Go to AfricaBib home

Go to AfricaBib home Africana Periodical Literature 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:African History and Imperial Culture in Colonial Nigerian Schools
Author:Zachernuk, Philip S.ISNI
Year:1998
Periodical:Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
Volume:68
Issue:4
Pages:484-505
Language:English
Geographic terms:Nigeria
Great Britain
Subjects:colonialism
educational policy
history education
Education and Oral Traditions
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/1161163
Abstract:Evaluations of colonial education policy tend to treat it as a tool for applying imperial ideology, which - among other things - denied Africans their past. This study of the debate about history education in southern Nigeria in the 1930s suggests the need to re-evaluate this assessment. It argues that colonial educators in Nigeria did not simply deny African history and dominate African minds. Rather, African history was simultaneously denied, delimited and, at least partially, described. A few colonial educators went much further, to actively promote pride in African history. Ideas about history education also generated conditions in which colonial subjects - in particular those connected with the colonial education system - could write histories which reached beyond, around and underneath the imperatives the imperialists intended to impart. These writers used colonial educational media, constrained but not silenced by their colonial situation. The study argues that recognizing the ambivalence of this aspect of imperial culture opens new and more fruitful approaches to colonial intellectual history in general. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French.
Views
Cover