Excellent article about indigenous schools in Uganda
Reference: Hanson, Holly Elizabeth. (2010). Indigenous adaptation: Uganda’s village schools, ca. 1880-1937. Comparative Education Review Vol 54 (2) 155-174.
Holly Hanson (2010) wrote an excellent article about the development of Ugandan indigenous schools and their widespread efficacy from 1880-1937. Ugandans who came into contact with both Muslims and Christians became enamored of learning to read and write and adapted literacy immediately into the culture. The article is a fascinating description of how from royalty to local people, Ugandan culture is a teaching culture. Once a person learns anything, it is automatic to teach it to someone else.
Prior to colonial contact, Ugandan society was egalitarian with equal numbers of women and men chiefs and decision makers across the tribe. As soon as the capacity to read and write became known to Ugandans, they immediately started schools wherein equal numbers of boys and girls were introduced to the joys of reading and writing. Almost 3,000 schools were spread across the country and taught by local teachers who were subsidized by the communities with food and lodging so they could dedicate their time and energy to teaching. Both adults and children learned to read and write so that there would not be a power imbalance if children became more educated than their parents. Then, fearing what might happen if Ugandans continued this path of self-realization and widespread literacy, the British colonists imposed a tax on the schools which teachers could not pay, reduced the number of schools to just over 200 in an effort to “improve their quality” and concentrated on teaching boys over girls. Within a couple of generations, an elite Ugandan social class emerged that was only interested in self-promotion, women and girls went to the bottom of the social scale, and social inequity based on acquisition of British education and material wealth spread through the country.
This article shows how natural it is for people to learn from each other’s cultures and to begin adaptation that is culturally appropriate. It also shows how easy it is to destroy a people by using education as a source of division instead of a tool for the common weal. How wonderful it could have been had the missionaries and colonialists learned the progressive social thinking of Ugandans while Ugandans learned to read and write. What a blossoming of both cultures could have occurred had inequity and greed not sullied the relationship across cultures. I hope many Africans read this article and take pride in their traditional cultures, and I hope many North Americans and Europeans read it too so that this image of Africa as undeveloped and backward can be put into context. Damage always happens when one group deems itself superior to the rest. What a fabulous world we would have if attitudes of superiority and privilege would be replaced with mutual respect and appreciation.
