Ethics and Ethnocentricity in British Tropical Africa.

AFRICA; UNITED Kingdom

The article examines the philosophy of education in Great Britain in the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly that of the elite private schools known as public schools, and how that philosophy was installed in the educational systems of Great Britain's colonies. The emphasis on both the physical and moral benefits of sports stressed by those schools is seen as one of the basic tenets of that philosophy, which stressed the development of a student's character more than the acquisition of knowledge. Colonial administrators of the period are cited in which this idea is explicitly stated. Accounts of education in British colonies in Africa are given to support the contention that the African students of the period had exactly the opposite view of their schooling, placing the acquisition of academic credentials far ahead of sports.