Johannes Zimmermann, for example, produced a Ga dictionary, Ga bible and grammar book. Despite their significant contributions to education, local language development, agriculture and the economy as a whole, the missionaries have been criticized severally. Establishment of Christian Churches In Sierra Leone. Contribution of the Methodist Church to education in Ghana Thank you for supporting this project. 1991. Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the 15th century, informal education existed in Ghana with the goal of introducing young people into the society. Introduction, spread and effects, 6: Christian Missionary Activities in West Africa, 7: Scramble for and Partition of West Africa, 9: Problems of Independent West African States, 10: West Africa and International Organizations, 11: Women and Authority in West African History, 12: The Environment in West African History. His immigrant Irish-born parents instilled faith and a firm work ethic in their sons. Another important Catholic missionary in this area was the Irishman, Bishop Shanahan. In the case of Ghana, like other nations, the impact . The study examines the historical foundations of Western education in Meru and factors that influenced its development. The missionary and colonial education aimed at character training and civilization resulted in cultural annihilation and religious, and linguistic hegemony. The copies of letters received, 1890-1927, mention the plan from 1914 to gain control of future Ashanti Chiefs using education. Similar developments were carried out by the missionaries in other Nigerian languages, Efik, Kanuri, Igbo, etc. %PDF-1.7 % His request to the Danish Crown for missionaries was forwarded to . Establishment of Christian Churches In The Gambia. Their economic activities went beyond the development of agriculture. WAEC The vast majority of the people of The Gambia are Moslems; but a sizeable percentage of the population, especially in and around the capital Banjul, are Christians. ), Father Auguste Moreau and Father Eugene Murat, arrived at Elmina and revived the Roman Catholic Church in Ghana. Joseph Dunwell. Prior to advent of the Christian missionaries and indeed well into the pre-independence period, most sick people depended for cure upon concoction herbs and roots and barks of trees. The latter, non-academic form of education provided by the missions has stimulated much interest among scholars, who are particularly interested in the failure of many of these schools and the hypocritical government support for the schools, seeing as the import of cheap goods from the mother countries caused many vocational school graduates, such as seamstresses, to be unemployed (Ayandele 1966:296; Foster 1965:134). When he arrived in Nkwatia-Kwahu to teach English at St. Peters Secondary School, the town had yet to benefit from electricity and running water. It is important to emphasize that the modern history of the Christian Mission in Africa started from the late Eighteenth Century, the Catholics had been there earlier in the first centuries of the Christian era especially during the first Portuguese adventures. Hundreds of believers were baptized, branches organized, and a mission established. Third, rivalry between the various Christian denominations also contributed to the poor standards of education. Reiterating what teacher education must encapsulate, Adegoke (2003) and Benneh (2006) indi-cated that the mission of Ghana's teacher education is to pro- All work is written to order. Vol. I compared data on the historical locations of mission stations since 1924, in 26 sub-Saharan countries with recent education data between 2008 and 2018. Another important missionary doctor was J. R. Stephen who for many years headed a missionary hospital at Ilesha. These missionaries saw death in the course of their evangelizing work as a means to ascend to heavenly glory. In December 1868 he went with his wife and child to Anum in the present-day Volta Region of Ghana. The missionaries also greatly improved the health services. A large percentage of Ghanas 30 million people are nominally Christian (more than 70% as of the last census), and 28% consider themselves evangelical believers. Although modern scientific research has confirmed the medicinal properties of these concoctions, traditional medical practice had several shortcomings. churches were firmly established in several important towns, such as Abeokuta (1846), Lagos (1851), Ibadan (1853), and Oyo (1856). Ghana continued to call. The European Christian missions preached the Gospel, built churches, and seminaries translated the Bible to Ghanaian Languages such as Ewe, Ga, and Twi. Among several others, the native Bishop Ajayi Crowther produced the first translation of the Bible in Yoruba. Thomas Birch Freeman, son of a London-based West Indian father and an English mother. Just look at the lyrics of this evangelizing song written in 1819 by Reginald Heber, a prolific English hymnist in the Anglican church. In addition to contributing to fluctuating educational standards across the colony, inter-denominational rivalry caused a disparity in access to education. West Africa owes to the Christian missionaries not only a new religious faith which has changed the beliefs and life of millions of people, but also the foundation of western education. Through hard work and persuasion she succeeded in stopping the practice among the people of killing twins. The Journal of Negro Education, 8 8 The Effect of Western Formal New missionary societies (the LMS, the CMS, the Holy Ghost Fathers, the White Fathers, etc.) Ghana sits on West Africas coastline along the Gulf of Guinea, bordered by the Ivory Coast and Togo to the west and east and Burkina Faso to the north. Thus missionaries, by imparting education that promoted dependence on colonial rule, arguably contributed to the political instability that continues in the present day in many former African colonies, such as Kenya and Eritrea. After more than 20 years at Pope John XXIII School, he returned to the United States and served as parochial vicar at Blessed Sacrament-Our Lady of the Divine Shepherd in Trenton, N.J., where he lived with Father Tetteh. The Basel Mission, as a result of this phenomenal expansion trained many local personnel to man the new stations. In 1858 ten years after the founding of the first college, the Presbyterians opened a sister college at Aburi for the training of women teachers. The Wesleyan and Basel missionaries established schools in Cape Coast, Accra . English Henry Townsend who went from Sierra Leone to Badagry in 1842 in his company was the Rev Ajayi Crowther. They even considered traditional drumming and African clothing as practices that were not worthy in the sight of the Lord. In 1954, he became the first Deaf African American to earn a bachelor's degree from Gallaudet University, the American university for the Deaf, and the first to earn a master's degree from Eastern Michigan University.He earned a second master's degree from Seattle Pacific Christian . S.J. Mission schools were popular because of the new skills and opportunities they offered. The Journal of Negro Education (JNE), a refereed scholarly periodical, was founded at Howard University in 1932 to fill the need for a scholarly journal that would identify and define the problems that characterized the education of Black people in the United States and elsewhere, provide a forum for analysis and solutions, and serve as a vehicle for sharing statistics and research on a national basis. They need YOU. Indeed, in some situations the converts were taught to feel that they were absolved from obeying their own traditional rulers and certain laws of the state. The high temperatures coupled with high rainfall patterns in some parts of the country experienced during the daytime, made the missionaries stay indoors, which slowed down their activities. Technical and vocational education had been emphasized in the education system in Ghana since the colonial era. Porter, Andrew. %%EOF He knew me as a boy [in Ghana] who washed his car and went with him when he said Mass at mission stations, yet [as an adult] he treated me as an equal, Father Tetteh said. Of the ten largest congregations for men, the Society of the Divine Word is the fastest growing over the past 50 years. A large body of studies show that missionaries had a lasting impact beyond their early years. adult education Grammar School for Boys in 1859, St Gregorys College opened by the Catholics in 1876, Methodist Boys High School 1878 and Methodist Girls High School 1879. This study simply offers systematic, long-term evidence of it. But despite the work of Portuguese missionaries based on the island of Sao Tome and later of Spanish missionaries in Benin, it was not until the nineteenth century that the Christian religion was firmly established in Nigeria. This single problem made the missionary work very difficult. Mr. Henry Kwadwo Amoako is a Ghanaian Social Scientist, Researcher and Acclaimed Historian for over two decades. Preventive medicine was hardly known; the result was that epidemics of different kinds were frequent. Under the Basel Missions Salem system, converts were separated from the traditional society. Copyright 2023 ABWE. The achievement of the purpose of these Christian Missions came with some costs. As happened in other colonial territories, the government did not show great interest in the provision of education in Ghana until the missionaries had extended their services throughout the country and had set up primary schools and a few secondary schools and training colleges. Mission education left an uneven legacy: an analysis of 26 African As a member of the Church of England, it interests me to see echoes of Christian educational efforts by organizations such as Compassion Canada in the educational efforts of the missionary branch of the Anglican Church, the Church Missionary Society, or CMS. J. G. Christaller produced a Twi Grammar and Dictionary. Being able to speak and write in the colonisers language was considered a privilege. Its message was that of love and the universal brotherhood of mankind. However, the early missionaries established medical centres, at first at their mission posts, and later far and wide, to attend to the sick. As happened in other West African countries, many more mission-sponsored hospitals were founded in the course of the twentieth century. The Scottish Missionary Society had been working in Calabar, Nigeria, also a British colony adjacent to the Gold Coast and it was from the Calabar Presbyterian Church in Nigeria that a missionary was sent to take charge of the Presbyterian work in the Gold Coast after the deportations. The history of education in Ghana from the earliest times to the Because of rivalry, instead of building one common, multi-denominational school in a village that really only needed the one school, missionaries each built a school for their particular denomination and competed for students (Berman 1974:533). Governments are also not free from blame even if they had a laissez-faire educational policy, as in Ghana, where until 1944 the registration of schools was not required and no attempt was made to exert detailed control even over the activities of grant-aided [by the government] institutions except for a series of minimal registrations (Foster 1965:114). Help those suffering in Turkey and Syria. Free resources to assist you with your university studies! Moreover, it was not in the colonial powers interest for the natives to become too educated, as they might become self-reliant and could conceivably demand independence from the colonial power, so encouraging the less intellectual agricultural schools was in the governments interest. This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. Website design and development by Americaneagle.com, Inc, Society of the Divine Word- Western Province, Society of the Divine Word- Southern Province. This thesis discusses and assesses contribution of Christian Missionaries to education in Meru from 1908 to 1963. The role of the Christian missionaries in Ghana and West Africa was not limited to the education and agricultural sectors alone. Another missionary whose memory is revered in Nigeria was Mary Slessor, she arrived in the country in 1876, and for many years worked assiduously as a missionary nurse. Series CLR. These pioneer mission schools met with a discouraging response. Some of these effects are still with us today. After completing that assignment, Father Burkes superiors asked him to teach English as a second language (ESL) to Divine Word missionaries who did not know the language. A notable example was the Asafo Company, a purely military and social organisation of the peoples of Ghana, which was condemned by the early missionaries because of its presumed connection with fetish practices. Education in Ghana - Wikipedia From 1835 to the middle of the nineteenth century the Church was in opposition to traditional religion. document.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. The original letters from abroad cover West Africa from 1899 to 1933. Then lets begin straightaway. Their converts, for many years, were confined to the people of southern Nigerian extraction resident in the north, and to the-large non-Muslim population of the north. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004. Again, the missionaries helped to pacify Africans while their rich natural resources were being plundered by the colonial government. The American Episcopal Evangelical (A.M.E.) Zion Church owes its foundation in Ghana to Bishop J. Bryan Small, who started work first at Keta in 1898. Email: henrydonsco@gmail.com Like the Methodists, the Roman Catholic missionaries spread the faith notably in the interior, which later became Protectorate. This conditioning was focused on norms that missionaries deemed incompatible with a Christian way of life. Born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1933, Vincent Burke was the third of Walter and Eleanor (nee McGoff) Burkes four sons. Christian converts were indoctrinated to frown upon the use of indigenous first names in favour of Christian ones. This research was funded by the European Research Council. Wm. An attempt to respond to this question informs the underlying interest for this paper, namely, to explore the extent to which these institutions, especially . Cookies are small, safe and secure text files that sit on your computer which we use to give you a better experience on our site and help us improve the service that we provide to you. It is important for several reasons.