African Responses to Christian Mission Education

Abstract

Missionary domination of African education is a dying phenomenon. Today's church-affiliated institutions in Africa, while still mindful of their proselytizing duties, subordinate their religious messages to the rigors of academic preparation. The realities of contemporary African nation-building preclude any other course. Just as increasing nationalistic impulses and socio-economic considerations during the 19th century forced European politicians to recognize that education of their youth was too important to be left to the various confessions, so increasingly are African leaders coming to a similar conclusion. The shift from denominational to state control of the educational system is well advanced in many nations. In 1942, 97% of Nigeria's student population was enrolled in missionary schools; today missionary education has been banned in the East Central State of Nigeria—the heartland of the highly Christianized Ibos—and is steadily declining with the strengthening of the Local Education Authorities in other areas of Nigeria (Coleman, 1958: 113). As recently as 1950, missionary schools accounted for 97% of the total enrollment in Ghanaian schools; twelve years later the government assumed the responsibility tor the payment of salaries of all teachers, irrespective of the type of school in which they taught (Anim, 1966: 189). In an attempt to remove the school issue from the arena of sectarian politics the government of Uganda abolished the posts of mission school supervisors in 1963, placing their functions in the hands of secular authorities (Hindmarsh, 1966: 145). In 1945 there were 5,360 mission-run schools for Africans in South Africa and only 230 state-sponsored schools;

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