student life Another important German missionary was Wilhelm Johannson, better known by the English version of his name, William Johnson, who is revered in the history of the CMS in West Africa. In addition to contributing to fluctuating educational standards across the colony, inter-denominational rivalry caused a disparity in access to education. From the second half of the eighteenth century, a fervent wave of evangelical spirit developed in the United Kingdom, Europe and the New World which inspired men and women with the missionary fervour to found religious societies whose members would go out to Africa and the other lands. With the arrival of more missions into the country came an explosion in mission schools across southern Ghana. Hastings, Adrian. Being able to speak and write in the colonisers language was considered a privilege. The Rev. Support earthquake relief and outreach efforts, biblical foundation for the next generation of believers. The work of the missionaries also had little success initially. While the Evangelical Presbyterian missionaries were the First to develop literature in Ewe, the Roman Catholics were responsible for Nzima literature. Christianity reborn: the global expansion of evangelicalism in the twentieth century. The original letters from abroad cover West Africa from 1899 to 1933. So why did the European missionaries come to Ghana and other parts of Africa? 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. Christian converts were indoctrinated to frown upon the use of indigenous first names in favour of Christian ones. 26. Missionaries were no doubt also aware that Africans came to associate European technological achievement with Western education (Bassey 1991:45) and therefore offered Western education as a means to attract Africans of this belief and then convert them. These Christian converts considered themselves to be holier than their traditional rulers and elders. JNE sustains a commitment to a threefold mission: first, to stimulate the collection and facilitate the dissemination of facts about the education of Black people; second, to present discussions involving critical appraisals of the proposals and practices relating to the education of Black people; and third, to stimulate and sponsor investigations of issues incident to the education of Black people. Establishment of Christian Churches In The Gambia. This comes at no extra cost to you. English for life The missionary impact on education would have far-reaching consequences, as their creation of a weak basis of education would slow down the political and educational development of many former colonies in Africa. Find below a list of mission schools that still exist in Ghana today. Apart from the extreme south and the Horn, the interior was hardly touched by Europeans before the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Prior to the advent of western education, Ghana's traditional social structures had inbuilt opportunities for mobility. senior high school history skills for his or her future role in the society (Hetherington, 1979; Davidoff, 1980; Aboagye, 1997). A new era began with the settlements of Black Christians from Nova Scotia in Sierra Leone in 1787 and the missionary advance inland from Cape Town beginning with the arrival there of J. T. van der Kemp in 1799. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations in the name of Father Burke can be made for the care of elderly and infirm missionaries and sent to The Rector, Divine Word Residence, 1901 Waukegan Road, P.O. 'In view of this idea, Mmofraturo, the first girls boarding school in Ashanti was officially . 1991. Their arrival in South Africa was aimed particularly at spreading the Word of God. However, the early missionaries established medical centres, at first at their mission posts, and later far and wide, to attend to the sick. For instance, in Nigeria, one of the first groups of missionaries to introduce organised medical services were the Roman Catholics. The early missionaries set up craft centres as part of their educational programmes. The Committee for Women's Work was responsible for the education of native girls. 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 . Non-African Poetry In the 19thh century, too, Afro-Brazilians returned to Benin and Nigeria with Catholicism. Thank you for supporting this project. Yet, the relationship between European missionaries and African populations had some contradictions. Email: henrydonsco@gmail.com Other difficulties the early Christians faced were the problems of the many languages and dialects and their ignorance of the true meaning of the various cultures, beliefs, values and ways of life of the people whom they set out to convert to Christianity. In fact in 1966, Father Burke led students to a victory in a national educational contest called the Ghana TV Cup. The early African converts to Christianity, were made to abandon their ancestral culture and way of life as pagan therefore to be shunned. Hugh Goldie and William Anderson. Thomas Thompson, arrived in Cape Coast in 1752. A special memorial Mass was celebrated at the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Accra, Ghana, on Oct. 9. Apart from giving to the converts a new religious faith which they consider is superior to the traditional religions, the Christian missionaries did pioneering work in introducing new crafts, industries, Western education and modern health services. This thesis discusses and assesses contribution of Christian Missionaries to education in Meru from 1908 to 1963. CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY TO WEST AFRICA. Their records from World War One show their distance from the war and yet that it did affect . This study simply offers systematic, long-term evidence of it. For example, they made our people view polygamy and puberty rites as pagan practices. Learn how your comment data is processed. Given their priorities, it should thus come as little surprise that missions often provided poor education to the African pupils. adult education Father Jean Marie Coquard, operating in and from Abeokuta for forty years, was renowned among the Egba as a priest and surgeon in the second half of the nineteenth century. For more than a year, Ghanaian Saints continued to practice their faith in their homes. Predominantly Muslim territory, the North received western education later than the South. The Methodists founded Mfantsipim (1876) for boys and Wesley Girls High School (1884). A second reason for the poor education of the mission schools was that in many cases the teachers in mission schools were unqualified as teachers, but were instead preachers by training. New team members can be part of establishing a biblical foundation for the next generation of believers, the growth of nationally-led churches, and church planting in Ghana. senior high school English This box contains: the correspondence of Bishop See thematic groupings of our digital collections, See all of our digital collections in one place, Ghana in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1886-1951, Copies of letters received, 1890-1927; West Africa, vol. In 1876 the college became associated with Durham University in England, which awarded degrees to students of the college. This research was funded by the European Research Council. Notably among these missionaries are the Wesleyan, Basel, and Bremen. All work is written to order. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations in the name of Father Burke can be made for the care of elderly and infirm missionaries and sent to The Rector, Divine Word Residence, 1901 Waukegan Road, P.O. A tiny act of kindness is remembered by a young man in need. The original letters from abroad cover West Africa from 1899 to 1933. CUP Archive, 1979. Thus as early as 1823, the Roman Catholic Sisters started a clinic for the sick and for children in Banjul. The education provided in schools in early days also tended to place great emphasis on the superiority of western culture. In addition, while missionaries did run many academic primary schools, they provided little secondary education, a practice which prevented natives from becoming too educated (Ayandele 1966:286) and potentially subversive. Request Permissions. Missionary, educator contributed to building independent Ghana. One Liberian student recalls that we were taught to dress properly, to eat properly, to speak properly. In the field of education, however, the missionaries had to adjust their programmes to fit in with the policy of assimilation. Call: +233558280780, Your email address will not be published. The school, which was established the year of independence in 1957, was a work in progress. However the superficial motivations and ideologies have changed, at the most basic level both contemporary Northern charities and nineteenth century missionaries share the belief that the North must come and save the suffering natives, which in the case of the missionaries, has been proven to have inflicted more harm than provided relief. From 1870 to 1914 the Basel Mission succeeded in extending its work from the Akwapim Ridge to Kwahu, Akim and Asante and across the Volta as far as Yendi the north in 1913. As they could not recruit British missionary volunteers initially, the Church Missionary Society sponsored the services of German missionaries, who were Lutherans, to come out to Sierra Leone. Are you ready to discover the points for an essay on the contribution of the Christian mission to the social and economic development of Ghana? Indeed, once the souls had been saved and since the students must have been considered clever enough, European languages were almost universally the languages of instruction in the later primary years and in secondary schools (Beck 1966: 120; Foster 1965: 159; Miran 2002:127). 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. As happened in other territories, the Christian missionaries did not confine their work to the spread of the gospel alone. Website design and development by Americaneagle.com, Inc, Society of the Divine Word- Western Province, Society of the Divine Word- Southern Province. For that matter, they rebelled against their chiefs and elders. Andreas Riis, assisted by a team of West Indian evangelists, laid the foundations of the Basel Missionary Church in the country. As negative as all these impacts of the missionaries undoubtedly were for the African pupils, the long-term consequences are arguably as serious. Unsurprisingly, the level of education increased as one moved closer to the missionaries. The quest for an all-inclusive development model of Ghana and other developing nations, therefore, calls for an insight into the role and responsibilities of religion toward education. Furthermore, each denomination had differing policies on education, so standards in education fluctuated across each colony, depending on what denomination had schools in each area. 522 0 obj <>stream They provided missionaries a way to spread Eurocentric norms and attract new converts. Joseph Dunwell. opened was the Christian Institute, established in 1814 for the training of teachers, catechists and priests. Thus, because of the motive of proselytization, unqualified teachers, and inter-denominational rivalry, missions frequently provided poor education. The problems created by the white missionaries themselves arose largely from a misconception of what Africa represented. New missionary societies (the LMS, the CMS, the Holy Ghost Fathers, the White Fathers, etc.) Their converts increased steadily in numbers until 1821 when a section broke away to form the first independent African, Christian church in West Africa, called the West Africa Methodist Church. They relied very much on their home churches for their funds. Furthermore, missionaries, believing in the civilizing mission, attempted to disintegrate traditional society through education by choosing academic subjects, such as the histories of the Western colonial powers, that illustrated the superiority of the Western culture, as well as by teaching about the superiority of the West in non-academic matters such as hygiene. The Missionary Factor in Ghana's Development, pp.11 &135 categorically asserted that economic and social changes were brought about by the total effect of the various projects initiated by the. 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. They often attributed natural ailments to supernatural causes and resorted to mystic cults to appease the unknown spirit, before applying medicine to the sick person. The agricultural schools the missions ran would have been even more advantageous to the colonial governments considering the discouragement of local industries that might have competed with the motherland. For instance, in the Salisbury region of Rhodesia, it was reported in 1924 that no male teachers had educational qualifications (Bone 1969:28). They include Sierra Leone 1900-1933; Ghana 1903; Cape Verde 1904-1910; and St Vincent 1907-1912. Before we examine the contribution of Christian missionaries in Ghana, we need to identify the missionaries that came to Ghana. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions English comprehension In 1859, the first newspaper in Yoruba, called the Iwe-Irohim, was published by the missionaries. Besides education, they cared for the sick. They also introduced vocational education in the country. In 1859, the first newspaper in Yoruba. Amidst much honest missionary activity in the country for two centuries, prosperity gospel teachers have also gained influence, and numerous indigenous cults have arisen with distinct appeal and just enough truth to create confusion and syncretism. I wanted to buy a smartphone for him, but when he got to know the price of the cell phone, he humbly declined. After six years at St. Peters, Father Burke was named chaplain and professor of English literature at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School in Osu, Ghana. No plagiarism, guaranteed! essay writing The missionaries condemned African religion, music, art, festivals and customary practices. As Ayandele points out (1966:285), the ideal of many of the missions was to make their converts live literally as the unlearned and ignorant apostles of old. This ideal, combined with the fact that many missionaries discovered that Africans with only basic education were best at spreading the Gospel, meant that missionaries were reluctant to provide higher primary or secondary education (Ayandele 1966:286). The traditions and values of the community, as well as the meaning of life, were taught to the child. The Roman Catholic Sisters provided medical care in the Upper and Northern Regions of the country before the government started to provide hospitals and clinics in the regional and district headquarters. African poetry Among several others, the native Bishop Ajayi Crowther produced the first translation of the Bible in Yoruba. faceless characters In Ghana, missions strategically weighted costs and benefits when choosing where to establish their churches and schools. And traditionally polygamous societies would have higher educational outcomes today. It was difficult for the European missionaries to communicate freely with the local people. According to the Head of the Methodist Church in Ghana, Mmofraturo was established in Kumasi, 'when it dawned on the early Wesleyan Missionaries that when the girl child was educated, she could grow up to face the challenges of the fast-changing world. The coming of the Christian missionaries to Ghana had a positive impact on agriculture. However, the motivation behind teaching Africans basic literacy and mathematics might not have been a cause for concern if not for the fact that the religious motivation curtailed education. Please click this link to download the chapter. WAEC While the protestant evangelical movements were gaining ground in West Africa, similar movements were being promoted by the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. 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. Operational Christianity started 267 Years ago. The missionaries opened schools further inland, and by 1880, the Wesleyan Mission had eighty -three schools. Johannes Zimmermann, for example, produced a Ga dictionary, Ga bible and grammar book. Among these were the Congregation of the Holy Ghost (commonly known as the Holy Ghost Father), the Society of African Missions (SMA), the Society of Missionaries of Africa, popularly known as the White Fathers because of the white Muslim-like clothing which the Fathers wore, and the society of the Divine Word (SVD, abbreviated from its Latin name). Efforts to change these norms were often aimed at women. People all around the world are searching for hope, but many dont have someone to tell them about the hope found in Jesus. African prose 1 (1971): 103-115. Ghana Education Service seeks to create an enabling environment in all educational institutions and management positions that will facilitate effective teaching and learning and efficiency in the management for the attainment of the goals of the Service. The training college later became part of Achimota College. However, the discovery of quinine and other curative medicines in the late 19th century made the history of the missionary work in West Africa a different thing altogether. Several missionaries died at a youthful age due to the unfriendly tropical climate. The Christian religion teaches the doctrine of one supreme God and is opposed to the worship of any other forms of deity. Mission societies often expanded into territories before colonial powers did, and providing education only cost them a little more. Johannes Zimmermann wrote a grammar of the Ga language and translated the entire Bible and a Bible history into Ga. Then in 1874, the Rev. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[250,250],'cegastacademy_com-large-mobile-banner-1','ezslot_15',609,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-cegastacademy_com-large-mobile-banner-1-0');The European missionaries began their activities in Ghana as far back as the early fifteenth century. These contradictions are surprisingly absent from contemporary research. We use cookies to improve your experience on our website. These new movements considered such ventures to be their contribution to Europes reparation for centuries of exploitation of Africans, reparation for the centuries of exploitation which the Trans Atlantic slave trade had caused to African society. Indeed, most of our early nationalists were all products of mission schools. In addition to studying the impact of these struggles on education, we also need to understand how they influenced gender inequality. Both the academic and vocational forms of education the missions provided served to strengthen the rule of the colonial powers, so that the native inhabitants were second-class citizens in their own land. In 1989-90, the government banned the activities of several religious organizations, including the Church. Now, with the burgeoning Cocoa industry, the expansion of commercial activity, the development of gold mines and the building of roads and railways disturbed the traditional lifestyle. This Western education imparted to the Ameru by the Church of Scotland Missionaries, Consolata .