1 |
![](http://digital.soas.ac.uk/content/AA/00/00/17/27/00001/00005thm.jpg) |
“...Executive Council. The country wishes the popularly
elected Assembly and the Executive Council well. Whatever
the future may hold for the actors in this experiment, the past .
indicates that the capacity which has brought the country to
the present stage in its development derived mainly from school
education, and that education has been provided very largely by
Missions.
Responsibility for three of the most important Ministries
bas fallen on products of Mission schools: Kwame Nkrumah,
Leader of Government Business, attended the Roman Catholic
Mission School at Half-Assini and later taught in its College
at Amissano; Kodjo Botsio, Minister of Education and Social
Welfare, attended the Anglican Adisadel College; and Archie-
Casely Hayford, Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources,
the Methodist School, Mfantsipim. Of the members of the
Assembly who have already given indications of ability to make
an effective contribution, Dr. K. A. Busia, Old Boy of
-Mfantsipim, may be mentioned. Behind all...”
|
|
2 |
![](http://digital.soas.ac.uk/content/AA/00/00/17/27/00001/00006thm.jpg) |
“...4
Tather than to design. Its strength, particularly in the Western
Districts of the country (the field under consideration in this
monograph) lies in the challenge of the responsibility which each
church had to accept for the school which grew up within its
orbit. Almost without any previous experience the struggling
Church became responsible for the support and management of
the school. In this way Mission education added to the
capacity for responsibility which indigenous education fostered.
The idea of Africanisation is not as new as it appears.
High missionary mortality alone would have given rise to it
even if there were not the persistent thought that the harvest
truly was plenteous but the Jabourers were few. The beginnings
‘of the idea in action date from the work of Rev. Thomas
Thompson, missionary of the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel.
Education before Thompson’s Arrival X
Prior to his arrival some simple instructicn in Reading nd
the Catechism had...”
|
|
3 |
![](http://digital.soas.ac.uk/content/AA/00/00/17/27/00001/00008thm.jpg) |
“...6
been founded in Copenhagen in 1714, and been made the res-
ponsibility of the state. But for all that the Danish Mission to
the East Indies was not only initiated by two non-Danish
missionaries from Germany, Ziegenbalg and Plutschau, but its
spiritual direction continued to come from Halle in Germany.
No more zest for the extension of work beyond the settlement
was noticeable in Danish Christiansborg in the Gold Coast.
Long after 1750 a resident Danish Chaplain, H. C. Monrad,
recorded his support of the tradition he had inherited in no
uncertain terms. He said that it was not right to regard the
chaplain in the Gold Coast as missionary. He was a priest
only to the local Europeans, the Mulattoes and Negroes who
had been, to Europe and America and had been christened
there. As far as he could ascertain it had never been the object
of his stay to work for the conversion of the natives to
Christianity.
Little more than this could be expected at this time from
sons of the Church in Denmark...”
|
|
4 |
![](http://digital.soas.ac.uk/content/AA/00/00/17/27/00001/00012thm.jpg) |
“...Quaque to England to ensure that somebody
would continue the work he had started.
TWO CENTURIES LATER
A hundred years after his arrival there were 21 boys’ and 4
girls’ schools in the Western half of the Colony, with Cape Coast
as their centre. Of these the Wesleyan Methodist Mission were
responsible for 20 boys’ and 4 girls’ schools with the total
enrolment of 673 boys and 162 girls, while Government
remained responsible for a boys’ school at Cape Coast. And it
should be remembered that the Wesleyan Methodist Mission
came to the Gold Coast in response to the invitation from two
of the Old Boys of Thompson’s pupil, Philip Quaque. The
work of the Mission in the West was now reinforced by the
work of the Basel Mission in the East.
Another hundred years later education by Missions (now
including Roman Catholics, the African Methodist Episcopal...”
|
|
5 |
![](http://digital.soas.ac.uk/content/AA/00/00/17/27/00001/00013thm.jpg) |
“...II
Church, Salvation Army, as well as Anglo-Catholics, Methodists
and Presbyterians) were providing 78 per cent of the education
of the country, about 22 per cent being the responsibility of
Government, Native Administration and other non-mission
authorities.
There is something even more important than the number of
schools and pupils. By providing generations of men and women
with the ability to read, write and speak-a world language, educa-
tion by Missions has widened the horizon of the people of the
Gold Coast (more quickly than it would otherwise have been
possible) to embrace in varying degrees certain assumptions
which have grown out of the world’s experiment in living. These
assumptions about the world and life are gaining wide acceptance
not because they are carefully thought out but because the general
drift of social development make people ready to accept them.
They sometimes contradict one another; and action based on
them could be quite bewildering for a young nation like...”
|
|
6 |
![](http://digital.soas.ac.uk/content/AA/00/00/17/27/00001/00014thm.jpg) |
“...as a
necessary part of the machinery of government and the idea of
self-help in a cash economy are two contributions of Missions,
which a ‘ paternal’ civil Government could not make.
CONCLUSION
* A great tree has indeed sprung from the small grain of
seed” which Thompson sowed. ©
One important branch of the tree is the new Legislative
Assembly. Behind it is the tradition of Mission education
which a long line of workers have endeavoured to give since
the days of Thomas Thompson.
Another important branch is the Church in the Gold
Coast which has rapidly replaced the Missions of the past.
The Methodist Mission has given place to the Methodist
Church under its own elected Chairman. The Basel and Pres-
byterian Missions to the Presbyterian Church under its own
Moderator. The Gold Coast Vicariate to the Archdiocese of
the Gold Coast under its own Archbishop, while the English
Missionary Diocese of the Gold Coast has become part of the
New Province of West Africa also under its own Archbishop...”
|
|