EDUCATION OF NATIVES

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26093, 21 April 1950, Page 3

EDUCATION OF NATIVES

MISSIONARY WORK i IN TANGANYIKA I • ADDRESS BY VERY REV. M. L. WIGGINS The work done by missionaries in educating the native population of Tanganyika was described by the Very Rev. M. L. Wiggins, Provost of Doaoma Cathedral in Tanganyika, in an address to a Church of England mens luncheon at the St. John’s i ? all yesterday. Mr Wiggins ! left Christchurch four and a half j years ago to take up missionary work il n v* nca and is at present on fur- . before leaving New Zealand, ! Mr Wiggins was vicar of Oxford. I A small but key- group of Africans ■ ’ was learning the English language m tne secondary schools run by the missionaries in Tanganyika, said Mr Wiggins, who is headmaster of the Alliance secondary school at Dodoma, which is run by a group of missionaries. The work was important because the vast mass of the people could not speak English and these students, numbering fewer than 2000, acted as interpreters of all the news that came to them in English papers and magazines. Care had .to be shown in the way the natives were told of eyents in the territory, as news wSs easily distorted. For instance, when the groundnuts scheme was inaugurated in Tanganyika, rumours had spread about the number of people who had lost their homes, whereas the scheme had been specifically allocated to unoccupied land. The Government had recently put out a new wages scale for the natives, which increased the wages about 200 per cent., Mr Wiggins said. The natives were encouraged to take 'secondary school education as the wages were scaled according to the standard of education reached. Consequently families would club together to- send boys to the secondary school and would put the pressure on afterwards when they were earning wages. Many were concerned purely with the materialistic aspect of education—they knew that good education meant good pay, and worked well for this purpose A partnership between the Europeans and the Africans was necessary in Tanganyika, Mr Wiggins said. If the Europeans walked out the Indians would take over, and their administration would not be impartial. K