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African history and imperial culture in colonial Nigerian schools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

P. S. Zachernuk
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Extract

Evaluations of colonial education policy tend to treat it as a tool for applying imperial ideology, which—among other things—denied the 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. While some imperial pronouncements did deny African history, colonial administration also required historical knowledge. Further, many colonial educators thought it proper to provide African students with a sense of their past appropriate to colonial subjects. A few went much further, to actively promote pride in African history. In this ambivalent context African schoolteachers and graduates got on with the task of describing their past, often using colonial educational media, constrained but not silenced by their colonial situation. Recognising the fertile ambivalence of this aspect of imperial culture opens new and more fruitful approaches to colonial intellectual history in general.

Résumé

Les évaluations réalisées à propos de la politique d'éducation coloniale tendent à la considérer comme un outil d'application de l'idéologie imperiale qui a, entre autres choses, privé les Africains de leur passé. Cette étude du débat sur l'enseignement de l'histoire dans le sud du Nigeria dans les années 30 suggère la nécessité de revoir cette évaluation. Même s'il est vrai que certaines déclarations impériales ont nié l'histoire africaine, il faut aussi souligner que l'administraton coloniale a eu besoin de connaissances historiques. De plus, de nombreux éducateurs coloniaux jugèrent bon de donner aux étudiants africains des notions de leur passé appropriées aux thèmes coloniaux. Certains d'entre eux allèrent beaucoup plus loin pour promouvoir activement le sentiment de fierté a l'égard de l'histoire africaine. Dans ce contexte ambivalent, les enseignants et les diplômés africains se sont appliqués à décrire leur passé, souvent à l'aide de moyens pédagogiques coloniaux, contraints mais non réduits au silence par leur situation coloniale. La reconnaissance de l'ambivalence fertile de cet aspect de la culture impériale ouvre la voie à de nouvelles approches plus fécondes à l'égard de l'histoire intellectuelle coloniale dans son ensemble.

Type
Writing music, teaching history
Information
Africa , Volume 68 , Issue 4 , October 1998 , pp. 484 - 505
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1998

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