Priests working in parishes up .and down the length and breadth of Africa are faced with a severe, and ever increasing problem. They refer to it as the “school leavers’ problem”, meaning the thousands of disaffected and frustrated primary and secondary school graduates, who having completed their course of education, and armed with their hard-earned certificates find themselves unemployed and unemployable. They may have spent years in the city, have tried every avenue and have drifted either into delinquency and crime, or have gravitated back to the “bush”.

They went to school in the hope that school would free them from the grinding poverty of the rural areas, by obtaining employment hopefully in town, and even more hopefully, white-collared: an easier and more interesting life than their parents’ was their goal. Their parents looked on this as an investment, insurance against their old age or infirmity, and likely as not made tremendous sacrifices to send them, equip them, and keep them there.

It rarely .turns out that way and years of expense, sacrifice and effort dissipate themselves as the graduates slip back into, at best, semi-literacy. Their styles and standards of living, their outlook and ambitions are often indistinguishable from those of their “less-fortunate” brothers and sisters who did not go to school.

For decades, and often in the teeth of Colonial opposition, the Churches founded schools, and brought “education” to the furthermost comers of Africa. To do this the Church, as much as the parents themselves, made huge sacrifices of personnel and material, time and money.