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Education and the Culture Concept

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Extract

The culture concept carries many implications for the educationist which have still to be worked out. Perhaps its greatest value will prove to lie in providing a corrective to the intellectualist fallacy to which teachers and educationists are singularly prone. By taking into account the complex and largely non-intellectual processes of acculturation, the teacher in Africa will realize that he is unlikely to effect a direct transference of intellectual propositions and idea-systems; and he may be saved from disappointment when he sees the truths he has dealt in employed to subserve ‘illegitimate’ ends.

Résumé

L'INSTRUCTION ET L'IDÉE GÉNÉRALE DE LA CULTURE

Pour un Anglais, qui enseigne des garçons africains, il est nécessaire, bien que difficile, de se rendre compte que beaucoup de ses idées générales et de ses croyances n'ont pas été admises par lui comme le résultat de l'examen des évidences, mais qu'elles sont gravées dans son esprit comme une partie de sa culture et de l'héritage de son histoire. Mais la situation est tout à fait différente en ce qui concerne des élèves africains; il lui sera demandé de prouver la vérité des idées qu'il considère comme admises. Même si ces idées sont acceptées, elles le seront probablement parce qu'elles forment une partie du niveau de moralité de I'homme civilisé que le garçon africain imite sans s'en rendre compte. Les idées de la liberté, de la nationalité et de I'égalité des hommes, du fonctionnement de forces impersonnelles, soit dans l'univers physique, soit dans la société, ne sont pas facilement intelligibles pour les élèves africains.

La culture que l'élève en Uganda rencontre dans ses rapports avec les résidents européens n'est pas de la même nature que celle qui existe actuellement dans la Grande-Bretagne; de plusieurs façons, les habitants de race blanche, en Uganda, vivent dans l'ambiance mentale et sociale de l'Angleterre du XVIIe ou du XVIIIe siècle, et cet état de choses, en fait, est plus facile à comprendre pour l'élève africain que les notions qui lui sont présentëes dans ses leçons à l'école.

L'auteur n'approuve pas les efforts faits pour donner un caractère africain aux programmes et aux activités des écoles, au lieu de présenter à l'élève un choix plus étendu d'intérêts et d'exemples qu'il pourrait imiter; les pouvoirs mimétiques des enfants africains sont précieux et l'instituteur devrait s'en servir. Dans sa discussion de la récréation, l'auteur note que les jeux traditionnels des enfants sont toujours liés étroitement aux voies traditionnelles de la vie, et constituent une formation par anticipation dans le comportement et dans les activités des membres adultes de la société. A l'école, les garçons jouent rarement d'une façon spontanée; l'auteur suggère que la routine d'habitudes peu familières imposées par la vie et le travail de l'école se substituent aux jeux.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1953

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References

page 114 note 1 See Weldon's, T. D. analysis of American democracy in Politics and Morals, 1946, ch. 5.Google Scholar

page 115 note 1 This form of cultural lag, in which appropriate institutions lag behind a change in ideas, is often as significant in the interpretation of social change as the process, given emphasis by Ogburn, in which ideas lag behind the changes in material culture and social organization. New ideas may cause tensions in, and bring about the modification of, social forms, just as changed social forms may cause a recasting of ideas—as the central thesis of Mr. Leonard Woolf amply illustrates. Ideas as causes rather than as consequences are similarly affirmed by Professor Gordon Childe: ‘An obsolete ideology can hamper an economy and impede its change for longer than Marxists admit’ (What Happened in History).

page 117 note 1 Synge, P. M. observes: ‘The Baganda have shown a most unusual adaptability to modern European civilization, and a real seeking after knowledge, as I discovered at their Makerere College…’ i.e. unusual in comparison with the peoples of Borneo and other Polynesians (Mountains of the Moon, 1937, p. xxiii).Google Scholar

page 117 note 2 The Bakonjo are one of the biggest tribes in Uganda but send a very low proportion of their children to the schools (which are easily accessible to them in Toro and Bwamba). They will usually explain their indifference by saying: ‘We are too poor to pay school fees ’, but this is not convincing: the Bakonjo enjoy a high degree of prosperity, particularly those who are growing cash-crops—coffee, rice, and cotton—in Bwamba. Although four primary schools are taking an increasing number of Bakonjo, it is not clear that this reflects a genuine growth of interest in education, since the pressure, brought to bear by Miruka chiefs on parents known to have money, to send their children to school, is considerable.

page 117 note 3 This policy of ‘educational adaptations’ to African conditions was the central recommendation of the Phelps-Stokes Commission on East African Education (1924), and has dominated the general trend of East African Education in the past quarter of a century.

page 118 note 1 Cf. Mair, L. P.: ‘They (the Baganda) certainly love any kind of mimicry, whether of notable village characters, animals or dramatic scenes such as a fight between two warriors’ (An African People in the Twentieth Century, 1934, p. 26).Google Scholar

page 120 note 1 The boys have heard the great names in the history of the Mission—Hannington and Mackay— in the schools; but of missionaries such as Brewer at Hoima in Bunyoro, Miss Pike and Maddox at Kabarole in Toro, they have heard only from their parents and elders. Every Mutoro in the school knows, with a great wealth of circumstantial detail, of the work and personal characteristics of Miss Pike (whose name they cannot spell and whom they call ‘Miss Paker’) and of Maddox. Boys from Bun— yoro, Ankole, and Buganda are in full agreement that: ‘Unlike the modern merciless European, they were merciful men. They were not proud of their colour, like Europeans today, and did not despise us for ours. They lived with our people on equal terms, even eating the same food. They were kind and generous: they gave people clothes and taught them reading and writing without charging fees. They were learned men, and some, like Mr. Maddox, translated the Bible into the vernacular.’ The tradition insists on this unfavourable comparison of present-day Englishmen with the early missionaries. I have talked to no boy from Buganda, Toro, Bunyoro, and Ankole who could not recount intimate and detailed stories of the first missionaries (often ascribed to a period ‘a hundred years ago’) in his district.

page 121 note 1 The Baganda call it Mweso, the Lango Coro, the Etesot Ailesit, the Bakiga Echisoro, the Bamba Kisoro, and the Bakonko Obwaso.

page 121 note 2 They practise surprisingly little traditional music, although on rare occasions a group will gather round the recreation-room piano and sing traditional songs. But a school concert party will choose predominantly Negro Spirituals or even hymn tunes. Yet these boys have been extremely interested in traditional music and musical instruments, as can quickly be discovered in a well-directed conversation; and most of them can play and even make the endingidi, a single-string violin, played with a sisal bow, popular in all the Bantu tribes in Uganda. The peoples of western Uganda—Batoro, Banyankole, Banyoro, and Bakonjo —make and enjoy a form of harp. I have never seen my pupils in possession of, or playing, either of these instruments (though I have seen boys making and playing a European-type banjo). Nor do they ever propose that they should obtain and play them at the frequent school concerts. The only traditional game played by the boys is Mweso.

page 124 note 1 Ruhanga, the Supreme Being of the Banyankole, ‘is only looked on as the creator of all things, not as having any controlling authority over what he has made.’ Williams, F. Lukyn, Uganda Journal, vol. no. 3, 1936.Google Scholar

Lubanga, the creator and Supreme Being of the Acholi, who could wield great power if he chose, is usually too lazy to do so; hence the lesser spirits, Jok, are the usual objects of prayer and propitiation. See Renato Boccassino's paper in Uganda Journal, vol. iv, no. 4, April 1939, pp. 195201.Google Scholar

In Buganda the Christian Church has established a deity of the old pagan religion as the Christian God. He is Katonda, but the Baganda seem unable to regard him as being so directly effective as lesser spirits (lubale): ‘But Katonda has by no means placed the other divinities and, in cases of specific need, it is to them that many natives would first appeal.’ Katonda gives you children, ‘said one,’ but if you have none you go to the prophet of Mukasa. ‘Another, comparing old times and new, said:’ The lubale answered prayer directly, but Katonda only answers you after you are dead.’ (Mair, L. P., An African People in the Twentieth Century, 1934, p. 258.)Google Scholar