception of number. Buildings and equipment vary, and teachers in the first four classes often have little but primary education themselves, reproducing methods by which they were taught. When notebooks are eaten by white ants, teachers rely on memory. The quality of teacher training calls for urgent consideration. The standard of education for teachers has risen, though women have lagged behind, but lower standards are disappearing. Double sessions increase the number of children but may double ineffective education, with small children waiting till the heat of the day for tired teachers.
The School Garden as the Heart of Learning
The planning of a primary school’s work and aims around a garden, rather than a building, was proposed as a fundamental reversal of normal procedure. In one region, before schools were started, the people were undernourished, kept emaciated stock, and used destructive cultivation methods. Before a school was started, a site was chosen for a garden, not a building. A common garden and individual gardens were laid out, and new crops and cultivation methods were introduced, turning the school into a seed-distributor. Boys who left school to work on the land remained associated with it through Young Farmers’ Club-type activities. Handwork for garden needs produced seed boxes, tree-shelters, planting-sticks, wheelbarrows, and pots. Later, animals were added to food growing, and eroded land was enclosed for pasture. The schools’ effect spread, shown by movement toward pasture enclosures, better cultivation, and anti-erosion measures. The primary school should always be a demonstration centre for adult educational work of the agriculture department, as only primary schools are numerous and widespread enough.
For demonstration, a primary school’s experimental plots could show good, bad, and indifferent cultivation methods. Some plots could have manure, compost, irrigation channels, rotation, intercropping, or ridging, or not. When harvested, the schoolroom’s benches and floor could display the effects of different techniques. Adults from the district could be invited to examine the crop exhibition with explanatory labels and charts. Keeping small domestic animals was important for nature-study and showed the fruitful interrelation of plant and animal life in food production. Children delighted in observing animals grow, feed, and reproduce, which could be a starting-point for primary school work.
Regular periods of work studying the environment could produce lively interest in the rural surroundings of the African child. Without this, a mental divorce from the land might be sown early in school life. The nature table, weather observations, and maps, diagrams, and illustrations of rural life were needed to fill the classroom with material from the outside world. Because of the prevalent attitude that land work is for the uneducated and for women, field work had to be completely related to academic classroom work. Drudgery was inevitable in all work but was accepted cheerfully if its need as part of an intelligent purpose was perceived by even the smallest child. The school garden should not be too large, or work becomes drudgery and children hate it. Cultivation should be intensive, not extensive, based not on food production but on the garden as a starting-point for education. If larger gardens were used, paid labour should be employed, with costs met from food sale profits. Where the garden was linked closely with classroom work, children entered manual work gladly; where the educational aim was neglected, manual work was desultory and grudging, creating dislike of agricultural labour.
In districts where primary schools were fairly close together, school gardening was encouraged when a reward was given for the best garden among a group of schools. In some places the middle school was thought of as a section of a continuous academic course formed from two standards from the primary school and two from the old junior secondary school. What was needed was a new conception of this stage with a curriculum integrating practical and theoretical studies. Agriculture would form the most important starting-point for studies in the middle school. The garden and farm-land should never be used primarily to raise food for boarders, staff, or sale, but primarily in relation to the school curriculum. The middle school library should include books on farming and rural life, such as N. Humphrey’s three books on Africans and Their Land.
Most European teachers in secondary schools had experience in urban grammar schools of an industrial society. This fact, and examination pressure, prevented secondary schools from playing a leading part in Africa’s agricultural revival. The importance of the secondary school farm and an agriculture course to School Certificate standard was described in the secondary school section of the report. Examination pressure was largely responsible for the attitude that practical agricultural work was a waste of time that should be used for examination cramming. These written, highly theoretical examinations were necessary for further education and advancement. Competitive scholarship awards to secondary schools exacerbated these evils. Scholarships should be awarded on ascertained need, not competitively, to those who qualified for admission. Examination reform might improve educated Africans’ attitudes toward agriculture and practical work.
The best type of teacher-training college for agricultural understanding was the composite college, where teachers and agricultural assistants trained side by side at a college with a well-run farm and mixed staff of educational and agricultural experts. As long as many teachers trained at small colleges attached to academic secondary schools without enthusiasm for agriculture, schools would produce children whose desire was to escape the land. In territories without composite training colleges, some teachers in training went for a period of agricultural training at an agricultural assistants’ college. This was excellent as an interim measure, but the period was usually short and regarded as an excrescence on the main course. It could not be a valid alternative to the composite college or a course rooted in rural realities where academic subjects grew out of those realities. Another arrangement seconded selected teachers showing initiative in rural studies for a year’s agricultural course at a centre such as Thogoto in Kenya, then returned them to schools. This was excellent, though the one-year secondment confined benefits to very few teachers. Agriculture in university and adult stages was dealt with in subsequent chapters. Increasing local agricultural shows had an excellent effect in arousing interest among adults and children in improvements and new methods.
Recommendations for Rural and Adult Education
A series of numbered recommendations emerged from the study group. The primary school course should be based on the realities of rural life, and the primary school should be used as a demonstration centre for teaching good food production to adults of its region. Pupils leaving primary school should remain associated through Young Farmers’ Club-type activities. Adult education should be the responsibility of a Department of Education under a senior officer unlikely to think in formal education terms. Adult education should “follow up” primary education through supply and distribution of inexpensive literature designed for adolescent and adult interests. Standing camps should be established where ex-primary-school pupils attend short educational and recreational courses between ages fifteen and twenty. Mass literacy campaigns should only begin when their work could be sustained into the future. Techniques for a mass education campaign in English suited to Africa should be developed with a pilot scheme. Visual and oral methods—film, radio, and especially striking posters displaying simple truths like better food production—should expand in adult education. Library services should be placed under an education officer who coordinates work and plans expansion. Where Unit Libraries were placed in educational institutions as regional centres, training colleges should be used where possible. The two Literature Bureaux should increase production and distribution. Co-operative societies should set aside a percentage of profits for co-operative education. The Churches should make a new pioneer effort in adult education, contracting some low-return educational work to embark on this field.
The Education of Women and Girls
Since the Phelps-Stokes Report and the declaration of Educational Policy for British Tropical Africa, attitudes toward educating women and girls had changed “revolutionarily.” Earlier approached with diffidence—”almost impossible to over-state the delicacy and the difficulties”—these problems had since been tackled with boldness. African women in East and Central Africa now could join Europeans in educating, training, and emancipating African women. There was widespread recognition of the need to extend educational facilities for women and girls both qualitatively and quantitatively. Progress seemed slow because much experience had to be “telescoped into the lifetime of one generation.” The problem was increased by tribal custom differences, transition from rural to urban and subsistence to cash economy, growth of African professional, technical, and clerical groups, and pressure of new material and moral forces.
The immediate challenge targeted the minority personally involved in these changes, but the great responsibility lay with Europeans and Africans concerned with the mass of rural women—few schooled, few sending children to school, “onlookers rather than participators.” Evolution of African society should rest on complementary contributions of men and women. Women’s education lagged seriously behind men’s, so especially favourable terms should be offered girls to induce them forward. Girls’ education had to meet many needs: the woman in the family, whether in bush or town, wife of a land-worker, skilled worker, clerk, professional, or overseas-trained man; the woman earning her living, by custom owning property or sharing crop money, or through specialist training as nurse or teacher; the growing group of economically independent spinsters—”a new and important factor”; and the woman active in community life through Church or voluntary society.
The traditional school or training institution could not meet these expectations. Women needed education fitting them for a world of social change, tools of learning, and professional and occupational training for economic independence and responsibility for educating their own people. The main task was sound training in “techniques of living” to raise African life socially, intellectually, and spiritually. Informal education of adolescent and adult women needed as much attention as formal education of girls. “There is no woman’s problem; there is a multiplicity of problems.” Despite varied tribal patterns, woman was commonly “the worker in the home and on the land.” Formal education upset established order, disturbed relationships, and made demands on men. The curriculum included customary land and home work plus new processes and labour-saving methods. Girls learned health rules, child care, and food values—then met “reluctance to change” and resentment of elders taking advice from the young; girls in turn lost respect for older, less-educated generations.
Girls learned other relationships between men and women, thought for themselves, and expressed their thoughts; debates and essays revealed how quickly they grasped change possibilities. Employment meant economic independence; education put them on an intellectual level with men. Men’s mental resistance was waning; educated influential men wanted wives to share their political, social, and professional aspirations. In one territory, Africans asked the Woman Assistant Director of Education for tea-parties so wives could learn European social behaviour; in another, husbands allowed wives five-month-to-a-year residential homecraft courses; in a third, girls’ boarding schools filled on the first day when fees rose and boys’ attendance dropped. Women themselves sometimes opposed change most strongly, fearing European contacts’ effects on daughters. Ignorance of African social organization led Europeans to pity African women unnecessarily—they worked hard but lived in a “safe, known way” with precedents for every contingency. Their influence was considerable, especially where puberty rites and initiation ceremonies concentrated authority in their hands; education became disruptive, excluding girls from community, sapping older women’s power, isolating girls as outcasts until enough formed their own society. African women developed duty and responsibility beyond most men; they believed relief from burdens would betray their trust as wives and mothers. Modernization might cause temporary set-back in status and influence; removal of external discipline might cause moral decline unless self-restraint based on spiritual belief replaced it.
European women’s professional participation was recent enough that Woman Officers in Colonial Territories faced difficulty. There was a paradox: they were expected to endure loneliness, discomfort, responsibility, arduous journeys, dangers, and unsuitable rest camps—yet were often given inferior living conditions, expected to yield to men with families, and denied leisure freedom.
Further Recommendations on Women and Training
Bursaries open only to girls should address the disparity between girls’ and boys’ numbers in classes except the first two. Recruitment of girls for teaching, especially primary, should increase. Working parties should draw up new integrated middle-school curricula for girls linking Household Arts with Health, Civics, Art, Crafts, Biology, Mathematics, or Languages. Girls’ schools and colleges should advance material conditions—amenities for privacy, personality expression, initiative, and decision—to foster independence. Married women trained as teachers should be induced to return to teaching. Priority should go to trades and technical training for women and girls in needlecraft, catering, institutional management, and secretarial arts. Special adult courses should be devised for wives of Africans going overseas and wives of married teachers in training. For European women’s contribution, annual travelling grants for isolated women educators, short tours for staffing continuity, regular in-service training in the United Kingdom for foreign women educationalists in grant-aided posts, such posts requiring excellent command of English used daily, and more travelling Women Education Officers as liaison and specialist consultants were all recommended. Research projects into problems affecting women and girls should accompany developments.
Teacher training recommendations included revised ten-year estimates of teacher needs, discontinuation of training after only six years’ schooling, up-grading vernacular teachers via refresher courses, and a third training year in handicraft, domestic science, and agriculture. Training colleges should foster professional loyalty. ‘Quotas’ or ‘rationing’ systems should not retard progressive areas keen on education. Intending teachers’ financial conditions should equal those of other Government trainees. Transport of students, particularly girls and women, needed careful organization and financial assistance. A Unified Teaching Service for all grant-aided school teachers should be instituted. No discrepancy should exist between teachers’ salaries and other civil servants’ with similar qualifications, and contributory pension schemes should apply. Composite Training Centres training teachers, agricultural and health assistants together had advantages. By 1955 no training college should have fewer than 120 students, nor rarely exceed three times that. New syllabuses needed trial periods before general use. Teacher training courses should make experience the starting-point—through Development Plans and Wastage study, observation, Teaching Aids construction, Social Welfare practice, the Project Method, and integrating Teaching Practice with theory. Examinations should limit written papers and assess practical work carefully. Each territory should co-ordinate teacher-training along English Institute of Education lines, with territorial Institutes exercising functions including co-ordination, examinations, in-service training, and research allocation; Boards should represent the Department of Education, Training Colleges, Churches, Local Government Education Committees, and serving teachers. In-service training should link practitioners with British professional associations, establish a Standing Professional Committee, review British courses, devise ad hoc schemes for visits and conferences, and establish a bureau for refresher course information.
Fees should be charged in all schools, uniform throughout courses and territories, approximating consumable equipment and food and clothing costs; remission should be authorized by district commissioners, eventually African local authorities; fees collected by teachers and audited. Boarding schools should provide adequate food, beds, dormitory supervision, drinking-water, washing facilities, latrines, raised social standards, and lighting. Schools should provide uniforms charged as part of boarding fees. Schools should provide buses or lorries where economic, with parental assistance available from chiefs or district commissioners. On urban matters, city and town councils should become local education authorities, and missions were to continue their role.
The Structure of Educational Administration
The report on administration asserted that administration in the United Kingdom could not be understood merely by listing functions and their formal apportionment between central and local authorities; its strength lay in subtle interactions felt only from within the system. The report dwelt on this because oversimplification was a danger in thinking about African educational administration. However, facing difficulties did not mean inaction. Africa had accepted the essence of English local government: real devolution of power from the centre. Administrative advance had to match political realities; Africans needed opportunity to serve their immediate communities, and real service required responsibility. Participation in local affairs was both present service and preparation for larger future service; peoples reached political maturity only through steadily increasing executive responsibility.
The Education of Girls and the Retention of Married Women Teachers
The report turns to the specific challenges of educating girls, insisting that no deserving pupil should be barred from schooling simply because of poverty. It recommends financial provisions to cover the costs of travel and to ensure safe escort to and from boarding schools. Beyond mere access, the curriculum itself must be integrated and suitable, designed to hold the interest of girls until they are ready to proceed to training college. The authors place great value on securing married women as teachers, noting that their teaching often carries a “quality of sympathy and understanding” that more than compensates for the disadvantages they face from the competing demands of home duties. Every effort should be made to retain them in the profession, with attractive terms of service and arrangements that make it easy for mothers to teach. The report cites examples of territories where married women are allowed to continue their training courses and where mothers can have their babies cared for on school premises while they teach.
Entry to Training College and the Problem of Age
As educational standards improve, the age at which pupils leave primary school falls, creating a new problem: many potential teachers leave school too young for college and are subsequently lost to the profession. The report cautions that admitting these young people to college immediately upon their obtaining the requisite academic qualification would be a mistake, as they lack the maturity needed for the profession. Yet, it is equally wrong to lose promising entrants simply because they finished their schooling early. The report notes that even in the United Kingdom, where students under eighteen are not admitted for training, some leave school at fifteen and must fill three years as best they can. In Africa, where opportunities for secondary or part-time evening education are far more limited, the problem is even more acute. As a solution, the report suggests that prospective teachers might be retained as pupil teachers under good supervision until they are old enough for college. The age of entry should not be lowered; no prospective teacher should be admitted until sufficiently mature, and each territory should determine the appropriate entry age according to its own local conditions.
Staffing of Training Colleges
The authors express deep concern over the staffing difficulties reported at training colleges. Teachers on training college staff often lack a special desire or vocation for teacher-training, and transfers are frequent. Teacher-training is seen as unpopular, being considered too hard or offering no promotion prospects, and few staff are adequately experienced or qualified. The report notes that grammar school experience in England is not necessarily helpful for training teachers for African primary schools. Governments often insist on graduates, even though half the teachers in British training colleges are non-graduates, and they seem content with a graduate without inquiring whether he or she is specially suitable for the work. These difficulties must be overcome. The authors agree with the recommendations of the Jeffery report, insisting that staff, whether African or European, should be specially selected for their experience, academic qualifications, and sense of vocation. They must be of high moral character to exercise a sound influence on students, and they should be suitably remunerated. Academic qualifications need not include a university degree, and while high moral character will manifest itself in a convinced religious faith, no doctrinal test should be imposed.
The Size of the Training College
Examining what the college should do required a discussion of its size. For small colleges, individual tuition and personal contacts are easier, things that African education cannot afford to lose. If colleges grow, a tutorial system should be introduced to retain these benefits. On balance, the advantages of larger colleges outweigh their disadvantages. A college should be large enough to support specialist staff and amenities, including an adequate library, generous equipment, and a fuller community life. With an adequate staffing ratio, individual tuition and personal contacts remain possible. The report accepts the minimum of 100 or 120 students as recommended by the Binns and Jeffery reports, noting this is a minimum, not a maximum. Such a college would need ten or twelve teaching staff with sufficient administrative support. With a staffing ratio of one to twelve, twelve staff would give 144 students, and in-service training would require additional staff. Training colleges are sometimes kept small because of the difficulty in finding teaching-practice schools. Two solutions were heard: first, a central college could maintain satellite colleges staffed by its own staff, where students receive preliminary training before coming to the central college for further training after a period of service in schools; second, a college could maintain hostels in areas with plenty of schools, with the warden supervising practice. In both cases, the head teachers of practice schools were trained to co-operate with the training college staff.
The Work of the Training College
The authors discuss whether a college should give general education in addition to professional training, noting that the term “professional training” is ambiguous and the distinction may not be real. Even without fresh knowledge, a college guides students to view existing knowledge in a new light, which is itself a form of general education. Ideally, the school gives general education and the college professional training, but schools are often unequal to their task, so colleges must remedy deficiencies. A major difficulty is “the dead weight of tradition.” Head teachers and senior colleagues fail to understand the new ideas of young teachers, and trained teachers often revert to the bad methods they experienced at school rather than the good methods they learned at college. Even college tutors sometimes lecture and dictate notes instead of teaching as they wish their students to imitate. Students would benefit from being taught by methods appropriate to the classes they will later teach, though with limits. A tutor should never plead that dictating notes is necessary to get through the programme. The passage stresses the importance of the demonstration lesson, where a college tutor teaches a school class before the students, and the criticism lesson, where a student teaches in a similar fashion. Each college should have an attached demonstration school under its own control, with its quality carefully maintained. Its purpose is to show what can be done with generally available equipment and methods, not to be so lavishly equipped that students regard its work as inapplicable elsewhere.
Pre-Service and In-Service Training
Pre-service and in-service training must go together. The college staff must visit head teachers and invite them to the college, and both must plan co-operation. Newly trained teachers must find that head teachers understand and sympathize with their new ideas. There must be a constant coming and going, with college staff visiting schools, teachers visiting the college, and teachers returning for further courses. Teachers attending in-service training should receive full pay, superannuation benefits, and travelling expenses. The staffing ratio must exceed one to twelve to make this possible.
Group E: Education and the Adult
The record of the conference proceedings turns to the discussions of “Group E: Education and the Adult” and its pronouncements on informal education in Africa. The group discussed who should control informal education. A strong minority felt that the first two heads of informal education should rest with education authorities, but the majority preferred to entrust the third head to other agencies such as the administration, voluntary agencies, or local authorities. The majority view was that a senior officer at the centre should co-ordinate the work of all these agencies and the training of workers. Of nine members discussing this in full session, four were for the education authorities, four for an alternative, and the ninth wished to get away from departmental control altogether. The group made a pronouncement endorsed by the conference: “At least for the short term, there should be a quite novel concentration of energy and resources upon the tasks of informal education.” This was called the most revolutionary sentence spoken during the conference. Eight speakers, seven of them African, endorsed it, and no one opposed it.
Group E’s Final Paper
The group’s final paper defines “Informal Education” as all educational influences outside the formal organization of an educational system. It envisages three main kinds of activity: systematic educational activities for the literate; efforts to make persons literate; and community development to promote better living, emphasizing popular initiative. The paper concludes that a novel concentration of energy on informal education is needed for the short term. A majority had reservations about making education departments responsible for the third category, fearing that a new “Authority” would confuse Government and people. They wanted a senior officer at the centre to co-ordinate extension work. The paper states that Extra-Mural Departments should conduct classes in Political Science, Economics, and Public Administration, and that Colonial Colleges should study literacy and social change problems. It proposes a national Council for Adult Education, with the initiative coming from Extra-Mural Departments. Special problems identified include the informal education of women and girls, literacy teaching, and training. On language, the group suggests a body in each territory to supply objective advice, associated with the Colonial Colleges of Arts, Science, and Technology. On libraries, it acknowledges the work of the British Council. The paper stresses the need to accelerate the output of men and women for community development.
Summary of Discussion
Seventeen speakers took part in the first discussion and twenty-two in the second. Eight speakers supported a high priority for informal education, citing reasons such as the “dead weight of ignorance” among adults, the influx of workers into new industries risking the “disintegration of society,” and the need to reconcile the influence of schools and tradition. Speakers debated who should control informal education. Those in favour of the education department argued that it was administratively unsound to separate education, and that educationists understand educational processes. Those against argued that the field needed more precise definition, that co-ordination could not be done by an officer from one department, favouring a Commissioner for Community Development, and that a separate service would avoid friction. One speaker said community development must aim at effacing itself, with development teams owned by the people. On literacy, one speaker said it was not essential to adult education, while another said literacy makes people more articulate politically. Four speakers stressed the need for voluntary helpers, with one noting a danger of a cleavage between educated and uneducated Africans. Other points raised included the need for vernacular literacy versus English literacy, covering both urban and rural areas, the role of the Churches, and the need for training to secure continuity.
Epilogue by the Chairman
The chairman concludes that education is concerned with organization and machinery, but is ultimately a “spiritual movement.” The conference’s chief purpose was in the field of human relations. He notes that the conference was an exercise in co-operative intellectual activity, and that inquiry and research are essential to constructive discussion. He states that a new movement has begun in African Colonial territories, with responsibility in transition from service officials to responsible Ministers. He mentions that earlier phases included visits resulting in the Binns and Jeffery reports. The next phase, he states, must take place in Africa, where policies must be framed. He concludes that higher education for some and literacy for all are not in competition, but are like the obverse and reverse sides of the same coin.
Main Arguments
The central argument of the book is that education in Africa must be rooted in African realities while drawing on the best of external experience. This is not a simple middle path between tradition and modernity but a demanding synthesis that requires clear thinking about purposes and methods. The authors repeatedly warn against two dangers: on one hand, the uncritical importation of European models; on the other, a romantic attachment to African traditions that fails to recognize the necessity of change.
A second major argument concerns the relationship between education and national development. The book insists that Africa’s progress schemes will fail unless manpower is effectively deployed, and that this requires an education system that produces not only trained workers but people of character who will use their skills in the service of their communities. The authors are skeptical of purely economic prescriptions for manpower problems. Raising pay may attract workers temporarily, but it cannot create the deeper motivation that sustains effort over time. The educationist’s task is to point to the question of motive: should the mainspring of action be self-interest or the desire to serve? The book argues that Africans have a strong sense of kinship and brotherhood that could become the foundation of a truly African national life—or could be weakened by an overemphasis on individual advancement.
A third argument concerns the dangers of examination-driven education. The book is scathing about the proliferation of examinations on the West Coast, where the average child may spend a third of school life being examined or revising. Many examinations have lost their educational justification and are retained merely as “convenient pegs” for Government employment qualifications. The Cambridge School Certificate, which dominates the curriculum of grammar schools, demands maximum factual knowledge but no real understanding; it tests memory rather than thinking. The book argues that this should be reversed, and that examinations should be made to serve educational ends rather than administrative convenience.
A fourth argument concerns the education of women and girls. The book notes that attitudes have changed “revolutionarily” since earlier reports, which had approached the subject with almost excessive delicacy. Yet progress remains slow, and women’s education lags seriously behind men’s. The book argues that the evolution of African society should rest on the complementary contributions of men and women, and that especially favorable terms should be offered to girls to induce them forward. It recognizes the multiplicity of problems facing women’s education—the different needs of women in the family, women earning their living, economically independent spinsters, and women active in community life—and insists that no single approach can meet them all.
A fifth argument concerns the importance of informal education. The book’s most revolutionary pronouncement, endorsed by the conference, is that there should be a “quite novel concentration of energy and resources upon the tasks of informal education.” This means education outside the formal school system: adult literacy, community development, libraries, radio, film, and the work of voluntary agencies. The book argues that formal schooling alone cannot meet Africa’s needs, and that the education of adults—particularly rural women who are “onlookers rather than participators” in the changes sweeping their societies—is essential to any real progress.
Key Concepts
The book develops several distinctive concepts that organize its thinking about African education. The first is the idea of the school as a demonstration centre. This is most fully worked out in relation to agriculture, where the book describes how a primary school’s garden can become a site for showing adults the benefits of better cultivation methods. The school is not merely a place where children learn; it is a centre from which new knowledge and practices radiate outward into the community. The book describes one region where schools were preceded by gardens, where new crops and methods were introduced, and where the school became a seed-distributor. The effect spread beyond the school, as evidenced by movement toward pasture enclosures, better cultivation, and anti-erosion measures in the surrounding area.
A second key concept is the integrated curriculum. The book argues against the separation of academic and practical work, proposing instead that theory should rise from practical beginnings. This is worked out in detail for the middle school, where four basic integrated courses are proposed: agriculture and animal husbandry with biology; building and machine construction with mathematics; commercial studies in special areas; and household arts for girls. The book also proposes an integrated “Social Studies” course in which current affairs serve as the starting point, with pupils keeping notebooks of cuttings and critical comments that are summarized termly into History, Geography, and Civics.
A third concept is the distinction between formal and informal education. The book defines informal education as all educational influences outside the formal system, and argues that it deserves far more attention and resources than it has traditionally received. This includes adult literacy campaigns, community development, libraries, radio and film, and the educational work of churches and voluntary organizations. The book insists that informal education is not a poor relation of formal schooling but an essential complement to it, particularly in societies where the majority of adults have had little or no schooling.
A fourth concept is the idea of character as the balancing item between free service and social need. The book argues that a man of character values work needed by his fellows; he says, “Show me the job that I can do and that most needs doing and I will do it.” Building this character is the work of education. This concept links the individual to the community, suggesting that personal fulfillment and social service are not opposed but mutually reinforcing.
A fifth concept is the “two-stage” primary system. Where resources are limited, the book suggests, a four-year primary course may be the only feasible option, followed by a second stage for those who continue. The book is uneasy about this, arguing that such a short course cannot fulfill the aims of primary education, but it recognizes the practical constraints. The concept captures the book’s willingness to engage with difficult trade-offs while keeping longer-term goals in view.
A sixth concept is the idea of the composite training college, where teachers, agricultural assistants, and health assistants train side by side at a college with a well-run farm and a mixed staff of educational and agricultural experts. The book argues that this arrangement is the best way to ensure that teachers understand and value rural life, and that it should replace the small colleges attached to academic secondary schools that produce children whose desire is to escape the land.
Themes
A recurring theme is the relationship between education and the land. The book returns again and again to the danger that schooling will create a “mental divorce” from rural life, producing children whose ambition is to escape to the towns. It describes the prevalent attitude that land work is for the uneducated and for women, and argues that this must be combated by relating field work completely to academic classroom work. The school garden is not primarily a source of food but a starting-point for education, a place where children can see the fruitful interrelation of plant and animal life and learn the value of intensive cultivation. The theme extends to the wider question of Africa’s agricultural revival, which the book insists cannot succeed without educated Africans who are willing to work on the land.
A second theme is the tension between quality and quantity in education. The book confronts this dilemma repeatedly: whether to provide a short course that most children complete or a longer course that many will drop out of; whether to expand enrollment through double sessions that may double ineffective education; whether to build many small schools with inadequate staffing or fewer larger ones with better resources. The book refuses easy answers, insisting that the dilemma must be faced honestly and that expedients adopted under pressure should be discarded as soon as better alternatives become possible.
A third theme is the danger of cultural estrangement. The book worries that academic education may alienate African pupils from their own societies, producing a class of people who are neither fully African nor fully European. It criticizes the assumption that formal class instruction is the natural and best teaching method for any subject, and the readiness to accept syllabuses imported without modification from abroad. It argues that schools should take an interest in the outside world and the work in it, making pupils familiar with local work by description, observation, and participation. The theme is given particular urgency in the discussion of boarding schools, where the book warns that insisting on bare minimum equipment may prevent children from learning to raise standards in their own homes, while also acknowledging that the risk of “unsettling” children by accustoming them to unattainable conditions is not one West Coast schools seriously face.
A fourth theme is the changing role of women. The book describes how formal education upsets the established order, disturbing relationships and making demands on men. Girls who learn health rules, child care, and food values meet “reluctance to change” and the resentment of elders who dislike taking advice from the young. Girls in turn may lose respect for older, less-educated generations. The book notes that women themselves sometimes oppose change most strongly, fearing the effects of European contacts on their daughters. Yet it also records signs of progress: educated influential men who want wives to share their aspirations, husbands who allow their wives to attend residential homecraft courses, girls’ boarding schools that fill on the first day even as boys’ attendance drops. The theme is treated with notable sympathy for the difficulties faced by African women, who the book argues develop duty and responsibility beyond most men and who believe that relief from their burdens would betray their trust as wives and mothers.
A fifth theme is the importance of language. The book devotes sustained attention to the teaching of English and the place of vernacular languages. It argues for the selection of a few vernaculars in each territory for systematic training in a standardized orthography, and for rooting the child in his environment through the vernacular in primary school. At the same time, it insists on the importance of English for cooperation with Europeans and for access to technical information, recommending that English be taught from the second year of school life and that an oral examination be instituted at the School Certificate level. The theme reflects a broader concern with communication and community: how can people who speak different languages be brought together into a common nationhood without losing their distinctive identities?
A sixth theme is the responsibility of the wider community for education. The book argues that education is the united concern of a people for the right upbringing of its children and the improvement of national life, and that its success depends on the cooperation of parents, teachers, administrators, and leaders. It pays tribute to the efforts of missionaries, administrators, and local communities, and notes with hope the widespread interest in education on the West Coast. The theme extends to the book’s insistence that all English-speaking people in Africa have a responsibility as teachers, and to its recommendation that the Churches should make a new pioneer effort in adult education.
The Author’s Conclusions
The book concludes that African education stands at a critical juncture where the decisions taken will shape the future of the continent for generations. The authors are under no illusion about the magnitude of the difficulties: limited finance, scarce teachers, immense variety of circumstances, and the pressure of rapid change. Yet they find grounds for hope in the widespread interest in education and the determination of African peoples to overcome the obstacles.
The final sections of the book record the conference’s endorsement of a “quite novel concentration of energy and resources upon the tasks of informal education”—a pronouncement described as the most revolutionary sentence spoken during the conference. This is not a retreat from formal schooling but a recognition that schools alone cannot meet Africa’s needs. The education of adults, particularly those who have had little or no schooling, is essential if the benefits of education are to reach the whole community.
The book also concludes that the control of education must be progressively devolved to African authorities. It argues that administrative advance must match political realities, and that Africans need the opportunity to serve their immediate communities through real responsibility. Participation in local affairs is both present service and preparation for larger future service; peoples reach political maturity only through steadily increasing executive responsibility. The book endorses a staged evolution of local education authorities, from advisory to executive functions and from nominated to elected bases.
On the deeper question of purpose, the book concludes that education must build character as well as impart skills. A nation is happy when individuals do work they enjoy and think worthwhile while meeting all their needs. The final choice of work is an act of character, and the grounds and quality of these decisions are the supreme test of a school’s value. The book calls for a balance between self-interest and the desire to serve, arguing that Africans’ strong sense of kinship and brotherhood could become the foundation of a truly African national life.
The chairman’s epilogue reflects on the significance of the conference and the work that lies ahead. The book closes on a note of cautious hope, grounded in the conviction that the immense difficulties facing African education can be overcome through the cooperation of all concerned—parents, teachers, administrators, leaders, and the African peoples themselves, who are determined to shape their own future.
Significance
The book is significant as a document of its time, capturing a moment when the future of African education was being actively debated and shaped. It represents one of the most comprehensive attempts to think through the problems of education in British tropical Africa, drawing on the experience of educators and administrators across the continent and giving voice to African participants in the discussion. Its recommendations, though framed for a specific historical context, address questions that remain relevant: the relationship between education and development, the place of vernacular languages, the education of women and girls, the dangers of examination-driven schooling, and the importance of informal education.
The book is also significant for its insistence on rooting educational policy in African realities. It refuses both the easy path of importing European models wholesale and the romantic alternative of idealizing African traditions. Instead, it calls for a demanding synthesis that takes seriously the variety of African life and the rapid changes sweeping through it. This approach gives the book a lasting value beyond its immediate policy context.
The book’s treatment of women’s education is particularly noteworthy for its time. It recognizes the multiplicity of problems facing women and girls, takes seriously the resistance to change from both men and women, and argues for especially favorable terms to induce girls forward. It also acknowledges the paradoxes of modernization, warning that the removal of external discipline may cause moral decline unless self-restraint based on spiritual belief replaces it.
The book’s significance also lies in its recognition of the limits of purely economic approaches to education and development. It argues that raising pay is not enough, that manpower cannot be inflated like money, and that the deeper question of motive must be addressed. This insistence on character and service as essential elements of education gives the book a moral seriousness that transcends its administrative origins.
Finally, the book is significant as a record of African voices in the discussion of African education. The conference proceedings include African participants who speak with confidence and authority, endorsing the call for a new concentration on informal education. The book thus captures a moment of transition, when the subjects of colonial policy were beginning to become its authors. Its cautious hope for the future is grounded in the conviction that African peoples are determined to overcome the immense difficulties they face, and that education, rightly conceived, can be a means of building a truly African national life.
