EDUCATIONAL CONTROVERSIES - AFRICAN ACTIVISM AND EDUCATIONAL-STRATEGIES IN SOUTHERN RHODESIA, 1920-1934

This article examines three case studies of conflict between Africans' concepts of what education should be, and the education actually avai lable in schools in Southern Rhodesia. It focuses on the 1920s and ear ly 1930s, when African education first expanded and attained new level s of direct government involvement, and then began to contract under t he economic pressure of the depression. In the Gutu district, students and parents fought for alternatives to the Dutch Reformed Church scho ols, attempting to enlist government support for alternatives, and att ending independent schools. At Inyati, a London Missionary Society sch ool, dissatisfied students struck, forcing major changes on the school as the mission acknowledged a need to provide pupils with not merely subsistence and disciplined learning, but also respect and advancement . The government's schools started out with strikes over academic and industrial curricula, and provided, in the contrast between Domboshawa 's relative health and popularity, and Tjolotjo's continued conflict a nd problems, a lesson in the need to make compromises to achieve succe ssful educational policy. Ultimately, student activism, through protes ts, strikes, or appeals, did alter the curricula, and the forms of dis cipline, of schools in Southern Rhodesia. But the changes were limited . Protests did not produce an educational system capable of allowing A fricans to compete effectively with Europeans. Nevertheless these stru ggles taught important lessons about alliance formation, the presentat ion of demands, and negotiation. These lessons, and students' apprenti ceship in activism, may have been as important as any formal curricula r changes.