British Educational Policy in West and Central Africa

In: The journal of modern African studies: a quarterly survey of politics, economics & related topics in contemporary Africa, Volume 2, Issue 3, p. 365-377

Abstract

There is an understandable tendency to think that the first overt action taken by the British Government in respect of colonial education in Africa was the setting up of an Advisory Committee on Native Education in the British Tropical African Dependencies in 1923. This is not in fact true. There was for instance a Privy Council memorandum of 1847 on 'industrial schools for coloured races', in many ways a remarkable document, setting forth a number of ideas that were to be later accepted in colonial provision for education in Africa—ideas such as the interdependence of moral and physical training, the need for the school to make an impact on the local community in respect of agricultural development and improved sanitation, the need to adapt the content of the curriculum to local needs, and the advisability of the teacher being familiar with the local culture. And of course British experience in education in India provided some terms of reference for educationists in other parts of the world ruled by Britain. Often they tended to treat the Indian experience as a warning of what to avoid: for instance, it was believed that the use of English as a medium of instruction, as recommended in Macaulay's minute of 1833, might have contributed to the Mutiny of 1857; and also the structure of Indian education was considered rather top-heavy, following the establishment of universities whose students became leaders in the movements of political discontent. These "lessons' were to be incorporated in British thinking about education in Africa in the following century.