The Problem of Mass Education in Africa

Abstract

Opening ParagraphThe Report of the De La Warr Commission on Education in East Africa, the recent Colonial Office pamphlet on Education and Village Communities, and repeated statements and proposals by Directors of Education in British African dependencies are again drawing attention to the pressing need for new advances in the development of educational facilities in Africa. From these studies, proposals and reports it becomes clear that there are three main directions along which the need for advance seems urgent, namely: the development of higher education of a University standing (and the establishment of centres for research at the projected University schools), the increasing of facilities for secondary education which shall, inter alia, open for a greater number of Africans the doors to University studies, and, lastly, an increase in the numbers of some kind of rudimentary schools for the peoples as a whole, which will help to spread the basic tools of modern living—reading, writing, and arithmetic. It is this last line of development which is the subject of the present article.