In order to ascertain the work done by Europeans, the Government and the
Missionary Societies in schools for the natives of their various African
possessions, the German Colonial Institute in 1911 sent out to the
colonies over 2,000 printed _questionnaires_, with a request to the
authorities to return answers according to the state of the schools on
June 1st in that year. From the information filled in and returned, Herr
Missions-Inspector Schlunk, of Hamburg, was able to publish a voluminous
report on the subject, and the state of affairs thus revealed is
illustrative of the best and worst features of the Teutonic colonising
system. The facts in themselves concerning the educational work
accomplished in the way of providing the natives with schools and
teachers are remarkable.
In Cameroon the first educational work among the natives was begun by
the London Baptist Mission in 1845, and in 1885, the year in which the
Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United
States of America entered the field, the London Baptists resigned their
organisation to the Missions Gesellschaft, of Basel. Two years later the
first Government School was opened in Duala, and in the following four
years the Apostolic Vicariat Kamerun, of Limburg on the Lahn, and the
German Baptists, of Steglitz, established schools in the colony. In
Cameroon, as in Togo, the Government were behind the missions in the
number of schools and scholars, having, in 1911, only eight elementary
schools, as against the nine of the American Presbyterians, thirty-eight
of the German Baptists, eighty-six of the Roman Catholic, and 275 of the
Basel Mission. Altogether there were in the colony 499 elementary
schools, with forty-two European and 611 native teachers, and 32,056
pupils; twenty-one higher schools, with thirty-three European and thirty
native teachers, and 1,802 pupils; eleven industrial schools, with
twenty-two European and five native teachers, and 259 pupils; or a total
of 531 schools, with ninety-seven European and 646 native teachers, and
34,117 pupils. Of the teachers 3·3 per cent. and of the pupils 8·1 per
cent. were females.
THE SCHOOL COURSE.
In both Togo and Cameroon, the course of the elementary schools began
with an infant class and lasted four or five years, the objects of the
schools in both colonies having been to provide Christian instruction to
natives and to train pupils for the higher schools with a view to their
entering the service of Europeans. Instruction in German began in the
first year, and in the third year pupils were required to read and write
German fluently in both characters. The curriculum for the last year
included the history of the German Empire since the Franco-German War of
1870-71, the history of the German Emperors since January 18th, 1871,
the Geography of Germany, and the singing of German patriotic songs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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