The Phelps-Stokes Fund was established in 1911 by a bequest of Miss Caroline Phelps Stokes, a New York philanthropist. The fund was set up principally for the education of blacks in Africa and in the United States. Dr. Anson Phillips Stokes, one of the trustees of the fund, chaired its educational committee, while Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones served as the educational director of the fund. The latter had formerly served on the U. S. Bureau of Education in Washington, D. C., where he was involved in the production of two volumes on the education of blacks in 1917. He later served at the Hampton Institute, dubbed “the most successful institute for Negro education in the world,” as director of its research institute.
Through the activities of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the education of American blacks came to be used as a blueprint for the education of blacks in Africa. In this regard, the educational experiments undertaken at the black institutions of Hampton and Tuskegee served as an example of an “appropriate” education for colonial Africans. The Southern industrial and agricultural institutions of Hampton and Tuskegee were originally set up as a compromise to the Southern labor problem following the emancipation of slaves. Industrial education became the cornerstone of the education system that was offered to the freed slaves, which aimed at prevention of racial conflict. The rural educational applications of the American black South were extended within America by such educational agencies as the General Education Board, the Jeanes and Slater Funds, and the United States Department of Agriculture. They were extended to the African soil primarily by the Phelps-Stokes Education Fund. Thus, the Phelps-Stokes education commissions were influenced by the education principles that Samuel Chapman Armstrong had developed at Hampton, and those of Booker T. Washington and Principal Mouton at Tuskegee.
The membership of the Phelps-Stokes Education Commissions attested to the cooperation of colonial governments and missionary societies in America and Europe. Members included Dr. Henry Stanley Hollenbeck, who had served as a missionary in Angola, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Wilkie of the Church of Scotland Mission in Calabar, Nigeria, and Leo Ray, an accountant and specialist in industrial education. Ray had also supervised the technical training of “Negro” soldiers during World War I, and now served as the first commission’s secretary. Dr. C. T. Loram, chairman of the South African Native Affairs Commission, and former chief inspector of native education in Natal, was included in the second commission. Hanns Vischer, secretary and member of the newly formed Advisory Committee on Education in Tropical Africa at the colonial office in London, and Mrs. Vischer also served in the second commission.
Only two of the members of the first commission also served in the second. These were Dr. Thomas
Jesse Jones and Dr. James Emmanuel Kwegyr Aggrey, the latter of the famed Achimota College in Gold Coast (Ghana). Dr. Aggrey’s inclusion had been suggested by Dr. Paul Monroe, a professor at Columbia University and member of the board of trustees of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. “The Great Aggrey,” an individual of outstanding ability, had just completed a professional teaching qualification. He went on to exert significant influence on the activities of the Education Commissions, and left an indelible mark on subsequent developments in African education.
The first of the two Phelps-Stokes Education Commissions carried out its activities in western, southern and equatorial Africa from July 15,1920 to September 10, 1921, and in particular visited Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gold Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon, Belgian Congo, Angola, South Africa, and the British territories. The second, instituted at the suggestion of colonial governments, concentrated its efforts in eastern, central, and southern Africa from January 5, 1924 to June 19,1924, traveling to Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Nyasaland, Rhodesia, South Africa, and the trust territories. The goal of the education commissions was to ascertain the necessary requirements for improvement of the education of blacks in Africa.
The commissions invoked the Jeanes idea, which was based on the view that Africans were a mainly rurally oriented and agriculturally based people; it was named after Anna T. Jeanes, who had donated money to pay for the teachers of rural schools. Jeanes education went beyond the basics of formal teaching, and sought to facilitate an overall change in the socioeconomic makeup of African communities. It sought to do this by encouraging the emphasis of the African environment in the teaching of skills and trades as well as by promotion of the African way of life; African institutions, customs, stories, and songs; and the use of drills and games as a teaching method.
The most far-reaching of the commissions’ recommendations were centered on the teaching of industrial education and agriculture as the core basis of colonial African education. Hence, less emphasis was placed on the “literary” or “bookish” education of Africans, as it was considered to be irrelevant to their needs. It was also seen to be alienating Africans from their predominantly rural lifestyle. Instead, institutions that promoted manual work and taught “practical” subjects were upheld as a good illustration of appropriate African education. The education philosophy espoused by the commissions sought to promote African traditions and aimed to foster African appreciation of these. Appropriate education of women was considered to be paramount to the adoption of a holistic and rurally oriented education system. It was on the basis of this that domestic science in its widest sense was envisaged as an appropriate education for women. Women’s education was to include hygiene and sanitation, the care of infant life, simple remedies for common ailments, and the nursing of the sick. Concerns about health and the spread of disease, advances in medicine (and, notably, the discovery of new vaccines) influenced the inclusion of hygiene in the curriculum.
In both formal and informal ways, African education was to reflect more closely the needs of a mainly rural populace. In this regard, much emphasis was placed on the importance of the village school. Teacher training was to form an integral part of this holistic view of African education, and in this regard mobile schools were started using both the teachers and extension workers to bring the school closer to the community. In eastern and central Africa for example, model Jeanes settlements or model villages were set up that served as examples to the rest of the community; in Zimbabwe, home visits by social workers, nurses, and family welfare educators were a part of the plan.
The commissions made valuable observations regarding the status and future prospects of the Western education of Africans—in particular, mission education, the education of women and girls, and the role of agriculture and indigenous skills training. The activities of the commissions culminated in the publication of two reports. The first, published in 1922, was titled Education in Africa: A Study of West, South and Equatorial Africa by the African Education Commission, under the Auspices of the Phelps-Stokes Fund and Foreign Mission Societies of North America and Europe. The second report, entitled Education in East Africa, was published in 1925.
Lily Mafela
See also: Education.
Further Reading
King, K. J. Pan-Africanism and Education: A Study of Race, Philanthropy and Education in the Southern States of America and East Africa, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.
Lewis, L. J. Phelps-Stokes Reports on Education in Africa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Phelps-Stokes Fund. “Education in Africa: A Study of East, Central and Southern Africa, Second African Education Commission under the Auspices of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, in Cooperation with the International Education Board, 1923-24.” 1925.
Phelps-Stokes Fund. “Report of the Education Commission in West, South and Equatorial Africa, July 15th, 1920-September 10, 1921.” 1922.
World History
