The British and curriculum development in West Africa: A historical discourse

THE BRITISH AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN WEST

AFRICA: A HISTORICAL DISCOURSE

KWABENA DEI OFORI-ATTAH

Abstract – THE BRITISH AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN WESTAFRICA:AHISTORICALSTUDY–Only recently haveAfrican nations begun tomaketheir way towards establishing genuinely autonomous education systems incorporatingelements of indigenous culture. The present study examines the historical development ofcurriculum in British West Africa in its links with the educational activities of the earlyChristian missionaries and the imposition of British colonial rule. For over 300 years, thecurriculum content was essentially European in nature. African interests and culturalpractices were largely excluded, as ‘‘bookwork’’ was favored over ‘‘handwork’’. Thecolonial curriculum also helped introduce a new social order toWestAfrica, leading to therise of new local elites reading, writing, and speaking foreign European languages. Thisstudy explores how the idea of a ‘‘civilized’’ person, promoted through the colonial schoolcurriculum, developed new local elites with different sets of values and expectations thatoften made them strangers in their own societies. It also describes the connection betweenthis curriculum and the repeated failure of education-reform efforts.

Zusammenfassung – DIE BRITEN UND DIE ENTWICKLUNG VON LEHRPLA-NEN IN WESTAFRIKA: EINE HISTORISCHE UNTERSUCHUNG – Erst in jung-ster Zeit haben die afrikanischen Nationen begonnen, eigene Wege bei der Etablierungwirklich autonomer Bildungssysteme einzuschlagen, die auchElemente derAfrikanischenKulturen einbeziehen. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die historische Entwicklung vonLehrplanen im britischen Westafrika unter Berucksichtigung der Aktivitaten der fruhenchristlichenMissionare im Bildungssektor sowie der britischen Kolonialherrschaft. Uber300 Jahre lang war der Inhalt der Lehrplane im Wesentlichen europaischer Natur. Af-rikanische Interessen und kulturelle Praktiken waren weitgehend ausgeschlossen, da dieArbeit an Buchern hoher als die Arbeit mit den Handen geschatzt wurde. Die kolonialenLehrplane halfen dabei, eine neue soziale Ordnung in Westafrika einzufuhren, die zumAufstieg einer neuen lokalen Elite fuhrte, die Lesen, Schreiben und europaische Fre-mdsprachen beherrschte. Diese Untersuchung erforscht, wie die Idee eines ,,zivilisierten’’Menschen, die durch die kolonialen Schullehrplane verbreitet wurde, neue lokale Elitenmit einem Wertesystem und Erwartungshaltungen hervorbrachte, die sie haufig zuFremden in der eigenen Gesellschaft werden ließ. Diese Studie beschreibt ausserdem dieVerbindung zwischen den kolonialen Lehrplanen und den Misserfolgen bei den Bemuh-ungen, das Bildungssystem zu reformieren.

Resume – LES ANGLAIS ET LE DEVELOPPEMENT DU PROGRAMMED’ETUDES EN AFRIQUE OCCIDENTALE : UNE ETUDE HISTORIQUE – Cen’est que tout recemment que les nations africaines ont commence a se frayer un cheminvers l’etablissement de systemes d’education veritablement autonomes, incorporant deselements de culture indigene. La presente etude examine le developpement historique duprogramme d’etudes en Afrique occidentale britannique, dans ses liens avec les activites

Review of Education (2006) 52:409–423 � Springer 2006DOI 10.1007/s11159-006-9001-4

educatives des premiers missionnaires chretiens, et l’imposition de la regle colonialebritannique. Pendant plus de 3 siecles, le contenu du programme d’etudes fut essenti-ellement europeen par nature. Les interets africains et les pratiques culturelles en ont eteen grande partie exclus, du fait qu’on favorisait le ‘‘travail livresque’’ par rapport au‘‘travail manuel’’. Le programme d’etudes colonial a egalement contribue a introduireun nouvel ordre social en Afrique occidentale, conduisant a la naissance de nouvelleselites locales lisant, ecrivant et parlant des langue europeennes etrangeres. Cette etudeexplore comment l’idee d’une personne ‘‘civilisee’’, promue par le programme d’etudescolonial scolaire, a fait se developper de nouvelles elites locales avec des ensembles devaleurs differents et des esperances qui les ont souvent rendus etrangers a leurs propressocietes. Elle decrit egalement la connection existant entre ce programme d’etudes etl’echec repete des efforts de reforme de l’education.

Resumen – EL DESARROLLO DE LOS PLANES DE ESTUDIO EN AFRICAOCCIDENTAL BRITANICA: ESTUDIO HISTORICO – No hace mucho tiempoque las naciones africanas han comenzado a trazar su propio camino hacia la im-plantacion de sistemas de educacion realmente autonomos, incorporando elementos desu cultura autoctona. Este estudio examina el desarrollo historico de los planes deestudio en la Africa Occidental Britanica y su relacion con las actividades educativasde los primeros misioneros cristianos y la imposicion de un orden colonial britanico.Durante 300 anos, los planes de estudio han sido europeos en su esencia, y losintereses y las practicas culturales africanas quedaban excluidas en su mayor parte,puesto que se valoraba mas la ‘‘lectura’’ que la ‘‘manufactura’’. El currıculo colonialtambien ayudo a introducir un nuevo orden social en Africa Occidental, dando lugaral surgimiento de nuevas elites locales que leıan, escribıan y hablaban lenguas euro-peas extranjeras. Este estudio investiga como la idea de una persona ‘‘civilizada’’,promovida a traves del currıculo de las escuelas coloniales, desarrollo nuevas eliteslocales con diferentes valores y expectativas que, con frecuencia, los convirtio enextranos dentro de sus propias sociedades. Tambien describe la relacion existente entreestos planes de estudio y los frecuentes intentos fracasados de reformar la educacion.

410 Kwabena Dei Ofori-Attah

Curriculum development in British West Africa can be linked to theeducational activities of early European merchants and missionaries, whovisited the continent during the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Theycame from all over Europe, and the Portuguese, Dutch, French, Spaniards,Italians, British, and Germans all participated in the development of colo-nial education in Africa. European merchants established schools toachieve their business objectives. Missionaries, on the other hand, estab-lished Christian schools in order to spread the gospel, again with the helpof the Africans. They included the Christian Missionary Society (CMS),The Wesleyan Missionaries, Basel Missionaries, Presbyterian Missionaries,Scottish Missionaries, Catholic Augustinian Missionaries, and the Mor-avian Protestant Church Missionary (Hilliard 1957; Taylor 1984). With thepassage of time, the missionaries came to enjoy the support of both themerchants and the British colonial government, which took control of mostof the territories in West Africa. The educational agenda became a hybridof commerce and evangelization (Lloyd 1967). Of course, the missionarieshad to meet certain conditions in return for the support of the colonialgovernment. One such condition was the disregard of vernacular languagein the school curriculum, or as a medium of instruction (Awoniyi 1975).However the missionaries had learned local languages and were using thevernacular, if minimally, in their schools (Crabtree 1914). So, this require-ment seldom found favor with the missionaries, who in many instanceshad gone to great pains to develop written forms for local languages(Buxton 1918).

As Gutek (1988) has pointed out, curriculum designers, regardless oftheir philosophical convictions, seek what is of greatest value to the lear-ner. The problem has always lain in identifying and agreeing upon what isof the ‘‘... greatest truth, beauty and goodness’’ (Gutek 1988: 5), hence,the importance of an examination of the intentions of curriculum planners,the core content of a curriculum, the interests of learners and forces shap-ing the process. This article presents a historical analysis of the Britishcolonial school curricula used in elementary schools in West Africa fromthe early 17th to the early 20th centuries. It also attempts to trace thegradual reforms made by the British colonial government to align the cur-riculum with the perceived needs of West African peoples during the colo-nial era. The territories included in this discussion are Ghana, SierraLeone, Nigeria, The Gambia, and later, British Togoland and WesternCameroon.

Philosophical foundations of the curriculum

A philosophical analysis of British colonial education is essential because asBroudy (1954) argued, ‘‘... if we know what an educator’s philosophy is, wecan predict what sort of school he will advocate’’ (1954: 13). The curriculum

411The British and curriculum development in West Africa

of a school determines the learning experiences and outcomes of the learn-ers, and their behavior as citizens in a society (Taba 1962; Tanner and Tan-ner 1975).

The philosophy that guided colonial missionary education and its curricu-lum was evangelicalism: humankind originated from God through the act ofcreation, and human destiny was to return to God. It was only through edu-cation that a human being could achieve the gift of divine elevation, whichwould ultimately put him or her in union with God (Gutek 1988). As Myersand Myers argue,

‘‘It (Evangelicalism) is a diverse movement based upon a common set of Judeo-Christian beliefs that include the following: God is a personal, rational, creativebeing; humankind is made in the likeness of God; nature and scripture revealtruths that are otherwise impossible to know; life has purpose and meaning in thelove and service of God and others; ethical principles are based upon the rationaland moral nature of God; human beings are alienated from God and need to bereconciled in Jesus Christ.’’ (Myers and Myers 1990: 313)

African forms of religion or worship were not an entry point to the kingdomof God. After all, these were not based on the teachings of the Bible, butrather on animism, witchcraft, paganism, and superstition, all of them con-demned by Christian beliefs and doctrine (Junod 1905). Therefore, Africanforms of spirituality, including music, dancing, art, and religious practiceswere all excluded from the colonial curriculum. The African learner thus hadno hope of learning or acquiring skills of immediate relevance to the com-munity, and curricula were aligned with the interests of missionaries andBritish colonial government as in all colonies in Africa, North and SouthAmerica, Asia, or the Caribbean (Bacchus 1974, 1990; Roy-Campbell 2001).

The colonial curriculum was also grounded in essentialist philosophy(Oliva 2004), according to which there were certain values and ideas com-mon to all humanity and vital to the development and promotion of civilsociety. These core values had been present in the civilizations of the past,and contributed significantly to public welfare (Macdonald 1965). Anysociety that deviated from them flirted with chaos, misery, retardation, insta-bility, or ‘‘lower’’ social norms. Disregard for these core values was believedto promote the kind of social behavior that departs from ‘‘civilization’’.There was therefore a strong urge in colonial curriculum planners to ‘‘en-rich’’ the curriculum with contents that would lead West Africans on thepath of civility and modernization.

The missionary ideology

Ideologically, the missionaries sought schools that would diffuse their con-cept of a humanitarian, just, and civilized society among West Africans(Murray 1935; Thomas 2000). They were also motivated by their ‘‘... desire


to give rather than to take, and to offer what they believed to be the bestform of their own culture’’ (Taylor 1984: 196). Europe at that time hadmade significant progress in social development, with advances in science,medicine, agriculture and other branches of learning. Improvements inmedicine had made it possible for physicians to treat previously incurablediseases. The invention of the printing press during the Renaissance drasti-cally lowered the cost of written materials and books, making possible theestablishment of more schools with cheaper reading materials. The CatholicChurch had lost its hold on teaching, distributing, and interpreting theBible, and after the Reformation many European Protestants gave newmeaning to the scriptures. Some saw the need to live the scriptures as in-tended by Christ, including sharing and spreading the ‘‘good news’’ to allparts of the world, especially to places where the Holy Bible had hardlymade a mark. Africa no doubt became a fertile ground, as Christianitywas virtually unheard of at that time. Africans knew about God and hadtheir own elaborate way of worshiping Him (Wilson 1971), but they werenot aware of Jesus Christ and His divine mission of salvation forhumanity.

In fact, Africans had hardly heard of any of the great and spectaculardevelopments that were gradually transforming the entire European conti-nent. The Christian missionaries saw it as their religious duty to share these‘‘modern’’ happenings with their African brothers and sisters through anevangelizing and civilizing mission. To make these social transformationspossible, the missionaries turned to the educational system, and Africanswho attended mission schools were required to adopt European dress, cul-ture, language, and values (Brummett et al. 2000: 894). There was no needto align the curriculum with African social and cultural practices, as thesewere all diametrically opposed to the European way of life and Christianethics.

In all their schools, Christian missionaries designed the timetables insuch a way that the subjects they deemed important and valuable weretaught in the morning, when African weather was a little cooler andallowed for concentration. The morning session was thus usually devotedto scriptures, singing, prayers, catechism, and grammar. The subjects themissionaries considered of lesser importance were all taught in the after-noon, including arithmetic, reading, spelling, writing, and vocabulary.Each day’s session began with prayers, singing, and a short reading fromthe Bible.

The British and the West African school curriculum

The school curriculum designed and implemented in West Africa followedthe pattern established by earlier European powers in the region such as thePortuguese (Martin 1976). Starting in 1482, the Portuguese had established a


few schools in the region, with the aim of preparing Africans for missionaryand commercial duties. Initially, they set up schools in their fortified out-posts and castles. Later and as they won the confidence and support of thepeople, they used community labor to build schools outside the forts. Theschools were open to all children the Portuguese had fathered, and to thelocal children from Christian families. Of special interest to the Portuguesewere royalty and the children of chiefs, who were seen as future leaders oftheir society. Initial enrollment was poor, as many of the local peopleresisted European culture and values (Migeod 1916). However, as Africansbecame aware of the importance of formal schooling, they increasinglyembraced these schools, making personal sacrifices in order to enroll theirchildren (Busia 1962).

As explained above, the curriculum the British and Missionary educa-tional planners implemented did not include any local topics or languages.The main reason they put forward was that there were no written records ofany West African language or history. In the case of the Portuguese, theteachers could not speak any of the local languages and it was reasonablefor them to use their language. The obvious choice was therefore Portu-guese. Instruction in all subjects, namely religion, reading, writing, and arith-metic, was carried out from the beginning in Portuguese (Martin 1976).

As the Portuguese had few resources with which to educate the Africans,they selected a few students to send abroad for further education. Most ofthe students were the children of local chiefs (Guggisberg 1922). The ideawas to create an ‘‘elite’’ ruling class that would not oppose the modifiedposition and role of chiefs in the administration of the colony. Many ofthese students returned to West Africa and became ‘‘... scholars of distinc-tion’’ (Naylor 2000: 14) or helped the Portuguese merchants and missionar-ies with their commercial and educational activities (Martin 1976;Tibenderana 1985). Some, however, after acquiring a taste for the Europeanway of life, did not return to West Africa but remained in Europe.

When the British eventually took charge of Ghana, Sierra Leone, TheGambia, and Nigeria during the later part of the 18th century, British edu-cational planners designed and implemented curricula for West Africanschools that followed the European model (Szostak 2003). The content ofthe curriculum in all public schools changed to focus more on British topics,concepts, and interests. The English language became the medium of instruc-tion in all public schools in territories that were previously under the admin-istration of other European nations. Even though the British colonialgovernment took charge of these West African territories, missionariesremained in charge of their own parochial institutions. Only the Germanmissionaries lost control of their schools, as a result of Germany’s defeat inthe First World War (Guggisberg 1922). Thus the new, British curriculumemphasized courses that would prepare West Africans to speak English andto seek employment as clerks, teachers, missionaries, or law enforcementofficers in the British West African colonies (Rado 1972; Ocholla 2000).


Contents of the British colonial curriculum

The colonial curriculum in West Africa was structured to advance the com-mercial and evangelization interests of the British and the missionariesrespectively, and the school curriculum was essentially made up of subjectsthat served their needs and interests (Buxton 1918). After all, the Africanwas in school to promote European culture and civilization. As Ormsby-Gore explains,

‘‘This knowledge must include the experience of mankind in ethics and the historyof human events and progress as well as the knowledge of the physical sciences,which have enabled ... the West to master the forces of nature and develop theuseful arts for the service of man.’’ (1937: 66)

African cultural and social practices were not considered essential, since theyhad nothing to contribute to the development of a civilized and modernsociety as defined by the colonists and missionaries. The curriculum contentreflected what Bestor (1955) described as the presumed intentions of the cur-riculum planners, who were naturally all British. The potential intention ofthe curriculum planners was to lead the African to accept the European wayof life as most appropriate to meet the challenges of civilization. As Buxton(1918) states,

‘‘... in West Africa, few will claim that the system of education has been a reasonedgrowth: it partakes more of the nature of a stunted, misshapen dwarf, which cameinto being by a process of analogy with European methods, devised for Europeanends, rather than as a result of conclusions reached by a careful investigation intothe primary needs of those to be educated, with the consequence that ‘‘preparingchildren against their occupations’’ has, in a certain sense, proved altogether toosuccessful in West Africa, with the most disastrous result!’’ (1918: 343)

For 300 years, the content of the colonial school curriculum was made up ofarithmetic, religion, and reading or the ‘‘three Rs’’ as we call them today.All reading materials were based on Biblical themes and foreign concepts.Religion was based on the Bible, arithmetic was made of problems based onforeign expressions and concepts like ‘‘pounds’’, ‘‘shillings’’, ‘‘pence’’, and‘‘miles’’, and geography was based on the hills, rivers, capes, and bays ofEngland or Europe (Judd 1917). These were all concepts that aroused nosense of imagination in the African. The only route to understanding whatwas taught was through memorization, which was no learning at all (Dewey1933; Wright 1981).

Topics in history were European and not West African. Topics in naturestudy were about plants, insects, animals, trees or birds in Europe. Singingwas about British culture, topics in the humanities were all selected fromEurope and music was all about English themes, concepts, ideas, or beliefsor stories. The study of poetry and literature related to the works of Shake-speare, Chaucer, Elliot, or Dickens. The subjects at the core of the


curriculum were intended to transform the African, in his own environment,to serve the needs of a colonial government and a new African society.From the late 15th century to the early 19th century, the colonial schoolcurriculum continued to emphasize foreign interests and aspirations (Wright1981). The usual argument put forth by the colonial government was thatthere were no local materials produced by people of knowledge and author-ity in African history, geography, languages, music, art, politics, or agricul-ture that could be used in the local schools.

The missionaries on the other hand made significant attempts to use locallanguages in their schools. They also translated the Bible into local lan-guages during the latter half of the 19th century. In The Gambia, they trans-lated parts of the Bible into Mandinka in 1837. In Sierra Leone, parts of theBible were published in Kuranko in 1899. In Nigeria, a part of the Bible waspublished in Yoruba in 1850 and Hausa in 1857. In Ghana, the Germanmissionaries found the use of local languages very effective in teaching andby 1853 J. C. Christaller had studied Twi and was able to translate the Bibleinto that language. The missionaries went on to produce the first grammarbook in Ewe in 1858 and in 1905 produced an Ewe dictionary (Martin1976). Once the missionaries translated the Bible into local languages, theyproceeded to make limited room for vernacular in the school curriculum.The Basel Missionaries often established boarding schools, where childrenlived for several years as students (Ball 1983). However, students were notencouraged to learn all subjects in their mother tongue, as the missionarieswere not very fluent in local languages and did not encourage their large-scale use. Other children or the school authorities often ridiculed childrenwho broke this and other rules. This was also the case in other schools inAfrica (Bacchus 1990; Roy-Campbell 2002).

Although they saw the need to incorporate local languages into the cur-riculum, the missionaries hastened to eliminate those local influences andpractices they considered unacceptable. In Ghana for instance, as Martin(1976) pointed out,

‘‘The missionaries realized that African religion, art, music and other social activi-ties were very closely connected with each other. They incorrectly thought that theycould not replace existing beliefs with Christianity unless they expelled all other be-liefs. African dancing and music were banned from the curriculum.’’ (1976: 50)

The first major attempt to adapt the curriculum to local needs occurred in1847, when the Education Committee of the Privy Council gave a report inwhich it argued for, among other things, the diffusion ‘‘... of grammaticalknowledge of the English language as the most important agent of civiliza-tion’’ and the promotion of Christianity ‘‘... by such instruction as can begiven in elementary schools’’ (Ball 1983: 243). The report also suggestedemphasizing agriculture. However, this report did not secure curriculumchanges because West Africans opposed any form of ‘‘adapted’’ curriculum.


The British colonial government passed the 1882 Education Ordinancewith the aim of enforcing curriculum expansion and reform. The Ordinancehas been described by many as the first educational act designed by the Brit-ish colonial government to establish the ground rules for church-state part-nerships. Among other things, the Ordinance did not support the teaching ofreligion in schools. Rather it argued for the inclusion of trade subjects in thecurriculum. Vernacular was only to be used in public schools during specificperiods. In some cases this was not more than 30 minutes per day. Englishwas to be used as a medium of instruction in all public schools (Awoniyi1975). The 1882 Education Ordinance ‘‘merely’’ laid the foundation for cur-riculum expansion. Any educational institution that wanted a governmentgrant was to make sure that only English was used as a medium of instruc-tion. The 1882 Ordinance made it nearly impossible for the missionaries toreceive grants from the British colonial government, because the former werenot prepared to reform their curriculum sufficiently to meet some of thedemands (Buxton 1918).

The Rowden Educational Report of 1909 was designed to correct some ofthe problems and disparities inherent in the colonial school curriculum, andcalled for ‘‘... improvement in the curriculum and especially the inclusion ofmanual training, hygiene, and physical drill’’ and ‘‘... the provision of soundmoral instruction, as distinct from the over-much denominational religiousteaching’’ (Hilliard 1954: 38). By 1914, a typical school curriculum in a WestAfrican public school looked as follows:

(1) Colloquial English(2) Arithmetic(3) English Reading(4) Writing(5) Hygiene(6) Plain Needlework for girls(7) Hand and Eye: Industrial Training to include Drawing or Nature Study

and Agricultural Training(8) Object Lessons in Nature Study and Elementary Hand and Eye Training

in Infant Classes.

The list of optional subjects included the following:

(1) Vernacular Reading(2) Singing(3) Geography(4) History(5) Grammar(6) Drill and Physical Exercises (Hilliard 1957: 79)(7) Book-keeping(8) Shorthand(9) Mensuration


(10) Algebra(11) Kindergarten

Clearly absent from the public school curriculum was religion, although itremained a strong component in the parochial schools. In the public schools,teachers had the freedom to offer religious instruction before regular classesbegan in the morning and after class in the evening. Again, it is interestingto note that vernacular was not emphasized in the curriculum but remainedas an optional subject. Needlework was added to the school curriculum, toprovide a different kind of education for girls (Thomas 2000). In manycases, while the girls broke into separate groups to do needlework, the boyswent to work on the school farm as part of agricultural training. Howeverarrangements such as this did not meet the expectation of curriculum plan-ners and educators outside the sub-region. A major curriculum reform andexpansion took place in West African schools after the publication in 1922of the Phelps-Stokes Report (Imhabekhai 2002).

The Phelps-Stokes Report: Expansion and reform

The problems of curriculum design, development, and implementation inWest Africa received greater attention with the publication of the Phelps-Stokes Report of 1922. This Report described the West African curriculumas being ‘‘... out of touch with the life of the community’’ and ‘‘... too book-ish’’ (Martin 1976: 51). Following these criticisms of colonial education inWest Africa, the British colonial government and the missionaries made sig-nificant changes in their curriculum content and alignment (Brown 1964). InGhana for instance, the colonial government reformed the curriculum andimplemented 16 provisions designed to align the curriculum to local needsand interests. Concerning curriculum reform and expansion, the governmentargued, among other things, that:

1. Character training must take an important place in education2. Religious teaching should form part of school life3. The course in every school should include special reference to the health,

welfare and industries of the locality4. There should be cooperation between Government and the Missions, and

the latter should be subsidised for educational purposes5. Trade schools should be established and provide a technical and literary

education that will fit young men to become skilled craftsmen and usefulcitizens. (Martin 1976: 52)


Hidden messages in the colonial curriculum

According to Myers and Myers (1990), the ‘‘hidden curriculum’’ has severaldimensions. One aspect includes unexpected ideas, skills, and values thatlearners may pick up from their studies unasked. Some may be good, othersmay be harmful to the learners’’ training. The good aspects may be in linewith the intended instruction, the harmful ones may be the learners’’ over-generalization of events (Doll 1986).

The hidden messages in the curricula introduced in West Africa had seriousimplications for the region. By all accounts, the British government and mis-sionaries never intended to shortchange the moral fiber of West Africans, how-ever, largely through the curriculum and its ‘‘... code of behavior, the contentsof its lessons all introduced pupils to a new life-style’’ (Taylor 1984: 193). Oneof the harmful messages bequeathed to children who attended colonial schoolswas total disregard for many West African customs. According to Martin,‘‘The young members were trained to be members of a minority Christiancommunity rather than members of the community as a whole’’ (1976: 50). Al-though missionary education did not ignore local languages altogether, itsemphasis on the use of English also dealt a serious blow to the use of local lan-guages. In Nigeria for instance, those who had studied in Freetown or Englandreturned home only to pretend not to speak any of the local languages, andcommunicated with others through interpreters (Awoniyi 1975). In Ghana,students who graduated from the missionary and public schools felt ashamedto speak local languages. At Achimota School in Ghana, students did notwant to sing in a local language during national events. They preferred to singin English in order to maintain their perceived higher social status (Coe 1974).

Another negative feature of the colonial curriculum was the differentialtreatment of boys and girls. Colonial curriculum planners made trade sub-jects like woodwork, agriculture, and leather work only for boys. Girls wereto take other courses such as needlework, cooking, or those that promotedsound home economics (Tibenderana 1985). The general aim was a schoolcurriculum that would provide the skills students would need to be produc-tive citizens in their community (Masemann 1974). Boys were generally seenas ‘‘hewers of wood’’ and girls as ‘‘drawers of water’’, hence the need fordifferential education.

On the whole, the curriculum emphasized ‘‘bookwork’’ over ‘‘handwork’’and therefore gave pupils the erroneous impression that schooling wasdesigned to produce clerks, teachers, and missionaries (Guggisberg 1922). AsMasemann (1974) points out, schooling was seen by many of the colonial stu-dents as a release from manual labor. A civilized and educated African wasthe one who spoke English, worked in an office, dressed like a European,gave orders to others, and generally lived like a Westerner. Any form of‘‘engagement’’ with manual work, however lucrative, was considered a breachof ethics. The standard practice was to avoid any form of work that entailed‘‘bathing’’ one’s feet and hands in the soil, or working in the hot African sun.


Additionally, a rigid bureaucratic school administration drove most stu-dents to adopt harmful habits such as indiscipline, deceit, and insubordina-tion (Myers and Myers 1990). In some of the boarding schools that laterbecame the preferred form of schooling, pupils were required to adherestrictly to school rules and regulations and the social life, behavior, and reli-gious practices of students were all subordinated to the provisions of thecurriculum. Some of the rules prevented students from using vernacular;others from eating local food while at school. Yet others prohibited thesinging of local songs. In many cases the only way students could availthemselves of local food was to leave school for a few days.

School culture is another aspect of the ‘‘hidden curriculum’’. The mission-ary practice of renaming Africans led to disrespect or disregard of localnames. As part of their cultural and religious conversion of Africans, theMissionaries required all converts to adopt a Christian name (Thomas 2000).In many cases, Africans continued this practice when they enrolled in gov-ernment schools. An African with a Christian name was seen as civilized,and expected to embrace and conform to the Western way of life. No Afri-can Christian was expected to compromise on this new faith, which was tobe strictly practiced at all times, including during social or cultural events(Wallbank 1935; Scott 1938). This practice undermined African identity andpersonality and brought about a new generation of Africans who saw them-selves as having the ‘‘mind’’ of Europeans and, consequently, repudiated thetraditional African way of life (Freund 1984: 151).

The way colonial school teachers forced West Africans to memorize infor-mation sent the message that rote learning was effective. As we know today,rote learning is no learning. Memorization gave students little opportunity tomake meaning of information (Dewey 1933; Eisner 1978), and therefore,most lacked critical thinking skills. They could hardly relate what they mem-orized to their own environment. As Lloyd (1967) has pointed out, duringthe colonial period it was common to see ‘‘... a youth with a good pass inSchool Certificate geography, able to describe the difference between crystal-line and sedimentary rocks, but unaware that his own village lay across theboundary of the two!’’(1967: 80)

Although the British colonial government and the missionaries workedclosely together to lay the foundations of a modern curriculum in WestAfrica, to a very large extent the curriculum they implemented was notaligned to local interests. The net effect was that the colonial education sys-tem produced African scholars of European history, geography, plants, oranimals. Such neglect of Africa diminished the importance of Africa’shistory and social and cultural practices in the academic world for centuries.

Conclusion

Every human society has the task of preserving its cultural heritage andpassing it from one generation to the other (Tanner and Tanner 1975;


Mortimore 1990). Culture, or simply put, the way of life of a people, makesit different from another. A society’s culture embodies relevant symbols, ritu-als, and traditions that give meaning to new events, situations, and experi-ences. Any curriculum design that fails to take these into account is boundto fail (Giroux 1991). Perhaps this is why repeated reforms failed to meet theexpectations of scholars in West Africa or of international bodies such as thePhelps-Stokes Commission.

Clearly, the early Christian missionaries and the British colonial govern-ment, through their educational systems, raised new West African elites(Gellar 1986: 128). These elites graduated from school only to find them-selves strangers in their own home territories. One thing is for sure: the ideaof a ‘‘civilized person’’ promoted through the school curriculum certainlypresented them with new challenges and expectations (Brummett et al. 2000).

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The author

Kwabena Dei Ofori-Attah received his doctorate from Ohio University, in Athens,Ohio (USA) in 1995. He is currently Associate Professor of Education in the Depart-ment of Education, Cumberland College, where he has taught since 1995. Since 2001,Dr. Ofori-Attah has also served as Editor-in-Chief and Consultant on Education inAfrica for the African Symposium, an online journal of research on African issuesavailable online at <http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/aern/afrisymp.html>.

Contact address: Dr. Kwabena Dei Ofori-Attah, Department of Education,Cumberland College, Williamsburg, VA, 40769, USA. E-mail: [email protected].


The British and curriculum development in West Africa: A historical discourse

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