EDUCATION IN AFRICA
Sett,—I read with great interest your editorial article on " Education in Africa " in your issue of January 14th.
As a planter of some experience in Bast Africa and being accustomed to deal with manual labourers, craftsmen, factory workers and clerks, I, and many others, view with grave misgivings such a project of mass education which will breed a race of clerks, only a limited number of which can be absorbed in offices—Government and commercial. It has become intTeasingly evident during the past couple of years when agricultural production is so important that the " educated " native regards manual work as undignified, and the tendency is to seek employ- ment in towns regardless of the fact that the cost of living is much higher and living conditions extremely poor. What is not realised in Englaed is that a native living in his birthplace conforms to the laws of his tribe, which he understands far better than the codes enforced when he is cut off from his own people.
Obviously this primitive people must be helped and educated in the widest sense, but cannot we concentrate on setting up bush schools where carpentry, masonry and agriculture is taught to the men and, more impor- tant still, hygiene, child welfare and the elementary principles of nutrition are taught to the women? The Government-run schools in this territory at the present time tend to emphasise the -importance of academic educa- tion only, and in fact turn out no craftsmen but merely a mass of youths seeking clerical openings.
Your article mentions the difficulty of providing personnel qualified to organise the educational movement It is doubtful whether an influx of young men and women secondary-school teachers, as appears to be the tendency at present, will provide this. Unless education is allowed a natural growth I am afraid it will breed a race of Africans despising their uneducated brothers, and dissatisfied with their lot, with the inevitable result of discontent and sedition. Have we not a glaring example of this in India?—Yours, &c., Joim WARD. Tanganytita Territory.
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