Development of Education in Sierra Leone. Already have a license? After six years at St. Peters, Father Burke was named chaplain and professor of English literature at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School in Osu, Ghana. Thank you! Here you can choose which regional hub you wish to view, providing you with the most relevant information we have for your specific region. We're here to answer any questions you have about our services. Nevertheless, the first higher institution in Ghana, now the Presbyterian Training College at Akuapem Akropon, was established in 1848, first as a centre for training catechists, and later to train teachers as well as ministers of the Presbyterian Church. Therefore the period for the rise of Christianizing Missions in the late Nineteenth Century has been considered as reprise. For instance, in the Salisbury region of Rhodesia, it was reported in 1924 that no male teachers had educational qualifications (Bone 1969:28). Among his pioneering achievements, he arranged for three youths to be sent to England for training as evangelists. The Basel Mission, as a result of this phenomenal expansion trained many local personnel to man the new stations. And traditionally polygamous societies would have higher educational outcomes today. Babalola, E. O. Christianity in West Africa. They also prescribed many taboos which, in the light of modern medical science, had no relation whatever with the illness being treated. Their economic activities went beyond the development of agriculture. The Essay Writing ExpertsUK Essay Experts. This box contains: the correspondence of Bishop See thematic groupings of our digital collections, See all of our digital collections in one place, Ghana in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1886-1951, Copies of letters received, 1890-1927; West Africa, vol. However the superficial motivations and ideologies have changed, at the most basic level both contemporary Northern charities and nineteenth century missionaries share the belief that the North must come and save the suffering natives, which in the case of the missionaries, has been proven to have inflicted more harm than provided relief. One of their scholarships is a drawing for $2,500. Their arrival in South Africa was aimed particularly at spreading the Word of God. Literature He knew me as a boy [in Ghana] who washed his car and went with him when he said Mass at mission stations, yet [as an adult] he treated me as an equal, Father Tetteh said. In fact in 1966, Father Burke led students to a victory in a national educational contest called the Ghana TV Cup. This hymn sums up the reasons why the Christian missionaries came to Africa and other parts of the world. They worked to write the bible, dictionaries and textbooks in such Ghanaian Languages as Ewe, Fanti, Ga and Twi. Again, the missionaries helped to pacify Africans while their rich natural resources were being plundered by the colonial government. Their educational activities helped spread literacy and vocational skills training among Ghanaians. A permanent station was established in Lagos in 1868, soon followed by others at Lokoja, Abeokuta and Ibadan. Series CLS. All the three secondary schools in Cape Coast were mission institutions. Consequently, they couldnt do much to promote the cultivation of food crops like maize, cassava, cocoyam and plantain. Among his pioneering achievements, he arranged for three youths to be sent to England for training as evangelists. Arnold, 1986. Contributions of Missionaries Towards Education in India In addition to teaching, he served as national spiritual director of the Ghana Sacred Heart Enthronement Centre and spiritual director of the Accra Diocesan Sacred Heart Centre. Another important missionary doctor was J. R. Stephen who for many years headed a missionary hospital at Ilesha. The system was devoid of any cohesive national policy. Indeed, once the souls had been saved and since the students must have been considered clever enough, European languages were almost universally the languages of instruction in the later primary years and in secondary schools (Beck 1966: 120; Foster 1965: 159; Miran 2002:127). It was not until the nineteenth century, that the new religion was really established in West Africa. By focusing on the African demand for education, I showed that Africans were not just passive recipients of mission schooling. Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries came to the Gold Coast from the 15th century. They need YOU. About us | Ghana Education Service - GES %PDF-1.7 % Rev. Volunteers and donors to organizations such as Compassion Canada believe that they are being humanitarian when they build schools in Africa, volunteer as teachers or help in other ways to improve the quality of education in African nations, yet missionaries and colonial governments were similarly lauded as performing a great work of humanity (Beck 1966:117) and likewise believed that they were helping their African pupils. The missionaries seemed to have concentrated much of their effort on the production of export crops. A member of the CMS, Henry Venn, boasted that the mission schools of Nigeria would produce an educated African elite that could form an intelligent and influential class of society and become the founders of a Kingdom which shall render incalculable benefits to Africa (Venn cited in Bassey 1991:37). student life 2023 Society of the Divine Word. The Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglican missions all made a major contribution to education in Ghana and Africa as a whole. Besides education, they cared for the sick. Until almost the end of the colonial period education was still largely in the hands of the churches. He had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Missionary Factor in Ghana's Development, pp.11 &135 categorically asserted that economic and social changes were brought about by the total effect of the various projects initiated by the. The history of education in Ghana from the earliest times to the mock tests These included the Basel Missionary Society, founded in Switzerland, and the Breman Mission formed in Germany. Missionaries were no doubt also aware that Africans came to associate European technological achievement with Western education (Bassey 1991:45) and therefore offered Western education as a means to attract Africans of this belief and then convert them. Although Lokoja had a small C.M.S. J. C. Taylor, in these parts of southern Nigeria can still be seen today. Among these were the Congregation of the Holy Ghost (commonly known as the Holy Ghost Father), the Society of African Missions (SMA), the Society of Missionaries of Africa, popularly known as the White Fathers because of the white Muslim-like clothing which the Fathers wore, and the society of the Divine Word (SVD, abbreviated from its Latin name). Often drumming and the harmless songs and dances of the people were condemned. Soon after the Methodist experiment, the church Missionary Society set up their own school at Badagry. Furthermore, they were skilled farmers that could grow cash crops to be consumed back in the mother country, such as cocoa from Ghana (Foster 1965: 153). The third, St Nicholas Grammar School (now Adisadel College), was founded by the Anglican Church in 1910. Apart from giving to the converts a new religious faith which they consider is superior to the traditional religions, the Christian missionaries did pioneering work in introducing new crafts, industries, Western education and modern health services. One of the missions most important contributions to the colonial regimes was their role in educating the native Africans. The colonial Eritrean government ensured that native Eritreans received poor education by permitting them to only attend school up to the fourth grade (Miran 2002:127). The others included the Christian responsibility for the regeneration of African peoples. For the next decade, the Church grew in Ghana at an accelerated pace. Longman Group Ltd. London and Basingstoke, 1986, Fage, J.D. better grades In this essay on the impact of Christian missionary activities on Ghanaian society, we shall examine the role of the missionaries in the development of Ghana and the rest of Africa. African Drama Johannes Zimmermann, for example, produced a Ga dictionary, Ga bible and grammar book. The impact of Christianity on West African society has persisted to this day. quiz How to Get Involved in Church Missions: The Ultimate Guide, 16 Causes of Crime Essay (with Solutions), Justify the Title of the Novel Second Class Citizen, The Role of Ghana in the Formation of the OAU, Economic Developments in Ghana Before Independence, 11 Causes of the Rise of Nationalism in Africa, Importance of the Odwira Festival in Ghana. Required fields are marked *. Who is Mrs. Konrad in Second Class Citizen? senior high school government C.M.S. Free resources to assist you with your university studies! However, with time, they brought some crops, which they cultivated and which sustained them. Required fields are marked *. Cookies are small, safe and secure text files that sit on your computer which we use to give you a better experience on our site and help us improve the service that we provide to you. The missionary activities in Nigeria, especially their educational programs helped to whip-up the consciousness of a shared identity and helped to train a new set of elite that championed the course of nationalism and constituted a virile leadership for the young nation at independence.Click to see full answer What is missionary education?A mission school or [] For example, the missionaries preached against certain aspects of African culture they considered barbaric or satanic or both. The early Christian missions concentrated their activities not only on religious matters. Request Permissions. It also plays an important role in organization of inheritances within matrilineal houses and thus exerts influence from a legal point of view. Their luggage and other necessities had to be carried on heads and took a long time before reaching the missionaries. The early missionaries set up craft centres as part of their educational programmes. The others include the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804, which was tasked with the responsibility of promoting the translation and printing of the Holy Bible. Christian Missionaries. Christian converts were indoctrinated to frown upon the use of indigenous first names in favour of Christian ones. Despite their significant contributions to education, local language development, agriculture and the economy as a whole, the missionaries have been criticized severally. Thus, despite what the images of suffering African children on websites such as that of Compassion Canada might lead one to believe, it is time for Africans to educate their own, without any interference. Thomas Birch Freeman, son of a London-based West Indian father and an English mother. Hastings, Adrian. People all around the world are searching for hope, but many dont have someone to tell them about the hope found in Jesus. A special memorial Mass was celebrated at the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Accra, Ghana, on Oct. 9. No plagiarism, guaranteed! They even considered traditional drumming and African clothing as practices that were not worthy in the sight of the Lord. 1 (1971): 103-115. WhatsApp : +233204700052 In spite of all this, with the advent of the First World War in 1914 in the Kwaku District there were 21 congregations with a total of over 2500 members. The Committee for Women's Work was responsible for the education of native girls. Christian Religious Studies This was because all the ships that came to the coast at that time were owned by trading firms and companies whose interest were basically on trade. Hope Waddell started pioneering work, in 1846, in Calabar. In an ironic twist, the more Africans became versed in the Bible, the more they began to challenge missionaries. It would be wrong, however, to blame all these ills on the Christian missionaries alone. Finally, education affects many other aspects of peoples lives, including economic opportunities and political attitudes. Yet, the relationship between European missionaries and African populations had some contradictions. Church history, history of Christianity, religious history: some reflections on British missionary enterprise since the late eighteenth century. Church History 71, no. Do you have a 2:1 degree or higher? Andrew Jackson Foster (1925-1987) was an American pioneer of deaf education in several countries in Africa. Economics The effort of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. However, by the turn of the Nineteenth Century there was systematic efforts by churches of Christian Europe, namely: Anglicans, Methodists, and Baptists who were active in Sierra Leone and, with Presbyterians, in Nigeria, while Methodists also set up missions in Ghana, Gambia, and Dahomey. Thus missionaries, by imparting education that promoted dependence on colonial rule, arguably contributed to the political instability that continues in the present day in many former African colonies, such as Kenya and Eritrea. After an unsuccessful beginning by the society of African Missions (SMA), this missionary body moved into other territories in what is now Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria. *You can also browse our support articles here >. The governor had observed the bad moral life of the Europeans in the fort. In 1858 ten years after the founding of the first college, the Presbyterians opened a sister college at Aburi for the training of women teachers. Thomas Thompson, arrived in Cape Coast in 1752. It was also terribly hard for a woman to be driven away, and to lose her status in the society where she is respected as a wife and a mother. In December 1868 he went with his wife and child to Anum in the present-day Volta Region of Ghana. Although it can be said that Christian missionaries benefitted Africans by bringing in the more advanced Western education to the European colonies in Africa, it is believed that the mission schools in fact had a negative impact on the native peoples. Europe in those days looked upon Africa as the Dark Continent with very primitive civilizations, and most Europeans refused to adapt their religion to suit the local situation. The contribution of the missionaries to the development of Setswana as These attempts were traumatic for the students and threatened the survival of unique cultures. I have used my expertise to design and implement strategies for major projects including new programme development, global proposals, book launches, international talks, lectures, and executive . These new movements considered such ventures to be their contribution to Europes reparation for centuries of exploitation of Africans, reparation for the centuries of exploitation which the Trans Atlantic slave trade had caused to African society. Their converts, for many years, were confined to the people of southern Nigerian extraction resident in the north, and to the-large non-Muslim population of the north. Some observers have argued that the Europeans used the Christian bible to justify the practice of slavery and the slave trade. As a member of the Church of England, it interests me to see echoes of Christian educational efforts by organizations such as Compassion Canada in the educational efforts of the missionary branch of the Anglican Church, the Church Missionary Society, or CMS. 6: Christian Missionary Activities in West Africa I well remember when he came to live with me in Trenton. For example, they preached against human sacrifice. In the same year as the Basel missionaries settled in Akuapem 1835 the Wesleyan (later Methodist) Church was established at Cape Coast by the Rev. Missionary, educator contributed to building independent Ghana. Apart from the extreme south and the Horn, the interior was hardly touched by Europeans before the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. This Western education imparted to the Ameru by the Church of Scotland Missionaries, Consolata . Another contribution of missionaries to the development of Ghana was their pioneering role in writing many local languages. In the case of Ghana, like other nations, the impact . Father Burke became director of the Divine Word Language and Cultural Centre in Ghana. Mission Statement The quest for an all-inclusive development model of Ghana and other developing nations, therefore, calls for an insight into the role and responsibilities of religion toward education. About the same time, the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) headed by the Rev. Moreover, speaking through interpreters is a defective means of communicating ones thoughts to ones audience. In the Western Region, the Catholic Sisters running a hospital at Eikwe specialized in maternity cases, and like Slessor in Nigeria succeeded in stamping out the practice of killing twins at birth. In the days of Portuguese contacts with Nigeria, Catholic priests had established missionary stations in Benin and the neighbourhood. English for life If a government fails to regulate schools at all, they have no right to complain that the education in their colony is poor. In this respect the Christian religion therefore differed from the traditional religions of West Africa, which along with an acceptance of one Supreme Being worshipped a hierarchy of gods. 1. "Big things have small beginnings"; so is The Presbyterian Church of Ghana. Andreas Riis, assisted by a team of West Indian evangelists, laid the foundations of the Basel Missionary Church in the country. They relied very much on their home churches for their funds. Because of rivalry, instead of building one common, multi-denominational school in a village that really only needed the one school, missionaries each built a school for their particular denomination and competed for students (Berman 1974:533). The study traces the his tory of colonial education and the tremendous contributions of missionaries in the establishment of formal education in the region. In fact, the Christian missionaries encouraged Ghanaians to reject African names and choose Christian names instead. 2236624), The beginning of Africanisation : the dawn of the missionary motive in Gold Coast education, Early colonial and missionary records from West Africa, West Indies material in the archives of the USPG, 1710-1950. Both the academic and vocational forms of education the missions provided served to strengthen the rule of the colonial powers, so that the native inhabitants were second-class citizens in their own land. This was the work of the great missionary, Thomas Birch Freeman, who placed two missionaries, Mr and Mrs. de Graft, in charge of the school. The academic education purposely did not train Africans for the higher level positions of colonial administrations, which were mostly reserved for Europeans (Ayandele 1966:295; Sheffield 1973:42), a practise which created dependency on the colonizers, as without them the colony did not have qualified administrators. The European missionaries believed that European culture was superior to African culture. They include Sierra Leone 1900-1933; Ghana 1903; Cape Verde 1904-1910; and St Vincent 1907-1912. The last two decades have witnessed the emergence of privately owned higher education institutions in Nigeria, including those owned by religious bodies and even by their individual members. As we help existing churches become healthy through theological education, discipleship, pastoral training, and leadership development, we desire to see church-planting efforts within the local church soon follow. This involved learning to read in the vernacular (Hadfield cited in Bone 1969:7). began work in many parts of Africa. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations in the name of Father Burke can be made for the care of elderly and infirm missionaries and sent to The Rector, Divine Word Residence, 1901 Waukegan Road, P.O. Among the early Protestant evangelical societies founded in Great Britain were the Baptist Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Wesleyan Missionary Society and what became known as the Presbyterian Missionary Society of the Church of Scotland. But that increase was greater in monogamous societies. Another reason why the Europeans came to spread the Christian religion in Ghana was to pave their own way into eternal glory. %%EOF In 1859, the first newspaper in Yoruba, called the Iwe-Irohim, was published by the missionaries. Lets now take a closer look at both the positive and negative impacts of the activities of the Christian missionaries in Ghana and the rest of Africa. However, the discovery of quinine and other curative medicines in the late 19th century made the history of the missionary work in West Africa a different thing altogether. Instruction in the Colonial School and the Wesleyan Mission schools at Cape Coast Castle was in English despite the fact that Fanti was the language of the native people. The constant tensions between traditionalists and Christian converts often erupted into all-out conflicts. 522 0 obj <>stream They preferred to hold onto polygamy, even at the cost of illiteracy. Mission education left an uneven legacy: an analysis of 26 African Christian missions also took a leading role in the campaign to end the slave trade and to suppress slavery. Success followed the efforts of the pioneer missionaries. Educational Reforms in Ghana: Past and Present - ResearchGate Their converts increased steadily in numbers until 1821 when a section broke away to form the first independent African, Christian church in West Africa, called the West Africa Methodist Church. Debate Speech: Religion Has Failed Society, A Speech Outlining the Achievements and Problems of Your School, 7 Factors Accounting for the Shortage of Capital In West Africa, The Resurrection of Jesus According to Marks Gospel. The Methodist Church Ghana came into existence as a result of the missionary activities of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, inaugurated with the arrival of Joseph Rhodes Dunwell to the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1835.Like the mother church, the Methodist Church in Ghana was established by people of Anglican background. The people received the message with indifference. adult education For that matter, they rebelled against their chiefs and elders. Let's look in-depth into these scholarships. Their records from World War One show their distance from the war and yet that it did affect their decisions. Thus, because of the motive of proselytization, unqualified teachers, and inter-denominational rivalry, missions frequently provided poor education. A short history of education in British West Africa. In addition to promoting a monogamous lifestyle in their schools, missionaries often insisted on divorces before polygamists or their children could even enrol. This single problem made the missionary work very difficult. The training college later became part of Achimota College. The evangelical societies founded in the Americas included the Baptist Missionary Board and the Nova Scotian Methodists, whose members went to work among the Maroons, who had settled mainly in Liberia. Joseph Dunwell. The Journal of Negro Education, 2019 Another valuable contribution of the Christian missionaries in West Africa was the development of literature in the local vernaculars, this included the translation of the Bible into some of the important local languages. In conclusion, the converts tended to look down upon many things in their ancestral culture.
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