To Bind Ties Between the School and Tribal Life: Educational Policy for Africans Under George Stark in Zimbabwe

Abstract

By its very nature, colonialism survives by denying the colonized a viable opportunity for development. In this context, the twenty years from 1934 to 1954 during which George Stark served as the Director of Native Education in Zimbabwe represented a high watermark in a strategy which the colonial government of that nation designed through its Education Ordinance of 1899. Like all colonial governments, the Zimbabwean regime of Stark's era was reluctant to formulate policies that would promote the genuine development of the colonized Africans. Through Stark, an educational policy for Africans was formulated and implemented to serve the political purposes of the colonial government, not to promote the development of the Africans. The Victorian beliefs that the Africans would advance themselves better by engaging in a program of practical training rather than by any other form of education and that practical training was consistent with the Africans' cultural practices merely camouflaged the fact that the ultimate purpose of colonial educational policies was to train the colonized as laborers. As a high-ranking colonial official, Stark shared this belief to the extent that it became the basis