Beschreibung
This study challenges the explanatory potential of
prevailing paradigms for analyzing the history of African
schooling in colonial Zimbabwe. By reconsidering the African
agency in the process, the author points to the
socio-economic, political, gender and age-related interests
and aspirations which determined the African response to
colonial education. The central argument of the study holds
that the expansion of the education system was crucially
shaped by the selective acceptance and active pursuit of
formal schooling on the part of the African population.
Within the context of rural social restrictions on the one
hand, and colonialist state policies on the other hand,
African men and women came to perceive formal education as a
means of enhancing employment opportunities, increasing
social mobility, and circumventing the patriarchal control
of African chiefs and elders. Due to the diminishing
viability of peasant production and the color bar in skilled
industrial employment, Africans mainly sought instruction
in literary rather than simple practical skills, which
contradicted official segregationist policies designed to
‘keep the Africans in their place’. With its focus on the
colonized people’s motivation and rationale in their
interaction with colonial structures, this study contributes
to the current rewriting of Southern African history as
the product of struggle between all societal elements rather
than as a design imposed by all-pervasive capitalist or
settler interests.