Educational Policy and the Mission Schools

Case Studies from the British Empire

Brian Holmes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134531462
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published 1967, this title reveals how the missionaries, so often misguided and short-sighted, were in fact pioneers of modernization, science and freedom. The structure of the book allows for comparative analysis and the volume illustrates how some of the social consequences of action through the schools could be foreseen. In addition light is thrown on the results of Imperial rule during the nineteenth century and on the nature of the impact of Western education in Asia and Africa.

1

BRITISH IMPERIAL POLICY AND THE MISSION SCHOOLS

Brian Holmes

AFTER the Second World War socio-political changes gathered momentum. The victors from western Europe were soon called upon to liquidate their colonial empires. Over the years, either as a matter of policy or after bitter struggles, Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands granted independence to their dependent peoples. Pre-war British policy of evolution to responsible self-government was implemented at a vastly accelerated rate. India and Pakistan became independent in 1947. Ceylon, already by 1940 an example of responsible local government, became fully independent in 1948. During the fifties the process continued. The withdrawal of British troops from Egypt after a period of over seventy years was completed in 1956. After years of agitation and a period (1955–9) of open rebellion in Cyprus a settlement was reached in 1959 which restricted Britain’s direct influence in the island’s affairs to small enclaves for defence. In Africa one territory after another established independent régimes under new constitutions: Nigeria celebrated independence in 1959; of the islands in the Caribbean the Bahamas had in fact long enjoyed a very considerable measure of self rule. Except for rather small changes the Constitution written in 1729 remained substantially the same until a new one was drawn up in 1964 which gave complete control over internal affairs to the Bahamian Government.

The new constitutions were based on the assumption that democratic self government would be possible. In most cases the institutions of Government were derived from British models; Parliamentary procedures were copied from Westminster and concepts of local government found expression in a devolution of certain powers. In short, the theory and practice of Government in the newly independent territories reflected British democracy. Unfortunately some of the hopes for the tranquil transition from colonial rule to successful self government have been thwarted.

So too have other post-war expectations. Not all the much publicized human rights in the United Nations Universal Declaration have been realized in practice. Among the thirty articles listing these rights and liberties, the twenty-sixth dealt with education. It said that everyone had the right to education which at the elementary stage should be free and compulsory. Technical and professional education should be generally available and higher education should be open to all on the basis of merit. The constitutions of many newly independent nations either anticipated or closely followed this declaration of intention; for example, Article 45 of India’s constitution provided for free, universal and compulsory education within ten years.

Similar provisions were included in major post-war educational legislation. The details varied from one country to another, to be sure, but until the late fifties and early sixties education laws reflected the concept of education as a human right with the corollary that democracy could not survive without a system of universal primary education. The difficulties of meeting this demand by providing a school place for every child were soon apparent. Studies in the economics of education helped to reorientate educational policy in the light of economic considerations. Manpower needs in relation to economic resources suggested that priority should be given to secondary and higher education and to technical and professional training.

No doubt many observers hold the imperial powers responsible for the difficulties of developing education either as a human right or as a form of economic investment in many newly independent countries.

THE POST-WAR SITUATION

Certainly the situation at the end of the war was very unpromising. Crude illiteracy figures from Unesco sources reveal one aspect of it. In 1944 the percentage for India was 85, for Egypt 88 and in 1946 Cyprus reported an illiteracy figure for people over fifteen years of age as 22 per cent. In that year the percentage in Ceylon was 37. These figures may be compared with a 15 per cent illiteracy of the over five year old Bahamian population in 1953. A Unesco report in 1950 estimated that three out of every four humans could neither read nor write.

The reasons for this state of affairs are complex. It was nevertheless easy to argue that the provision of education in the pre-war British colonies had been restricted to a small minority of the population and that too little money had been made available for education.

In fact the local governments (with some encouragement from Britain) had not been unmindful of the need to promote education. Laws about compulsory education have been on the statute books in the West Indies since the 1880s. By 1900 education in the Bahamas was free and compulsory up to the age of fourteen. The 1908 Act made it available to the remotest village. Compulsory education laws were passed in Ceylon in 1906 (Town Schools Ordinance No. 5) and 1907 (The Rural School Ordinance No. 8). Clause 19 of the National Constitution of 1923 made school attendance in Egypt compulsory for children between the ages of six and twelve.

Two processes were at work during the twentieth century. As a matter of policy education was becoming the responsibility of local governments in which elected representation was increasing. The second aspect of policy was that there was a growing devolution of function. Regional and local authorities were being given more and more responsibility for education. The Government of India Act 1919 introduced dyarchy in the Provinces under which education was transferred to popular control. By 1937 Indians had obtained almost complete control of education. By 1923, too, the Ministry of Education in Egypt had passed into purely Egyptian hands. In Nigeria the educational codes of 1926, which referred to the Northern Provinces (ordinance No. 14) and the Southern Provinces (ordinance No. 15), remained in force, virtually untouched, until after the Second World War. When Nigeria became a Federation in 1954 under a new constitution, there was a devolution of functions of the Central Authority on Regional Directors and Regional Boards. In the Eastern Region the Education Law of 1952 established local education authorities and in 1954 it was proposed to introduce free and universal primary education by 1956.

The Cyprian case is special. After 1931 laws were passed with the intention of giving the British authorities a greater measure of centralized control. They attempted to promote secondary as well as elementary education under the provisions of the Elementary Education Law of 1933 and the Secondary Education Law of 1936. In 1935 the English School Law was passed to strengthen the position of English. Mr. Persianis claims that the motives were political.

A policy of decentralization needs to be sustained by popular demand for education, and Mr. Bain’s point is that in the Bahamas there was relatively little demand for the kind of education provided under the compulsory education laws. Elsewhere in the thirties the economic situation was such that there were few openings for educated people. The growth of literacy depends very considerably on motivation which turns on the evident benefits which literacy confers on those who possess it. Government service was an obvious attraction. Evidently the extent to which local communities were prepared to support educational development depended upon economic circumstances and the priority given to education.

The vicious circle was not broken by the assistance provided by the British Government. From 1929 under the U.K. Colonial Development Acts only technical and economic projects qualified for assistance. Little attention was paid to social welfare schemes, including education. The economic crisis of the thirties had disastrous effects on the economies and planned development of many colonial territories. Consequently opportunities to benefit from the money invested and from whatever education was provided were restricted by the slowness of industrial and commercial growth. Only after the war did social welfare schemes qualify for aid.

By that time few of the non self-governing territories in the British Empire had achieved universal primary education let alone mass literacy. The responsibility of the colonial Governments for this state of affairs will not be analysed. Except in Cyprus it was the British missionaries (and in Egypt the British and French) who had, with the assistance of Government grants, shouldered the burden of providing whatever education these countries possessed by the time they became independent. In some cases the missionaries had done little more than introduce European schools. In other cases they had accepted responsibility for the provision of most of the schools at one level or another. In the Bahamas nearly 25 per cent of the primary schools in 1951 were denominational and were attended by over 30 per cent of the pupils. There was one Government high school enrolling little more than 12 per cent of high school pupils. In 1949–50 of the 279,309 educational institutions in India over 100,000 were managed by private bodies. A fifth of the schools in Kerala were managed by Christian organizations. In Ceylon the privileged position of the mission schools had been questioned for a long time but as late as 1958, under a dual system of control, roughly 53 per cent of the 7,674 schools were owned by the Government and 47 per cent by private bodies. The Dike Report on the educational system of Eastern Nigeria pointed out that in 1962 the voluntary agencies owned more than 80 per cent of the schools in the Region. Indeed nearly 50 per cent of all schools were owned and controlled by the Roman Catholics.

The contribution of the mission schools was obvious. For example, in Nigeria literacy rates were highest in the provinces in which the missionaries had been particularly active. In Ceylon the standards among Christians were higher than among Buddhists or Hindus. In most countries the prospects of the Government’s building up a system of universal primary schools without missionary help were slight. But post-independence debates have frequently centred round the position of the mission schools. The reason is not difficult to find—they represented a dual threat to indigenous institutions. In the first place the policy of the missionaries was to convert people to Christianity, and the school was one agency of conversion. Young people and parents were brought into contact with Christians and natives could be trained as catechists and priests. The reception given to this policy depended upon local circumstances and in particular on the religious beliefs of the people. It was rejected, resented or accepted, and so the missionaries were not always able to follow a policy of proselytization. Everywhere, however, by design or chance, they introduced a second threat by introducing the English language. Even where Christianity was rejected, the mission schools attracted pupils from groups in the community who saw the value of English in commerce, education and politics. Elements of British or English secular education including political ideals were inevitably taught, if incidentally.

The education provided in mission schools was thus feared (or resented) by some and in great demand from a small minority group. An understandable ambivalence towards missionary education lies at the heart of the politics of education in many developing countries. Its development and the form it has taken have been investigated by the various contributors to this book.

THE POLITICAL FRAMEWORK OF MISSIONARY EDUCATION

Because local conditions determined so much of what the missionaries could do each contributor has followed his own line of analysis within a broadly conceived framework. Three themes, however, run through each chapter. The first is how and under what political conditions the missionaries first established schools. The next theme relates to the educational policies pursued and how far they succeeded. Finally attempts have been made to estimate the consequences of mission schools in the societies where they were set up. These careful studies of the origins of mission schools make it possible to understand the ambivalent attitude towards them. Moreover, some vague dimensions of educational problems in newly independent countries may be clarified. In short, the intention is that these articles, although heavily historical, should illuminate some aspects of the dilemmas facing educational statesmen today.

The case studies examine the socio-political circumstances under which the mission schools were first established in selected countries. British political influences came from home and were also present in the local environment. Traders at home and overseas were interested in the role of the mission schools. The British Government and its representatives in the colonies were also involved. Finally British public opinion and the supporters of missionary endeavour exercised a profound influence on this work abroad. Indigenous political forces operated through the rulers, the priests, and the parents. Inevitably the missionaries became involved in politics. Sometimes they supported a Governor against directives from home. At other times they sought to influence the home Government against the policies of the colonial Government. In the long run their success depended upon their ability to win the support of the political power groups in whatever country they tried to work.

A general sequence of events throughout the British Empire can be described. The traders usually arrived first, then the missionaries. They set up schools. Then later the British officials came along and gradually secularized the control of education. The timing varies but the denominational battles and the process of removing education from clerical control tend to follow those which went on in England.

During the eighteenth century the commercial value of the West Indies made them the heart of the Empire. Since sugar was by far the most important crop in the islands the planters dominated political life. They filled most of the public offices—colonial secretary, attorney general, provost marshal—and were appointed from England. The position of the Bahamas was unique in that they depended less than the other islands on a plantation economy. Once piracy had been brought under control and constitutional Government had become increasingly possible trading interests dominated policy. The arrival from America of Loyalists strengthened the power of the colonists against the Home Government. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the great issue between the planters and influential groups in England was, of course, slavery which had been introduced during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When the missionaries arrived they depended very much on the attitudes of the planters towards their work. In the islands dependent on sugar the planters were hostile. They feared the political consequences of allowing the slaves to meet together in church.

Even in the Bahamas the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) was unable to do much work among the slaves because of the attitude of their owners. It was the Baptists and Methodists who arrived much later, around 1800, who helped the Negroes—slaves, freemen and indentured servants—and Dr. Bray’s Associates who opened a school for free Negroes in 1793. The attitude of the Government is reflected in the legislation passed against the Methodists in 1816 during a period when the West Indies lost a good deal of their cotton trade with Britain to the U.S.A. There can be little doubt that the subsequent deterioration of the economy was another reason why the Bahamian Government failed to implement its Education Acts.

In the East, of course, the East India Company was the dominant British influence for many years. A succession of Charters from 1600 gradually modified its role but not until the India Act of 1784 were the powers of the Proprietors effectively curtailed. In 1813 the Company lost its monopoly of Indian trade, twenty years later it was prevented from restricting the entry of British subjects into India. Its patronage was reduced when in 1853 all posts to the Indian Civil Service had to be thrown open to competition. It remained influential until the Government of India Act of 1858 transferred its powers to the Crown. Consequently, at a time when British missionaries began to reach India during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, their success depended upon the attitude of the East India Company.

For many years the Court of Proprietors in England had maintained a policy of strict neutrality towards religion. In 1792 it opposed Wilberforce’s proposal to add to the Charter Act clauses to send schoolmasters out to India. Subsequently, Charles Grant, a director of the Company, urged upon his colleagues the need for education in India. These proposals and Wilberforce’s expressed aim to get Christian missions established in India caused a split among the directors prior to the 1813 Charter which, in fact, required the Company to allocated 100,000 rupees to education, literature and science.

In 1812 the Company’s representative refused to allow American missionaries to remain in Calcutta, ordered them to leave, and declared that they were unacceptable in any of the territories over which the Company had jurisdiction. Under their leader, Samuel Newell, the American missionaries left for Ceylon where after a violent rebellion in 1802 British rule as a Crown Colony had been established. Henceforth political power was not directly in the hands of the representatives of trading interests. In the Crown colonies the attitude of the Governor towards the missionaries was of great importance.

The situation in the Near or Middle East was again somewhat different. The East India Company, however, recognized the vital importance of the overland route to India. In order to protect this line of communication and subsequently the Suez Canal Britain took a great interest in Egypt and Cyprus. But after the fall of Napoleon English traders were also searching for commercial openings. In fact, a number of them subscribed to missionary society funds and at the same time suggested how the missionaries could further British commercial interests in the Mediterranean. It is not without interest that one-third of the members of the first committee of the CMS were merchants, bankers and brokers. Political rather than economic factors, however, were more relevant to the success (and lack of it) of the British missions in Egypt.

In Eastern Nigeria the traders and missionaries were at first allies. The latter were opening up the country. It was MacGregor Laird who, in 1832, first organized the navigation of the Niger from its mouth to a point above its confluence with the Benue. In 1854 he fitted out a steamer which carried the Reverend Crowther (later Bishop) on his successful missionary expedition up the Niger and Benue rivers. Later the expansionist policies of Sir George Goldie through the United Africa Company, which received a royal charter under the Royal Niger Company, heralded a new kind of imperalism. In 1900 the political rights of the company were transferred to the Crown.

In the early days Crowther regarded the success of the West Africa Company as vital to his own mission’s success. In fact, collaboration was mutually beneficial. Mission workers were often agents for the company and used their local influence on behalf of the traders. Crowther was also interested in the possibilities of establishing links with England through a cotton industry. But as the scramble for markets increased and more and more traders with fewer scruples arrived the trade connection became a source of embarrassment to the missionaries.

Many traders, merchants and planters were either neutral or hostile to the m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Preface
• About the Contributors
• References and Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. British Imperial Policy and the Mission Schools
• 2. Missionary Activity in the Bahamas, 1700—1830
• 3. Missionary Education in Ceylon
• 4. Missionary Activity and the Syrian Christians in Kerala
• 5. The CMS in Kashmir
• 6. Missionary Work in Egypt during the Nineteenth Century
• 7. Church and State in the Development of Education in Cyprus 1878—1960
• 8. Some Mission Schools in Eastern Nigeria prior to Independence
• Name Index
• Subject Index