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A Uganda Secondary School as a Field of Culture Change1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

F. Musgrove
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Extract

I Propose to examine the Uganda secondary boys' boarding-school, in which I teach, as an institution in culture contact; to consider how far its function must be interpreted in terms of its own dynamism and how far in terms of the parent cultures of the Black and White members of the community. The interpretation I make from data gained chiefly within the school is necessarily incomplete, and a complementary study by a field anthropologist, looking at the school from the point of view of outside society, is desirable. But within the limits of the data available to a schoolmaster I here offer a description and an analysis.

Résumé

UN LYCÉE A L'UGANDA COMME UN DOMAINE DE DÉVELOPPEMENT CULTUREL

L'auteur donne une description d'un pensionnat de garçons à l'Uganda, où il professe. Il décrit les affiliations tribales des élèves qui proviennent de toutes les régions de l'Uganda, et fait remarquer l'absence de tensions et de rivalités d'ordre tribal. L'école engendre une solidarité de groupe et des rivalités qui lui sont propres; les postes d'influence et de direction sont obtenus par mérite personnel et par popularité. L'auteur examine l'influence de l'école sur la conduite des élèves après leur retour dans leur propre environnement social, et, de là, son influence sur la société en dehors de l'école. Après une analyse des raisons pour lesquelles les élèves viennent à l'école et des besoins qu'ils cherchent à satisfaire par l'instruction, il arrive à la conclusion que les Africains recherchent des satisfactions plus subtiles que l'on ne suppose ordinairement, et il souligne l'idéal de ‘l'homme instruit’ qui a remplacé l'ancien idéal du guerrier ou du chef. II envisage l'école comme un domaine aussi bien de contact culturel que de conflit, le conflit se manifestant surtout dans le domaine des croyances religieuses. Bien que plusieurs des dogmes chrétiens—et plus particulièrement la cosmologie chrétienne d'autrefois — sont facilement acceptés, les conceptions chrétiennes de conduite sont souvent inacceptables et sont mises en contraste avec la conduite véritable, ou prétendue, des Européens.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , July 1952 , pp. 234 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1952

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References

page 237 note 1 A poem written by a junior boy on the subject of shoes goes as follows:

Lovely things, I thought much about you in childhood.

Before I had you I wanted you dearly

For you arc so beautiful and have all my love.

Oh! how beautiful you are and perfectly shaped.

How clean you are and well kept,

I marvel you shine with such brightness … &c.

I would never have thought you could cause so much Pain.

page 238 note 1 It is, perhaps, of interest that, by a curious coincidence, on the morning when I had planned to make inquiries about belief in metamorphosis, at the routine chapel service the following portion of the Scriptures was read:

‘And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod.

And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.

And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand’ (Exodus, ch. 4.)

page 240 note 1 Mair, L. P., An African People in the Twentieth Century, 1934, pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

page 242 note 1 Mulira, E. M. K., The Vernacular in African Education, pp. 36–37.Google Scholar

page 243 note 1 Oversea Education, vol. xix, No. 3, April 1948, pp. 705-6.

page 243 note 2 Rhodes-Livingstone Paper No. 8, 1942.

page 244 note 1 Ashe, R. P., Two Kings of Uganda, 1889, p. 149.Google Scholar

page 244 note 2 Ibid., pp. 218-19.

page 245 note 1 Ritchie, J. F., The African as Suckling and as Adult, Rhodes-Livingstone Paper No. 9.Google Scholar

page 246 note 1 Mannheim, Karl, Diagnosis of our Time, 1943.Google Scholar