‘Book Learning’ versus ‘Adapted Education’: the Impact of Phelps‐Stokesism on Colonial Education Systems in Central Africa in the Interwar Period

Abstract

The article discusses the dissemination and reception of a practice‐oriented, community‐centred approach to colonial education, which was derived from educational concepts developed for African‐Americans in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century. This approach—which came to be known as ‘Phelps‐Stokesism’—gained wide currency among educationists in Africa in the decades following the First World War, and it became particularly strong in settler colonies such as Zimbabwe, where a large European community was steadily augmenting its political power within a racially segregated context. The premise that colonial education had to depart from a conventional form of Western schooling and was instead to be specifically adapted to what was perceived as African developmental and environmental needs shaped the articulation of educational policies and practices envisaged by local administrators. At the same time, within the context of rural decline and restrictive state policies—which severely limited African chances for advancement in the industrial and agricultural spheres—African men and women came to perceive a literary‐oriented kind of education as the key to gaining remunerable employment, enhancing upward social mobility and circumventing the patriarchal control of chiefs and elders. African strategies to shape the contents of education in accordance with their preferences and aspirations to some extent mitigated the translation of Phelps‐Stokesist concepts into educational practice and worked towards securing the provision of academically oriented forms of instruction to a greater extent than had been intended in prevailing schemes of adapted African education. Against the background of the author’s evidence, theoretical paradigms that suggest the preponderance of academic subjects in colonial school curricula and that interpret this as a reflection of ‘cultural imperialism’ or Western‐induced modernization seem strikingly untenable. The success or failure of the attempt to transfer Phelps‐Stokesist educational concepts to a colonial setting can hardly be understood without paying tribute to the interventions and struggles on the part of local populations. The haphazard and mostly unsuccessful implementation of practice‐oriented educational programmes in the era of African political independence seems to suggest that colonial educational controversies constitute a legacy that contemporary policy‐makers have to take into account when formulating plans for educational reform under today’s postcolonial conditions.

Notes

¹ Kallaway, P. “Welfare and Education in British Colonial Africa and South Africa during the 1930s and 1940s.” Paedagogica Historica 41, no. 3 (2005): 339.

² Two landmark studies in this respect, representing the underdevelopment school of thought, are Carnoy, M. Education as Cultural Imperialism. New York: David McKay, 1974, and the passages on education in Rodney, W. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1983². This type of approach also characterizes the collection of essays on colonial education in Southern Africa edited by Mugomba, A. T., and M. Nyaggah, eds. Independence Without Freedom: The Political Economy of Colonial Education in Southern Africa. Santa Barbara, CA–Oxford: ABC‐Clio, 1980. With regard to Zimbabwe, this kind of theoretical framework is represented, among others, by Moyana, T. T. Education, Liberation and the Creative Act. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1989; and Mandaza, I. “Education in Zimbabwe: The Colonial Framework and the Response of the National Liberation Movement.” In Zimbabwe: Towards a New Order. Working Papers. Vol. II, edited by the United Nations. Geneva: UN, 1980: 341–400. More recently, Durt, M. Bildungspolitik in Zimbabwe 1899–1990: Vom ‘Industrial Training’ zu ‘Education With Production’: Erfahrungen mit einem praxis‐orientierten Bildungkonzept. Frankfurt a.M.: IKO‐Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1993 and Zvobgo, R. J. Colonialism and Education in Zimbabwe. Harare: Sapes Books, 1994 have followed this line of argument.

³ An elaboration of this argument can be found in Küster, S. African Education in Colonial Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. Government Control, Settler Antagonism and African Agency, 1890–1964. Hamburg: LIT, 1999.

⁴ Challiss, R. J. “The Foundation of a Racially Segregated Education System in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1923, with Special Reference to the Education of Africans.” Ph.D. diss., University of Zimbabwe, 1982: 6. For a comprehensive list of mission societies including the dates of their establishment after 1890 see O’Callaghan, M. Southern Rhodesia: The Effects of a Conquest Society on Education, Culture and Information. Paris: UNESCO, 1977: 141.

⁵ Challiss, R. J. “The European Educational System in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1930.” Zambezia 8 (1980), suppl., Salisbury: 35–36, and ibid. “The Foundation of the Racially Segregated Education System,” 260.

⁶ Southern Rhodesia. Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Matter of Native Education in all its Bearings in the Colony of Southern Rhodesia. Salisbury: Government Printer, CSR 20, 1925: 46; Foley, G. “Education and Social Change in Zimbabwe, 1890–1962.” Ph.D. diss., University of Sydney, 1983: 281.

⁷ Phimister, I. R. “Peasant Production and Underdevelopment in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1914, with Particular Reference to the Victoria District.” In The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa, edited by R. Palmer and N. Parsons. Berkeley–Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977: 257.

⁸ Arrighi, G. “Labour Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the Proletarianization of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia.” Journal of Development Studies 6, no. 3 (1970): 213. The European community’s demand for a physical separation of the two races was reinforced by the influx of greater numbers of white settlers after the First World War.

⁹ Palmer, R. H. “The Agricultural History of Rhodesia.” In Palmer and Parsons, The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa, 238.

¹⁰ Between 1931 and 1941, about 50,000 Africans were resettled. See Arrighi, “Labour Supplies,” 220.

¹¹ Keigwin, H. S. “An Educational Experiment.” South African Journal of Science 18 (1921): 172–82.

¹² King, K. J. Pan‐Africanism and Education. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971: 9 and 95–97.

¹⁵ Jones in 1925, as quoted in Lewis, L. J., ed. Phelps‐Stokes Reports on Education in Africa. Abridged and with an Introduction by L. J. Lewis. London: Oxford University Press, 1962: 92.

¹³ Ibid.; Bude, U. Primary Schools, Local Community and Development in Africa. Baden‐Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1985: 57.

¹⁴ Phelps‐Stokes‐Fund. Education in Africa: A Study of West, South, and Equatorial Africa by the African Education Commission, under the Auspices of the Phelps‐Stokes‐Fund and the Foreign Mission Societies of North America and Europe, prepared by Thomas Jesse Jones. New York, 1922: 11.

¹⁶ Ibid., 45.

¹⁷ Quoted in Makaya, P. B. “An Analysis of Industrial Education for Africans in Zimbabwe Since 1899.” Ph.D. diss., Georgia State University, 1982: 88–89.

¹⁸ Quoted in Foster, P. J. Education and Social Change in Ghana. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965: 160–61.

²⁰ Keigwin, “An Educational Experiment,” 180–81.

¹⁹ Challiss, “The Foundation of the Racially Segregated Education System,” 376. Pise‐de‐terre building was considered more suited to African culture and rural conditions than more sophisticated styles of building in the European sector.

²¹ Foley, “Education and Social Change,” 190–91.

²² Mahonde, C. N. “The Role of Domboshawa Government Industrial School in African ‘Development’ with Particular Reference to Agriculture: 1920–1942.” B.A. Honors III Diss., University of Zimbabwe, 1983: 7; Chirenje, J. M. A History of Zimbabwe for Primary Schools. Harare: Longman Zimbabwe (Pvt), 1982: 51; Moyana, Education, Liberation and the Creative Act, 37.

²³ By this time the number of African students had risen to 109,000. Although school inspectors and the Director of Native Development expressed greater satisfaction with the level of industrial work, even in the more numerous, low‐standard Third Class schools it was occasionally admitted that the lack of funds restricted a more pervasive provision of regular industrial training at mission schools. See Foley, “Education and Social Change,” 258–59 and 347.

²⁴ Ibid., 320.

²⁵ Gray, R. The Two Nations. London: Oxford University Press, 1960: 133.

²⁶ Grimston, B. Survey of Native Educational Development, Southern Rhodesia 1937. Salisbury, 1937: Chapter 1, paragraphs 22 to 24.

²⁷ Southern Rhodesia. Report, 47; Mungazi, D. A. The Underdevelopment of African Education: A Black Zimbabwean Perspective. Washington: University Press of America, 1982: 51. Although this increase seems tremendous, it should not serve to obscure the fact that settler antagonism and essentially restrictive administrative policies had kept student and school numbers at a comparatively low level. Thus, colonial schools in Uganda had enrolled 157,000 African students by 1922; Tanzania in 1923 and Kenya in 1925 had registered 120,000 and 500,000 students, respectively. In Nigeria there were 160 government schools and 1602 mission schools in existence as early as 1920. See Azevedo, M. “A Century of Colonial Education in Mozambique.” In Independence Without Freedom: The Political Economy of Colonial Education in Southern Africa, edited by A. T. Mugomba and M. Nyaggah. Santa Barbara, CA–Oxford: ABC‐Clio, 1980: 193; and Taylor, W. H. “Missionary Education in Africa Reconsidered: The Presbyterian Educational Impact in Eastern Nigeria.” African Affairs 83, no. 331 (1984): 194.

²⁸ Southern Rhodesia, Report, 62.

²⁹ Ibid., 70.

³⁰ Ibid., 58–59; Makaya, “An Analysis of Industrial Education,” 71–72.

³¹ Arrighi, “Labour Supplies,” 220; Palmer, “The Agricultural History of Rhodesia,” 240.

³² Palmer, “The Agricultural History of Rhodesia,” 240.

³³ Gray, The Two Nations, 91–92.

³⁴ Holleman, J. F. Chief, Council and Commissioner: Some Problems of Government in Rhodesia. London: Oxford University Press, 1969: 30. It should be noted that this figure is problematic to the extent that it covers up regional differences as well as the fact that periods of employment ranged from a few months to several years or longer. In most cases in the 1920s and 1930s, involvement in wage employment did not signify the severing of all ties and commitments to the rural sector of the African economy. See Ranger, T. The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia, 1898–1930. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1970: 140; and Holleman, Chief, Council and Commissioner, 30.

³⁵ Challiss, “The Foundation of the Racially Segregated Education System,” 376–77; Lloyd, B. W. “Early History of Domboshawa School. Period 1920–1939.” NADA 39 (1962): 11–12; Ranger, The African Voice, 139–40; Nestvogel, R. “Zimbabwes Bildungssystem drei Jahre nach der Unabhängigkeit: Entwicklung, Probleme und Perspektiven.” Afrika Spektrum 3 (1983): 281.

³⁶ Barnes, T. A. “The Fight for Control of African Women’s Mobility in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1900–1939.” Signs 17, no. 3 (1992): 601.

³⁷ Foley, “Education and Social Change,” 309.

³⁸ Lloyd, “Early History,” 9.

³⁹ Makaya, “An Analysis of Industrial Education,” 126.

⁴⁰ Quoted in King, Pan‐Africanism, 185.

⁴¹ Murray, A. V. The School in the Bush: A Critical Study of the Theory and Practice of Native Education in Africa. London–New York–Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1929: 361.

⁴² Both quotations are taken from Foley, G. “Learning in the Struggle: The Development of Political Consciousness Among Zimbabweans in the 1930s.” Zimbabwean History 12 (1981): 48–52. Similar statements pointing to the impossibility of defining and preserving an allegedly pure African environment are cited in Molteno, F. “The Historical Foundations of the Schooling of Black South Africans.” In Apartheid and Education, edited by P. Kallaway. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984: 85–86; and Whitehead, C. “British Colonial Education Policy: A Synonym for Cultural Imperialism?” In ‘Benefits Bestowed’? Education and British Imperialism, edited by J. M. Mangan. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988: 220–21.

⁴³ Foley, “Education and Social Change,” 302. A similar background to educational expansion for African schools in colonial Kenya of the 1920s and 1930s is noted by Anderson, J. The Struggle for the School: The Interaction of Missionary, Colonial Government and Nationalist Enterprise in the Development of Formal Education in Kenya. London: Longman Group, 1970: 132.

⁴⁴ Foley, “Education and Social Change,” 300–01.

⁴⁵ In 1946, the Department of Native Education’s budget was £349,000, which amounted to fifteen times the 1924 figure. See Foley, “Education and Social Change,” 318.

⁴⁶ Blumör, R. ‘Education with Production’ in Zimbabwe. Frankfurt a.M.: Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1988: 84.

⁴⁷ Lloyd, “Early History,” 6; Summers, C. “Educational Controversies: African Activism and Educational Strategies in Southern Rhodesia, 1920–1934.” Journal of Southern African Studies 20, no. 1 (1994): 22–23.

⁴⁸ Quoted in Lloyd, “Early History,” 8.

⁴⁹ Summers, “Educational Controversies”, 23. Similar difficulties occurred at Tjolotjo, where students protested against having to build round, ‘adapted’ huts instead of the square houses usually built by European artisans. When the trainees voiced their opposition to ‘building in the round’, Principal Alexander informed them ‘that he had no intention of teaching them to build square houses, as by doing so, they would become competitors with European Artizans and thus deprive the Europeans of their livelihood’. Moreover, ‘a certain White man in Bulawayo had said, that if he (Mr Alexander) was teaching the natives European trades that he deserved to be shot’. Quoted in Challiss, “The Foundation of the Racially Segregated Education System,” 373. In response to this information, some trainees left the school. Those who stayed on insisted on consulting Keigwin on the matter. Alexander soon resigned his post. See ibid., 374–75, and Summers, “Educational Controversies,” 23–24.

⁵⁰ Lloyd, “Early History,” 8.

⁵² Both quotations are taken from Davis, B., and W. Döpcke. “Survival and Accumulation in Gutu: Class Formation and the Rise of the State in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1900–39.” Journal of Southern African Studies 14, no. 1 (1987): 84.

⁵¹ Summers, “Educational Controversies,” 14; Parker, F. African Development and Education in Southern Rhodesia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1960: 103.

⁵³ Foley, “Education and Social Change,” 352.

⁵⁴ Blumör, ‘Education with Production’; Durt, Bildungspolitik in Zimbabwe.