In 1859, the first newspaper in Yoruba, called the Iwe-Irohim, was published by the missionaries. bible knowledge Sign in to view the collection. Similar developments were carried out by the missionaries in other Nigerian languages, Efik, Kanuri, Igbo, etc. In 1950 Albert Academy was founded in Freetown; for-a long lime it was the secondary school in the Colony serving largely children from the provinces, among them were the future heads of state, Sir Milton Margai and Dr. Siaka Stevens. B. et al. Foremost in the contribution of the early Christian missionaries to the development of Ghana is their efforts to bring Western education to Ghanaians. life skills Properly meant by Anglo-Saxon standards. The third, St Nicholas Grammar School (now Adisadel College), was founded by the Anglican Church in 1910. In 1827 it grew into Fourah Bay College. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the Moravian Mission, the Mission of Bremen, the Methodists, and Roman Catholic missionaries all established themselves on the Gold Coast (Ghana) between 1820 and 1881, opening elementary schools for boys and girls . Preventive medicine was hardly known; the result was that epidemics of different kinds were frequent. Free resources to assist you with your university studies! Copyright 2023 ABWE. The American Episcopal Evangelical (A.M.E.) Zion Church owes its foundation in Ghana to Bishop J. Bryan Small, who started work first at Keta in 1898. After earlier unsuccessful attempts by the missionaries Chretien Proten, Henrick Huckuff and Jacobus Capitein, the Anglican, Rev. Father Burke was preceded in death by his parents and his brother John. The first Europeans arrived at the West-African Coasts at the end of the fifteenth century. Their converts, for many years, were confined to the people of southern Nigerian extraction resident in the north, and to the-large non-Muslim population of the north. Johannes Zimmermann, for example, produced a Ga dictionary, Ga bible and grammar book. ]v#5%{,%Y{iKsZ|Cm7NismGmg_zxKYh?>bQ?ni8G.wx:qAm$
eb!^Kr$,.9Qq^|1. By 1914 there were barely thirty schools in that vast area. Kalu, Ogbu. It is important for several reasons. In line with this, formal education in Ghana was started by the western traders and the missionaries by the 15th century through the 18th century respectively. Among these were the Congregation of the Holy Ghost (commonly known as the Holy Ghost Father), the Society of African Missions (SMA), the Society of Missionaries of Africa, popularly known as the White Fathers because of the white Muslim-like clothing which the Fathers wore, and the society of the Divine Word (SVD, abbreviated from its Latin name). Origins, organization and effects in the development of West Africa, 3: Islam in West Africa. opened, in Freetown, the first boys secondary school in the country and another for girls in 1849, later renamed the Annie Walsh Memorial School. Of the ten largest congregations for men, the Society of the Divine Word is the fastest growing over the past 50 years. Thank you for supporting this project. To put it differently, the motive was to gain acceptance in the sight of God so that after death they would be judged kindly by the heavenly father. These contradictions are surprisingly absent from contemporary research. And yet the Asafo provided most of the services which a community needed: protection against military attacks, communal services, etc. independent learning As a predominantly Roman Catholic country, France encouraged Roman Catholic missionaries right from the start of her colonial activities in West Africa. They had to speak through few interpreters who did not have sufficient education to interpret correctly. Within a short time the missionaries spread their activities inland. In the same year as the Basel missionaries settled in Akuapem in 1835, the Wesleyan (later Methodist) Church was established at Cape Coast by the Rev. There were related organizations that sprang up in Scandinavia, Holland and the USA. These trends occasionally brought kings into conflict with the missionaries and their converts. Efforts to change these norms were often aimed at women. It is simply one of the gross evils of heathen society which, like habitual murder or slavery, must at all costs be ended. The positive contribution of Christian missionaries in Ghana can be felt in such areas as education, local language development, stoppage of outmoded cultural practices, agriculture and commerce. The next major Christian missionaries to go out to Sierra Leone were the Roman Catholics. CUP Archive, 1979. He had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Volunteers and donors to organizations such as Compassion Canada believe that they are being humanitarian when they build schools in Africa, volunteer as teachers or help in other ways to improve the quality of education in African nations, yet missionaries and colonial governments were similarly lauded as performing a great work of humanity (Beck 1966:117) and likewise believed that they were helping their African pupils. Vol. It was not until 1909 that the government opened a teacher training college and a technical school in Accra. quiz Earlier in 1846, the Rev. Although Lokoja had a small C.M.S. By focusing on the African demand for education, I showed that Africans were not just passive recipients of mission schooling. In 1880, two Roman Catholic priests of the Society of African Missions (S.M.A. 1991. Chapter by Chapter Summaries of Second Class Citizen, 22 Reading Comprehension Past Questions and Answers, Second Class Citizen Summarized: Plot Summary, Themes & Characters, 50+ List of Characters in Second Class Citizen, Top 7 Reasons for the Colonization of Africa, 90+ Likely Grammatical Name (Past) Questions and Answers, Black Woman Analyzed: Subject Matter, Themes and Poetic Devices, Analysis of Bat: Meaning, Themes and Poetic Devices, 20+ Sample WASSCE English Summary Questions and Answers, Chapter 2 Summary of Second Class Citizen, Bookshop: High School Textbooks for Sale (PDF), English Language Audio Lessons Free (mp3), Download Key WASSCE PDFs, E-Books and More, July 2002 WAEC Economics Questions and Answers, 2001 WAEC Economics Questions and Answers (Nov-Dec), WASSCE 2000 Economics Questions and Answers, WASSCE 2002 Economics Past Questions and Answers, Is It You and Me or You and I? This conditioning was focused on norms that missionaries deemed incompatible with a Christian way of life. Christianity in northern Nigeria. A new era began with the settlements of Black Christians from Nova Scotia in Sierra Leone in 1787 and the missionary advance inland from Cape Town beginning with the arrival there of J. T. van der Kemp in 1799. famous poems The weakening of traditional societies was not simply a consequence of the efforts of missionaries but one of their main objectives, stemming from their belief in the civilizing mission. Supporters of the civilizing mission believed that European colonial enterprises were justified as the Europeans were imparting their superior Western culture and ideas to the ignorant heathens of Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australasia. Education (2002), the latest committee to work on education reforms in Ghana, recommended a critical review and approach to making teacher education relevant to the devel-opment of the country. 4; img 109. mock tests In conclusion, the educational enterprise of the Christian missionaries in the British and Italian colonies of Africa during the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries was primarily negative for the African pupils. government questions Included on the website is information about the charitys programs, such as their Leadership Development Program in which participants earn a degree in their chosen field of study, and participate in Christian leadership training, enabling them to become a fully developed agent of change in their nation (Compassion Canada 2011). They preferred to hold onto polygamy, even at the cost of illiteracy. In Ghana, for instance, they persuaded their converts to reject polygamy and human sacrifice. These pioneer mission schools met with a discouraging response. I found that while educational outcomes are generally better in places that were exposed to Christian missions in the colonial era, traditionally polygamous societies benefited less. CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY TO WEST AFRICA. His request to the Danish Crown for missionaries was forwarded to . For instance, in Nigeria, one of the first groups of missionaries to introduce organised medical services were the Roman Catholics. Hastings, Adrian. S.J. I also matched up locations that differed in proximity to the mission stations, but otherwise had similar preconditions for educational development. Third, rivalry between the various Christian denominations also contributed to the poor standards of education. For instance, in southern Nigeria, the CMS policy was to teach in the vernacular at the primary level, while the Roman Catholic Missions policy was to teach in English (Bassey 1991:42). The three models of Secondary education in Ghana since colonial times are the Mfantsipim School founded by the Church (mission) in 1876, Achimota School in 1927 established by the British Colonial government Seeing as missions in the British and Italian colonies had monopolies on education for the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, this reluctance meant that there were few secondary schools at all (Ayandele 1966:287; Beck 1966: 120). Upon completing his degree, Father Burke received his first assignment abroad: Ghana, the first Black sub-Saharan country in Africa to gain independence from a colonial power. This special relationship continued until 1960 when Fourah Bay became a college of the newly reconstituted University of Sierra Leone; the other constituent college located at Njala developed from a training college founded in 1920. Thus as early as 1823, the Roman Catholic Sisters started a clinic for the sick and for children in Banjul. hb```,,g@( B(Pi
xD
r[e}v'$ImK
*e()dP#jjTNl=VtN(%!30p0040tt0B GGc2m2@M``a$]x2\YkvIaB1b`h6f`
(eAKPU d
He also blogs at BloggingtotheMax.com. The traditions and values of the community, as well as the meaning of life, were taught to the child. Shaw, Mark. Soon after, in 1835 they moved up to Akropon on the hills in Akuapem, where the pioneer missionary the Rev. Therefore, considering that the impact of mission education continues to have serious repercussions today, one must question whether the First World should continue to interfere in African education. non-slave trade), Christianity, Civilization and Colonization. The agricultural schools the missions ran would have been even more advantageous to the colonial governments considering the discouragement of local industries that might have competed with the motherland. Other difficulties the early Christians faced were the problems of the many languages and dialects and their ignorance of the true meaning of the various cultures, beliefs, values and ways of life of the people whom they set out to convert to Christianity. crs questions and anwers The CMS began to work in the freed slave villages in Sierra Leone in 1804 and the Methodist in 1811. Above, we have described the role that trading companies, missionaries, and the government played for the spread of Western education in the coastal areas from the late sixteenth century onwards. Two important private schools with strong Christian influence must also be mentioned: Accra High School, founded in 1923 and Accra Academy, established in What would have happened if missionaries had not insisted on monogamy? others adopted a system of education varied from one and the other hence, lacking consistency in the educational sector [3]. He introduced the Methodist Church in Asante in 1839, and won the support of the Asante king. This post may contain affiliate links. Renewed evangelisation started when the Basel (later known as Presbyterian) missionaries started work at Osu (Accra). The Ghana Education Decentralization Project (GEDP), launched in 2010 and ended in 2012, has increased the influence of local authorities over management . Their economic activities went beyond the development of agriculture. Our academic experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have. The Presbyterians, also, opened hospitals in several parts of the country, including the one at Agogo in Asante-Akyem. As Sir Henry Johnston, a key figure in the Scramble for Africa says, they [the mission stations] strengthen our hold over the country, they spread the use of the English language, they induct natives into the best kind of civilization, and in fact, each mission station is an essay in colonization (Johnston cited in Sheffield 1973:10). The consequences of norm conflicts are likely to manifest beyond educational pursuit. As they could not recruit British missionary volunteers initially, the Church Missionary Society sponsored the services of German missionaries, who were Lutherans, to come out to Sierra Leone. The Basel missionaries arrived on the shores of the Gold Coast in 1828 and