Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
Few would disagree with the observation that the schools and universities of sub-Saharan Africa are perhaps the most important contemporary mechanisms of stratification and redistribution on the continent. They are not simply reflections of extant patterns of social and economic differentiation, but rather powerful independent forces in the creation of new and emergent groupings based on the variable possession of power, wealth, and prestige. Moreover, in using the word ‘contemporary’ we should not overlook the fact that formal educational systems are not a recent phenomenon in Africa. Schools existed on the western littoral in the eighteenth century, and their development in many parts of Africa, though slow up to the beginning of World War II, was of great significance. However, the African ‘educational explosion’ is largely a post-war phenomenon, and as a result we can no longer regard the school as an alien and intrusive institution perched precariously atop a range of predominantly ‘traditional’ societies. In most parts of Africa, the school is now as familiar a part of the local scene as the corrugated iron roof. Virtually everywhere, a whole generation would think it inconceivable to be without schools and, what is more, though Africa still remains the least formally educated of the continents, almost everyone now has a lively sense of the individual benefits that education can bring. As in other areas of social life, Africans perceive schooling in shrewd, pragmatic, and instrumental terms.
page 202 note 1 The absence of any specific reference to women in this review of the literature is deliberate since the topic is significant enough to merit a separate article.
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page 210 note 1 Levy, M., ‘Determinants of Primary School Drop-Outs in Developing Countries’, in Comparative Education Review, XV, 1, 02 1971, pp. 44–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
page 210 note 2 Estimates based on the relationship between the size of various age cohorts and the level of enrolment can be very misleading: although at a particular date only, say, 40 per cent of those in a certain age group may be at school, it might still be the case that 80 per cent of that cohort will be enroled at some time or another. Thus a few years of primary education may be more widely diffused among the younger population than some figures suggest.
page 211 note 1 The principal investigations upon which this commentary is based are: Anderson, C., Bowman, M. J., and Olson, J. B., Students, Teachers, and Opportunity Perceptions in Kenya, 1961–1968, Vols. I and II (Washington, 1969)Google Scholar; Campion-Vincent, V., ‘Systéme d'enseignement et mobiité sociale au Sénégal’, in Revue française de sociologie (Paris), 2, 1970, pp. 164–78Google Scholar; Charlick, R. B., ‘Access to Élite Education in the Ivory Coast: the importance of socio-economic origins’, in The Sociology of Education (Washington), 51, 3, 07 1978, pp. 187–200Google Scholar; Clignet, Rémi and Foster, Philip, The Fortunate Few: a study of secondary schools and students in the Ivory Coast (Evanston, 1966)Google Scholar; Clignet, Rémi and Foster, Philip, ‘La Prééminence de l'enseignement classique en Côte d'Ivoire’, in Revue française de sociologie, VII, 1966, pp. 32–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Currie, J., ‘Secondary School Selection and Occupational Placement in Uganda: the impact of family, schooling and academic achievement on educational and occupational attainment’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1975Google Scholar; Dorsey, B. J., ‘The African Secondary School Leaver: aspirations, academic achievement and post-school employment’, in Murphree, M. W. (ed), Education, Race and Employment in Rhodesia (Salisbury, 1975)Google Scholar; Eliou, M., ‘Scolarisation et promotion féminines en Afrique (Côte d'Ivoire, Haute Volta, Sénégal)’, in Tiers-Monde, XIII, 49, 01–03 1972, pp. 41–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Scolarité primaire et accès au second degré au Niger et au Sénégal’, in ibid. II, 44, October–December 1970, pp. 733–58; Foster, Philip, ‘Ethnicity and the Schools in Ghana’, in Comparative Education Review, VI, 2, 10 1962, pp. 127–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Secondary Schooling and Social Mobility in a West African Nation’, in Sociology of Education, 37, 2, Winter 1963, pp. 150–71Google Scholar, and Education and Social Change; Olson, J. B., ‘Educational Change in Kenya, 1961–1968’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1974Google Scholar, and ‘Secondary Schools and Elites in Kenya: a comparative study of students in 1961 and 1968’, in Comparative Education Review, XVI, 1, 1972, pp. 44–53Google Scholar; and Swindell, K., ‘The Provision of Secondary Education and Migration to School in Sierra Leone’, in Sierra Leone Geographical Journal (Freetown), 14, 1970, pp. 10–19Google Scholar.
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page 214 note 1 For an exchange on this issue, see Hurd, C. E. and Johnson, T. J., ‘Education and Social Mobility in Ghana’, in Sociology of Education, 40, 1, Winter 1967, pp. 55–79Google Scholar and Philip Foster, ‘Comments on Hurd and Johnson’, in ibid. 41, I, Winter 1968, pp. 111–15.
page 215 note 1 Weis, loc. cit.
page 215 note 2 Jahoda, loc. cit.
page 215 note 3 Peil, ‘Ghanaian University Students’.
page 215 note 4 van den Berghe, ‘Some Characteristics of University of Ibadan Students’.
page 215 note 5 Goldthorpe, op. cit.
page 215 note 6 van den Berghe, ‘An African Elite Revisited’.
page 215 note 7 Currie, Op. Cit.
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page 234 note 1 For an excellent discussion of this issue, see Windham, D. M., ‘The Macro-Planning of Education: why it fails, why it survives, and the alternatives’, in Comparative Education Review (Los Angeles), XIX, 2, 06 1975, pp. 187–201Google Scholar.
page 234 note 2 Foster, P., ‘Dilemmas of Educational Development: what we might learn from the past’, in Brammal, J. and May, R. J. (eds.), Education in Melanesia (Canberra, 1975), pp. 15–38Google Scholar, and Comparative Education Review, XIX, 3, October 1975, pp. 375–92.
page 234 note 3 A summary of existing research on private and social rates of return to schooling shows that these are almost uniformly higher at the primary than at the secondary or tertiary levels in most less-developed nations. Cf. Psacharopoulos, G., Returns of Education (San Francisco, 1973)Google Scholar.
page 235 note 1 It should be remembered that there are affluent minorities in less-developed and poorer majorities in more-developed regions. There is always the danger that special subventions to the former will be disproportionately utilised by the affluent minority. This raises the general principle that where aid is to be given it should be, as far as possible, directed at individuals rather than collectivities. The tendency to base social policy on aggregates, be they ethnic or regional groups, always raises the question that subventions will find their way into the ‘wrong hands’.