Go to AfricaBib home

Go to AfricaBib home Education in Africa Go to database home

bibliographic database
Line
Previous page New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Africanization or modernization? Historical origins of modern academical education in African initiative
Author:Adick, C.ISNI
Year:1989
Periodical:Liberia-Forum
Volume:5
Issue:8
Pages:50-62
Language:English
Geographic term:West Africa
Subjects:educational philosophy
higher education
Abstract:The two educational options, modernization or Africanization of schooling, are not the result of decolonization processes that have taken place in the past few years. On the contrary, they have a tradition of well over one hundred years within the African discussion on education. From among the early representatives of the African contribution to the discussion on the implementation and development of formal education in schools of the so-called 'European' model, the author has chosen Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) and James Africanus Beale Horton (1835-1883) for her study, especially because their thinking represents up to now the antagonistic option, Africanization or modernization, in a most distinct way. The article deals with their ideas on higher education in the context of West Africa, especially Liberia, Sierra Leone, the former Gold Coast and Lagos. An examination of Horton's suggestion concerning a modernization-orientated West African educational policy, and Blyden's African culturalist educational philosophy, is followed by a comparison of their conceptions. Horton saw Western-style education as a prerequisite for the economic development of Africa (in the sense of an association with the modern world system); Blyden viewed education according to the Western model as discriminatory and unsuited to the black race, whose cultural and spiritual identity he wished to rehabilitate through a distinctly African education. Bibliogr., notes.
Views