Liberia: Description, History, ProblemsStarr, Frederick
History
Liberia: Description, History, Problems
Starr, Frederick
Liberia
who died in 1822), the John Payne Scholarship, the Simon Greenleaf
Scholarship, and the George Briggs Scholarship. To what degree these
scholarships are still productive we do not know. The institution had
run down and was threatened with extinction when, in 1898, under the
national administration of President W. E. Coleman, it received a new
impulse, and in the year 1900 was re-organized. It is unfortunate that
the exact status of Liberia College is not more definite; it is neither
fish, flesh nor fowl; it is at once a private institution with a
directorate and management located across the seas, and a part of a
system of public education, receiving aid from national funds.
Such is the condition of education in the Republic. It leaves much to be
desired. Those who lead public thought are by no means ignorant of its
weak features; the national poverty, however, makes it difficult to
develop better things. If the nation is to advance, its education must
be greatly improved. This improvement must begin at the very foundation
with the primary public schools. These need reform in the matter of
buildings, equipment, and teachers’ salaries; if good teachers are to be
secured, and kept steadily at work to earn their salaries, they must be
promptly paid--prompt payment of any employees is a difficult matter in
Liberia. There should be a large increase in the number of public
schools; there are perhaps as many as are necessary within the civilized
settlements, but the native towns are almost without school
opportunities, except as these are offered by the missions. There is
crying need of the establishment of public schools in native towns. Such
should, however, be established only in towns where genuine promises of
self-support are given. There are, no doubt, many towns where, if the
matter were properly presented, the chiefs would readily build a
school-building, order the children to attend school, and support a
teacher. Such a teacher should be well acquainted with the native
tongue, and the bulk of the instruction should be given in it; to teach
elementary branches in a foreign language is poor policy; true, it has
been attempted--as on a wide scale in the Philippines, but mental and
moral imbecility are likely to be developed by such procedure; English
should be taught, but it should be taught as a subject in itself, and
the English language should not be used as the medium for conveying
_elementary_ instruction in fundamental branches; after English has once
been learned, it is of course desirable to encourage the reading of
English books and the acquisition of general knowledge through such
reading. It will probably be suggested that it will be impossible to
find teachers acquainted with the native tongues and competent to teach
the various branches of primary education; such a difficulty ought not
to exist after nearly eighty years of mission schools which have by
preference sought to teach and raise the native population. It will be
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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