NATIVES OF TANGANYIKA

Dunstan Times, 13 May 1935, Page 6

NATIVES OF TANGANYIKA

Dr Vincent Lucas, Bishop of Masasi, Tanganyika, who recently visited England, is greatly interested in educational developments in the territory. He has worked in Africa for 26 years. He loves and admires the Africans, and looks forward hopefully to their future. He likes to quote the opinion of a former Governor of the Territory, Sir Donald Cameron, who knows the West Coast well, that the people of East Africa are potentially far finer than those of the West, though the latter have had contact with Western civilisation for two or three hundred years, and the present level of education is much higher in West than in East Africa. When the Government in Tanganyika began nine or ten years ago to take a real interest in native education it favoured schools that provided a four-year course of English education in English, and also trained pupils aa masons, carpenters, or for other handicrafts. Only schools that turned out clerical workers and craftsmen received grants in aid. Dr Lucas told a ‘ Manchester Guardian ’ representative that for a long time he had felt this education was on the wrong lines; it was training the boys for export. He lives in the province of Lindi, the south-east part of Tanganyika, and he said that, while there was plenty of scope for the ordinary African worker, the chance of these trained craftsmen finding employment in districts such as Lindi was negligible, and therefore the temptation to seek highly-paid employment further afield was great. He pointed out to the Government that when the chiefs could say “ Education is a dreadful thing; it takes away our young men, and we never see them again ” there was a grave danger to education. Things, however, are changing. The Director of Education in Dar-es-Salaam has come to the conclusion that it would be better to give grants in aid for the teaching of Swahili. The bishop takes the view of modern anthropologists, that it is difficult, if not impossible, to interfere with any part of the elaborate structure of an old society without causing damage to the whole structure, and that the educators of a native race must therefore respect ancient customs and make use of all that is valuable in them, while taking out everything that was opposed to Christian morals and putting something good in its place. It is on this theory that he proceeds. “ The unspoiled Africans have beautiful manners,” Dr Lucas said, “ and they think we have no manners at all. The young people are taught good manners, and how they should act in various circumstances.” • Professor Julian Huxley, when he visited Tanganyika some time ago, advised Dr Lucas that all education should have a biological basis. The bishop had this in mind when he bought two fine Rhode Island cockerels and presented one to a boys’ boarding school and the other to a girls’. The children are taking an enormous interest in the poultry families, but the bishop says his main object was to improve the miserable breed of native poultry on which the African mainly depends for Ins meat diet.