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Education and Colonialism in Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

George E. Urch*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts

Extract

The independent nations of Africa now face the task of reevaluating and reshaping those institutions imposed on them by the former colonial powers. The educational institutions these emerging nations inherited are not linked to the realities of present-day African needs.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 History of Education Quarterly 

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References

Notes

1. In 1846, Ludwig Krapf, Dr. and the Rev. Rebmann, John, German members of the Church Missionary Society, Church of England, established a mission station at Rabai, fifteen miles inland from the coastal city of Mombasa. It was at Rabai that East Africa's first mission school was started by Krapf, who realized that his converts must be taught to read the Bible. Both of these men explored the interior. An account of early missionary activity in East Africa can be found in Roland Oliver, The Missionary Factor in East Africa (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1952).Google Scholar

2. Price, Slater W., My Third Campaign in East Africa (London: William Hunt and Co., 1891), p. 3.Google Scholar

3. Prior to 1920, the area of British influence in East Africa was called the East African Protectorate. In June 1920, the interior of what had been the East African Protectorate, excluding Uganda, became the Kenya Colony with a ten mile strip on the coast of the Indian Ocean designated as the Kenya Protectorate (Dilley, Marjorie R., British Policy in Kenya Colony [New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1937], p. 30).Google Scholar

4. Bennett, George, Kenya, A Political History (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 9.Google Scholar

5. Capon, M. G., Toward Unity in Kenya (Nairobi: Christian Council of Kenya, 1962), p. 5.Google Scholar

6. The ability to read and write was also made the criterion of a genuine desire for baptism on the part of the African.Google Scholar

7. Somerset Playne in Holderness Gale, F., ed., East Africa (British) (London: Foreign and Colonial Compiling and Publishing Co., 1909), p. 92.Google Scholar

8. By 1903, the railway line stretched from the coast to the shores of Lake Victoria. Its completion gave to the East African Protectorate a sense of unity and encouraged European settlers.Google Scholar

9. Sir Eliot, Charles, The East African Protectorate (London: Edward Arnold, 1905), pp. 241–42.Google Scholar

10. East African Protectorate, Education Report, 1909 (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1909), p. 32.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., p. 33.Google Scholar

12. Ibid.Google Scholar

13. The Leader of East Africa, October 30, 1909, p. 2.Google Scholar

14. East Standard, African, The East African Red Book, 1925–26 (Nairobi: East African Standard, 1925), p. 227.Google Scholar

15. Ward, H. F. and Milligan, J. W., Handbook of British East Africa, 1912 (Nairobi: Caxton [B.E.A.] Printing and Publishing Co., 1912), p. 176.Google Scholar

16. East African Standard, The ‘Standard’ British East Africa and Uganda Handbook and Directory (Nairobi: East African Standard, 1919), pp. 163–64.Google Scholar

17. After educational officials visited a mission school up-country the Provincial Commissioner, Nyeri, was informed that education was so primitive that it was a matter of getting the young men to read and write and to grasp the simplest elements of arithmetic. Most of the students would appear only in the morning (East African Protectorate, Native Affairs, Minute Paper No. 22 (d) [Nairobi Government Printer, 1918]).Google Scholar

18. East African Protectorate, Report of the Education Commission of the East African Protectorate (Nairobi: Swift Press, 1919), p. 6.Google Scholar

19. East African Protectorate, Evidence of the Education Commission of the East African Protectorate (Nairobi: Swift Press, 1919), p. 214.Google Scholar

20. Ibid.Google Scholar

21. Empathy for the problem of the African caused the missionaries to suggest to the colonial government that they represent the native's interest in the protectorate's Legislative Council. George Bennett, “Settlers and Politics in Kenya,” in History of East Africa, ed. Vincent Harlow (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1965), 2:293.Google Scholar

22. East African Protectorate, Report of the Education Commission of the East African Protectorate, p. 6.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., p. 9.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., p. 8.Google Scholar

25. Kenya Colony and Protectorate, Departmental Instructions Concerning Native Education in Assisted Schools (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1922).Google Scholar

26. Ibid., p. 4.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., p. 10.Google Scholar

28. Great Britain, Colonial Office, Indians in Kenya, Cmd. 1922 (London: H.M.S.O., 1923), p. 10.Google Scholar

29. The Phelps-Stokes Fund was provided for in the will of Miss Caroline Phelps-Stokes in May 1911. The fund was active in supporting Negro education in the southern states and in promoting interracial cooperation.Google Scholar

30. Jesse Jones, Thomas, Education in Africa (New York: Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1922), p. xvi.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. xix.Google Scholar

32. Jesse Jones, Thomas, Education in East Africa (New York: Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1925), p. 18.Google Scholar

33. Lewis, L. J., Educational Policy and Practice in British Tropical Areas (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1954), p. 13.Google Scholar

34. Great Britain, Colonial Office, Advisory Committee on Native Education in the British Tropical African Dependencies, Educational Policy in British Tropical Africa, Cmd. 2347 (London: H.M.S.O., 1925), p. 2.Google Scholar

35. Ibid.Google Scholar

36. Kenya Colony and Protectorate, Education Department, Annual Report, 1924 (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1924), p. 19.Google Scholar

37. Kenya Colony and Protectorate, Education Ordinance, No. 17 (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1924).Google Scholar

38. East African Standard, The East African Red Book, 1925–26 (Nairobi: East African Standard, 1925), pp. 230–31.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., p. 288.Google Scholar

40. Kenya Colony and Protectorate, Education Department, Annual Report, 1925 (Nairobi: East African Standard, 1925), p. 13.Google Scholar