CHAPTER XIV
A SCHEME OF NATIONAL EDUCATION
The predominant characteristic of our educational methods—official and unofficial—in Western Africa hitherto may be summed up in one word—denationalization. The result is so notoriously unsatisfactory as to need no specific illustration. If readers of Mr. Valentine Chirol’s book on India will turn to his chapters on the failure of our educational methods there, and substitute West Africa for India, they will be furnished with a replica of the situation on the West Coast of Africa. It is not an exact replica—for the reason that while the ties of caste in India are a deterrent to denationalization, such deterrent is non-existent in West Africa. But there is not one charge which Mr. Chirol brings against the Indian system that could not be equally brought against the West African system, and identical consequences are ensuing. We are barely beginning to realize that the policy, or rather impolicy, of the last half-century has been a hideous example of misdirected effort, and there is hardly an administrator who does not contemplate the development of the “educated native problem” with the gravest foreboding.
The object of the Northern Nigeria Administration is to set on foot an educational system throughout the country which shall save the Protectorate from these follies, while at the same time affording the rising generation the intellectual pabulum we are bound to provide, and ultimately laying the basis for a native civil service. At the present moment the scheme is only in its infancy, but the infant is robust and full of promise. It is at Nassarawa, a beautifully situated and healthy spot a few miles outside Kano, close by the Emir’s country residence, that the first Government schools have been started. They consist at present of the Mallamai school, or school for teachers, a school for the sons of Chiefs, an elementary vernacular school and a technical school with carpenters’, blacksmiths’, leather-workers’, and agricultural classes. The creation of a primary and secondary school will follow as soon as the work is sufficiently advanced. Special importance attaches to the elementary schools, as through them the mass of the population will be influenced. As soon as the teachers now being trained are ready they will be supplied to the Provinces, where the Residents are eagerly awaiting them, and it is the intention in every case that they shall be accompanied by a technical instructor. The training of Government clerks and of artisans for the Public Works Department is recognized as a necessity, but it takes quite a secondary place in the general educational plan which has been so successfully initiated, and these men will be trained so as to retain both their national instincts and their national dress.
A ride out to Nassarawa and some hours spent in investigating the work already accomplished (there are some 350 pupils) I shall always remember as one of the most pleasurable experiences of my visit to Northern Nigeria. Here at last, one saw, was a common-sense, well-thought-out, scientific scheme to enlarge the mental outlook of the West African on African lines, to preserve his racial constitution, to keep him in touch with his parents, in sympathy with his national life. Here, one felt, was the nucleus of a future Hausa university to be raised some day by the people themselves on their own initiative, a university which should far outshine the ancient glories of Timbuktu and Jenne, which should herald the dawn of a real African renascence, which instead of divorcing the people from their land should bind them to it in intensified bonds of pride and love. For one thing, the preservation of the national tongue is aimed at, the general teaching being given in the vernacular, for the present in Hausa—the lingua franca of the country—although in course of time, as the system extends, classes in Fulfulde (Fulani), Kanuri (the language of Bornu), and, perhaps, Nupe, will doubtless suggest themselves; not, however, to the exclusion of Hausa, but in combination with it. For another thing, the fatal mistake of taking in pupils free, or even paying them to come, is not being repeated here; the principle of every pupil paying a fee, paying for his books and paying for his medical attendance having been laid down from the start.
The Mallamai school was full of special interest, being composed of grown men from eighteen to thirty; for these are the teachers of to-morrow. I was told, and I can well believe it from their intellectual faces, that the rapidity with which they acquire and the ease with which they retain knowledge, is amazing. Land surveying and farm measuring is included in their curriculum, and some of them, although their course of instruction is not completed, have already rendered very considerable assistance, their work (which I was able to examine at a later date), calculated in acres and roods and covering many assessment sheets, being neat and generally accurate. I attended the geography lesson which was then going forward, and found these future teachers studying, not the configuration of the Alps or the names of the English counties, but the map of Africa, the rivers, mountain ranges and political divisions of their own continent: not the distances between Berlin and St. Petersburg, Rome and Paris, but between Kano and Lokoja, Zaria and Yola, and the routes to follow to reach those places from a given spot. The various classes, I observed, were not puzzling over, to them, incomprehensible stories about St. Bernard dogs rescuing snow-bound travellers, or busy bees improving shining hours, but becoming acquainted with the proverbs and folk-lore of their own land; not being edified with the properties of the mangel-wurzel or the potentialities of the strawberry, but instructed in the culture requirements of yams, sweet potatoes, and sugar-cane. I did not see rows of lads in European costume, unsuited to the climate, hideous (out here) and vehicles for the propagation of tuberculosis, but decently clothed in their own graceful, healthy African garb.
The school for the sons of chiefs—which, I venture to hope, will not, as rumoured, be abandoned without very careful consideration—struck me as a triumphant proof of what a sympathetic Administration can accomplish in a very short time out here by way of winning confidence and removing suspicions. Here were perhaps threescore youngsters, the older and more advanced boys forming a separate class, and a more intelligent, keener crowd it would be difficult to select in any country. Their presence—among them were sons of the Emirs of Sokoto, Kano, Bauchi, Bornu, Katsina, Katagum, Bida, Gombe, Gando, Daura, and Muri—together, was evidence of the revolution which a few years have brought, for their respective fathers were until our advent more or less in a state of chronic friction and sometimes of open warfare. These Yan Sarikis (sons of chiefs) are not only allowed, but encouraged, to correspond with their parents, and constant are the mounted messengers passing to and fro.
In the technical school, the leather-workers were particularly interesting. The encouragement of this branch of native art should prove a great incentive to what is a national industry. There is no reason why in time the Hausa leather-workers should not only cut out the trade in Tripoli saddlery and boots, imported across the desert and sold at fabulous profits in the local markets, but supply, as the Hausa cotton manufacturer supplies, the needs of French and German territory. Indeed, there is no limit to the vistas which this national system of education opens up. A people of considerable intellect, of notable industrial aptitudes, having the sense of history, possessed of singular national vitality, guided on national lines of thought expansion, the old-time barriers of internecine strife wiped out—what a magnificent experiment, and how great the privilege of the initiators! I referred to the opportunity for true Empire-building which lies before us in Yorubaland, if we will but seize it. Here at Nassarawa is Empire-building of another kind in actual progress. One other fact needs chronicling in connection with these national schools. It is the intention of the Administration to insist that all pupils receive careful religious instruction from teachers of their own creed. When I visited the schools, lessons in reading and writing the Koran were being given by a Kano Mallam specially selected by the Emir of Kano, somewhat on the model of the Egyptian schools. It is earnestly to be hoped that the Colonial Office will resist any attempt at interference with this policy. Interference would be disastrous. It has been a prodigious labour of tact and careful steering, for which Mr. Hanns Vischer, the director of education and the founder of these schools, deserve the greatest credit, to secure the support of the Emirs for a truly national system of education. Many prejudices have had to be overcome. The older school of Mallams do not look with a favourable eye upon an innovation which must gradually displace their influence in favour of a younger generation, broader-minded and more tolerant because better educated than they. Attempts both internal and external have not been, and are not, wanting to warn the chiefs of the danger of permitting their sons to become contaminated by foreign doctrines inimical to Islam. Justification for the confidence which the chiefs repose in our good faith can alone enable us to defeat these influences. Were that confidence to be shaken, the effort to train the future rulers (under the British suzerainty) of the country with a view to making them mentally and physically better fitted to assist the Administration, and to bring them into closer contact with one another and with the Government official, would receive a fatal blow, and the prestige of the Government would be deeply shaken. Let us once more turn to the pages of Mr. Chirol’s weighty volume and note the consequences which have followed the elimination of religious instruction from the Government schools. To allow a weakening of the spiritual forces at work among the peoples of the Northern Hausa States would be to perpetuate a cruel wrong upon those who have come under our protection and from thenceforth are our wards.
IRON-SMELTERS.
