THE NONLITERATE

AND

THE TRANSFER OF KNOWLEDGE IN WEST AFRICA

LaNette Weiss Thompson

This Thesis was presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts.

August 1998

Copyright LaNette Weiss Thompson, 1998

All Rights Reserved

Published by the Author

Fort Worth, Texas

Copies may be obtained through UMI Dissertation ServicesPO Box 1346Ann Arbor, MI 48106-13461-800-521-0600

or by contacting the author c/o International Mission BoardPO Box 6767Richmond, VA 23230

PREFACE

In 1990, after four years of working with nonliterate women and children in Burkina Faso, West Africa, I was introduced to the issue of primary orality and the concept of nonliterate learning styles. Until that time, I had been unaware of my own Western-educated, literate bias, a bias that had been apparent in my teaching methods, my lifestyle, and my attitude. However, in investigating the issue of the supposed orality/literacy dichotomy, several questions disturbed me. If highly-literate societies were similar world-wide, why were there such differences between Japanese and American cultures? If nonliterate people have such prodigious memories, why did the women I worked with have such difficulty memorizing the stories I was telling them?

As I looked around me at other American, European, and African Western-educated literates involved in aid, health, and religious work in West Africa, I realized we were, in effect, saying to the nonliterate community, “If you want our information, enter our world.” The conviction that it is we who must enter the nonliterate world led me to The University of Texas at Arlington. Dr. Alusine Jalloh, my supervising professor, with his eloquence and expertise enabled me to view the historical grandeur of the West Africa I love. Dr. Joseph Bastien challenged me to examine my own worldview, to open my eyes even wider. Dr. C. Jan Swearingen’s interest in the orality issue assured me that I was on the right track. To these three members of my committee, but especially to Dr. Jalloh, I express my appreciation. I would also like to express my appreciation to the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention for allowing me extended time in the United States to complete this study. I cannot fail to express my loving appreciation to my husband, Marvin Thompson, who gave up his possibility for a year of travel and time with family and friends in order to support me in this effort.

June 25, 1998

TABLE OF CONTENTSChapter

1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 1

2 THE NONLITERATE MIND .......................................................................... 5

Historical Antecedents to the Western View of the MindOrality and LiteracyWhat the Research ShowsConclusions

3 TRADITIONAL EDUCATION IN WEST AFRICA ...................................... 13

Traditional African ReligionThe Purpose and Characteristics of Traditional

African EducationOral Forms of Knowledge TransmissionFormal Settings for the Transmission of

Specialized KnowledgeConclusions

4 ISLAMIC EDUCATION IN WEST AFRICA ................................................. 21

The Purpose and Characteristics of Islamic EducationThe Forms and Methodology of Islamic EducationConclusions

5 TOWARD AN EFFECTIVE TRANSFER OF KNOWLEDGE ...................... 29

The Western-Educated Literate Becomes WorthyTransferring Knowledge

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 33

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT ................................................................................ 38

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

In 1787, over four hundred former slaves set sail from London for Sierra Leone, West Africa, to establish a self-governing community. The colony, which was later called Freetown, was on the brink of failure when it was reorganized by a group of British philanthropists in 1791. The following year, approximately twelve hundred former slaves freed by the British in the American Revolution arrived. In 1800, runaway Jamaican slaves who had surrendered to the authorities were added to the colony. Eight years later, the venture was turned over to the British government, and Freetown became a crown colony. With the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, the settlement provided a repatriation center for tens of thousands of Africans who were being rescued from slave ships by the British navy patrols. British government officials as well as Christian missionaries arrived to work with members of the colony and the neighboring indigenous peoples. Two hundred miles southwest of Freetown, a similar settlement founded by Americans was struggling in a land the settlers called Liberia (July 1992, 227-8).

The British and American government officials and missionaries in Sierra Leone were products of their own Western culture. They expended little effort in understanding West African culture. Besides preaching the Christian gospel, translating the Bible, and forming churches, missionaries promoted agriculture, taught skills such as carpentry and tailoring, and promoted literacy and Western education. By 1894, the Protestant missions had a total enrollment of 137,000 students in their schools (Boahen 1987, 16).

The missionary was necessarily an educationist; education and Christianity were handmaids. Although the primary aim of the missionary was to Christianize Africans, he perceived from the beginning that the Gospel could not be divorced from the written word; that to establish the Gospel among Africans the latter must have Bibles which they must read, and this implied instruction, hence the fact that wherever there was a missionary the Church and the school were inseparable. (Ayandele 1979, 79)

The reasons for establishing Western schools shifted with the coming of colonialism. Although France occupied almost three times as much territory in West Africa as the British, the population of the British colonies was twice the population of the French colonies (Clarke 1982, 187). The French were considered to have adapted their courses of instruction to the needs of the African more successfully than the other governments. Still, the language of the classroom was French, just as it was English in the British colonies (Scanlon 1964, 55). Realizing that the moral justification for imperialism would vanish once the Africans were educated in the same style as they, colonial government leaders were at best lukewarm to the provision of Western education. Governor General Carde summarized the French educational purposes in 1924 as “the instruction of the mass and the formation of an elite” (Hargreaves 1967, 128). It was not until the 1940s, when they realized they would not be able to rule forever, that the colonial powers began to encourage the spread of Western education (Ayandele 1979, 89). Between the first and second world wars, professional African educators began playing a more active role in colonial educational policies, stressing the need to tailor the curriculum to the African environment. Their requests had to be approved by government officers and missionary teachers, however, who often made major revisions in the policies (Scanlon 1964, 6). The goal of colonial educational policy was to extend to the Africans the “blessings of civilization” as well as the cultural heritage of the West. French and British educational policies equated civilization with a literary and philosophical culture that was not related to concrete social needs. That culture “has sometimes been intruded at the expense of devaluing authentic African experience and tradition” (Hargreaves 1967, 131). Schools and colleges were established in the main urban centers, but other areas were denied these facilities. In traditional African education, everyone has an opportunity to become a contributing member of society. Status is accorded with age and the ability to accept responsibility. The colonial governments, by introducing Western education and then limiting the training, created a state of frustration and dissatisfaction among the Africans (Rosenthal 1967, 71).

The use of colonial languages for instruction, the lingua franca, discouraged the use of any African language as a national language. In their insistence on the use of the lingua franca, the colonial governments created a state of illiteracy among the African people (Boahen, Ajayi, and Tidy 1986, 133). Where once the people had thrived in the valued traditions of their culture, they were now transformed into a state of deprivation.

Every third inhabitant of our planet manages to get by without the art of reading and without the art of writing. This includes roughly 900 million people, and their numbers will certainly increase. . . For the unlettered human to be done away with, he had first to be defined, tracked down, and unmasked. The concept of illiteracy is not very old. Its invention can be dated with some precision. The word appeared for the first time in a French publication of the year 1876 and quickly spread all over Europe . . .the triumph of popular education in Europe coincides with the maximum development of colonialism. And this is no accident. (Enzensberger 1986, 12-13)

The African people did not quietly accept their fate. At the beginning of colonialism, the nonliterate traditional rulers in rural areas and the Western-educated elite in urban areas reacted differently. Nonliterate traditional rulers instigated rebellions and insurrections with the objective of overthrowing the colonial system. Most of these revolts were precipitated by some colonial action such as taxation, land alienation, or the introduction of Western education. Besides revolt, the nonliterate rural people sought to escape by crossing international borders. Those who stayed often used passive resistance such as refusal to comply with orders, absenteeism, feigned illness, work slowdowns, and the rejection of anything connected with the colonial governments, including schools, churches, and the lingua franca. Rather than working to overthrow the colonial governments, the Western-educated elite generally worked within the system for its reform, using the press, conferences, and the formation of political parties (Boahen 1987, 63-68).

The traditional nonliterate people opposed Western education on several grounds. Farmers were afraid it would lead to a work avoidance syndrome where the young would not want to do any “real” work but would prefer to be dependent upon someone else. Those who were Muslim felt it would lead to a lowering of moral standards and a corruption of Islam. Others felt it would destroy the traditional criteria for choosing leadership on the basis of capacity, temperament, and character. Some realized that Western education was irrelevant to the needs of African society and would lead to a neglect of local arts and crafts. Many did not want girls to attend school beyond the age of twelve for fear they would take over roles traditionally held by men (Clarke 1982, 244).

Those that feared the coming of Western education had reason to be afraid. History has proven the validity of those fears.

Every country in Africa is torn by a rift between the educated and uneducated, the modern and traditional, the rich and poor, the urban and rural, the wage-earner and peasant. A recognizable elite – the educated-modern-rich-urban-wage-earners – controls the levers of power in every African state. (Astrachan 1971, 24-25)

The concept of an educated elite was not new to West Africans. For almost eight hundred years, nonliterate traditional rulers had used Muslim scholars as scribes and advisors in their kingdoms. Koranic schools could be found in most Muslim communities. At the coming of colonialism, Muslims ruled over Islamic states in various parts of West Africa. Neither was the concept of one group waging war and appropriating the land and property of another a new innovation. Kingdoms had risen and fallen on African soil since the beginning of time. Yet, even with these power struggles and the establishment of an elite class of Islamic scholars, the fabric of African society had not been ripped to shreds as it was with the introduction of Western education. Today, the separation wrought by education is not just a separation between one social class and another, but between nonliterate parent and literate child. Parents shake their heads at the impudence of their Western-educated offspring while children are ashamed that their parents lack Western skills. The educated elite hold political power, but the nonliterate traditional rulers control the power of the masses.

What is the solution to this disconnection of the African people? Should Western education be abolished and literacy outlawed? Obviously, these things will never happen. Africa is becoming a significant player in the world economy, an economy that necessitates Western skills. Institutionalized education based on Western methods is expanding rapidly throughout West Africa as governments seek to meet the demand for technological skills required in international trade. Twenty percent of United States oil imports come from Africa. Africa possesses 54% of the world’s cobalt, 32% of its bauxite, 52% of its manganese, and 81% of its chromium stocks. Trade with Africa directly supports over 100,000 American jobs. In 1995 and 1996, United States exports to Africa totaled $6.2 billion, an annual growth rate of fifteen percent. American investors are receiving an average annual return of over 25% on the book value of

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United States investments in Africa, as compared to less than 10% worldwide. Africa, as some have remarked, is not on the brink of destruction. Thirty years ago, African infant mortality rates were 165 per thousand. Today, the same rate is 97 per thousand. The average life expectancy has risen from 40.1 years to 51.3 years (Gordon and Wolpe 1998, 49, 55-56).

What can be done to heal the rift in African society? Some have blamed the difficulties on the traditional people’s lack of literacy. Nationwide campaigns have been instigated to “wipe out” this dreaded disease. In spite of exemplary progress and the sincere effort of government officials, nonliteracy has triumphed in many countries. Even with the widespread expansion of primary education, the literacy levels in West Africa remain extremely low. Statistics from 1995 show that 43.2% of those who were fifteen years old or older and were living in Sub-Saharan Africa were nonliterate. Over half, 53%, of all women in this area were nonliterate (UNESCO 1997). Some countries’ statistics are more dramatic. Even though Mali has had an extensive adult literacy program in operation since the late 1960s, in 1989, literacy among Malian males over the age of fifteen was 18.6 percent; for females, it was 1.8 percent. “Large numbers of literate semi-educated and unemployed youth now crowd Mali’s capital, Bamako, where they represent a disaffected group, and many of them resort to crime and become politically radicalized” (Imperato 1989, 93).

This same scene is reenacted in capital cities throughout West Africa as Western-educated young people express their frustration. The ethnic conflicts that one reads about in the press are not ancient antagonisms. Conflict in Nigeria between the Ibos, Yorubas, and Hausas is relatively recent. Prior to colonialism and the creation of Nigeria’s national boundaries and institutions, these groups did not even interact with each other.

In Nigeria, as elsewhere in Africa, those who sparked the ‘ethnicization’ of political competition were neither traditionalist nor illiterate rural peasants; rather, they were members of the emerging urban class of Western-educated clerks, educators, traders, contractors, and soldiers. It is not ‘tradition’ but the modern-day competition for scarce resources that has motivated their manipulation of ethnic symbols. (Gordon and Wolpe 1998, 57).

As Western-educated African leaders deal with African issues, multitudes of development and aid organizations from the United States and Europe flock to African soil intent on helping to solve Africa’s problems. Willing workers initiate programs that appear to have “the answer” to health or economic needs. These same workers often return to their homes in frustration when their programs gasp and die from lack of local initiative. American missionaries by the hundreds build edifices that churches in America would be proud to call their own. These same missionaries become discouraged and depressed when they realize that without their monetary contributions, many of the fledgling African congregations cannot even pay the utilities for such structures. Through all of this, the emphasis is on “redoing” the traditional African, making him or her more like the Westerner. Behind this emphasis is the belief that the Western way is a better way, that African nations are “developing,” with the implication being that the ultimate development will be when they become a carbon copy of the West. Westerners do not realize that they, themselves, are bound by their own worldview, the influence of their schooling and their culture. Western teaching methods, programs, schools, and churches all reflect this cultural bias. Is it not time to break out of this bias, to attempt to develop new teaching methodologies based on traditional African values? This does not mean that the information one wishes to share must be contextualized to coincide with African beliefs, but that the vehicle for disseminating that information must be a vehicle that can run on African soil.

For example, one typical way for development organizations to disseminate information is to bring representatives from various villages together in a conference. These representatives are usually young people who are literate. The information is taught with the expectation that the village representative will return and spread the information to the rest of the village. When the knowledge is not shared, the development workers become frustrated by the apparent “lack of concern” at the village level. This teaching practice is based on the Western concept of knowledge. Inherent in this concept is the belief that knowledge is limitless and easily accessible, waiting to be discovered. One can take from the “pool” of knowledge and the pool will never run dry. Knowledge is seen as being separate from the giver or the receiver of knowledge. Its worth is intrinsic.

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Most Africans believe that there is a limit to knowledge. Knowledge is power, to be guarded and used when power is to be exhibited. Two people cannot have the same knowledge, for that would make them equal in power. Knowledge’s worth resides in the giver of knowledge. If the giver of knowledge has a poor reputation, the knowledge must thus be poor. Knowledge received from one’s parents has an almost sacred quality. Knowledge from one’s peers is lesser knowledge (Riesman 1992, 152-153). No wonder the information from conferences is not normally shared. Because knowledge is power, the information given empowered the one who received it. It will retain its power only if it is not widely shared. Because knowledge is inextricably linked with the disseminator of the knowledge, the knowledge would have no value apart from the status of the one imparting it. Thus, if the conference attendee is a young person of little status, the community would not listen even if he or she decided to share the information. It is not a lack of concern on the part of the villagers, or a bias against the information itself that blocks communication. It is the use of Western models as the vehicle for disseminating information that blocks communication.

Many situations exist in West African nations where Westerners are used to disseminate health, agricultural, political, environmental, or religious information. In a continuation of past practices, Western-educated literates who wish to transmit information or skills to nonliterates are often unaware that they are using Western analytical techniques in their teaching methods. These methods include giving generalized rules, using lecture as the primary means of instruction, and presenting logic as the motivation for behavior. Although there has been a large emphasis on making the nonliterate literate, there has been little emphasis on equipping the Western-educated literate to enter the traditional African world, using the educational techniques that nonliterates have used for centuries to retain and transmit knowledge and skills. This does not mean that the Westerner’s goal is to become African. The Westerner’s feeble mimicry of the African would be as difficult as the traditional African’s mimicry of the Westerner. As the Fula ethnic group remark, the “proper way for all to act is to follow their tawaangal, their tradition” (Riesman 1992, 29). Americans would say, “Be yourself.”

This study is concerned with preparing the Western-educated literate to be effective in the transfer of knowledge in traditional West African nonliterate communities. Separating myth from reality in theories concerning the nonliterate mind and the orality/literacy issue will increase the worker’s effectiveness. By understanding the educational theory and practices underlying traditional African education, the Western-educated literate will be able to analyze his or her own teaching methods. By analyzing the ways in which Islamic education functions in West Africa, further teaching methodologies can be developed that will help the Western-educated literate to become more effective in the transfer of knowledge in the nonliterate West African community.

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CHAPTER TWO: THE NONLITERATE MIND

As Western-educated literates work in nonliterate African communities, they bring with them certain suppositions about learning and thought. Some assume that everyone learns in the same manner. Thus, a teaching style that works in one culture should work in another. Others act with certain suppositions about the nonliterate mind, believing that there is a recognizable dichotomy between the thought processes of those who live in literate cultures and those who live in primarily oral cultures. Many of these assumptions and suppositions are myths. All of these beliefs are based upon the Western worldview, the worldview of upper- and middle-income adult Europeans or Americans of European descent.

Historical Antecedents to the Western View of the Mind

For three thousand years, two opposing views on the human mind have influenced cognitive studies in the West. The enlightenment view holds that the mind is inherently reasonable and scientific with reason being the universal standard for judging validity and worth. Enlightenment researchers seek universals, idealizing progress and development. The romanticists, on the other hand, believe ideas and practices are nonrational and are not based on logic, empirical science, or reason. Romanticist researchers seek paradigms and cultural frames as they idealize local contexts. The romanticists do not accept the notion that mental processes “develop.” Instead, they grant equality to the “primitive” and the “modern” mind (Shweder 1984, 27-28).

As social scientists from each view theorize and publish, myths arise from the confusion. Some of the most persistent myths concern nonliterate people in less technologically advanced countries whose “primitive mind” is contrasted with the “Western mind.” Myth labels the Western mind as abstract, with ideas connected by general relations. Myth categorizes the primitive mind as concrete, with ideas connected by rote association. Whereas myth holds that the primitive mind is illogical, insensitive to con -tradictions, childish, and emotional, the Western mind is logical, mature, and rational (Miller 1971, vii). The confusion continues as philosophers, psychologists, and anthropologists argue over definitions of the mind. Most Westerners believe the mind is located in the brain and can be identified with the brain. Many also view the mind as distinct from the body, an inconsistency (Lillard 1998, 11). Inconsistencies exist in definitions of cognition as well. Twenty years ago, although psychologists agreed their field was in the throes of a cognitive revolution, few proffered a definition of cognition. Thomas Ciborowski stated “the central core of whatever we mean by cognition revolves around the issue of knowledge” (1979, 105).

The majority of cognitive psychologists in the United States ignore the variability of culture, accepting the literate Western mind as a universal. The desire to understand the Western mind opened up the field of comparative cognitive research. This research was based on the notion of evolution, adult from child, humans from primates, and industrial cultures from early tribal societies (Cole and Means 1981, 2-3). A sub-discipline of psychology, cross-cultural psychology, gained prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. Cross-cultural psychologists carry their experiments to foreign shores, usually comparing populations. Three important variables for cross-cultural psychology are age, culture, and schooling. Because age and formal schooling increase together in American society, cross-cultural psychologists seek “developing” societies where they can study the effects of these three variables (Cole and Means 1981, 4).

When differences were discovered in what the experiments determined as cognitive processing skills, psychologists offered two possible explanations. First, perhaps the psychologists’ tests were biased to Western culture, denying people from other cultures a fair opportunity to display their true mental skills. A second possibility for the differences in experimental results was attributed to “something” that affected the central processing mechanism in the human mind (Shweder 1990, 11). Researchers began the search for the supposed variable that triggered cognitive development, be it toys, urbanization, formal schooling, or literacy.

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Orality and Literacy

As psychologists and anthropologists were searching for the key that unlocked the secrets of the mind, others were worrying about the mind of a man who lived thousands of years ago. Literates had been enjoying the epic poems of Homer for over two thousand years. With the growing conviction that Homer was illiterate came the nagging question, how could such technically complex poems be composed without writing? Were these poems actually composed by a “primitive” mind (Egan 1993, 15)? Linguists interested in the technology of writing theorized about writing’s effect on primitive thought. Attention turned to the preliterate world.

To help describe this world, the term “orality” was coined on the analogy of “literacy” in the hopes that this new term would avoid the implications of failure inherent in the term “illiteracy.” Unfortunately, as Rosalind Thomas points out, the term is prone to vagueness. It should mean relying entirely on oral communication rather than written. Orality, however, is idealized in the “noble savage,” and has become more than a descriptive tool. Orality now implies a whole mentality or worldview. This idealization has led some to conclude that “oral culture is innocent, pure, and natural, uncorrupted by the written word . . .” (Thomas 1992, 7). As orality is contrasted with literacy, the question arises, what is literacy? Many different levels of literacy exist. The ability to read a label or fill out a form does not automatically imply an ability to comprehend complex texts. “The tendency to treat literacy as if it were a monolithic skill may be a modern fallacy” (Thomas 1992, 8-9). Modern fallacy or not, literacy is seen by many as having a major effect on cognitive processes.

Eric Havelock provides one of the best summations of the theory on the effects of literacy on human thought. Beginning with the evolutionary theory of Darwin, Havelock points out that the human capacity for language brought society into existence. With society, came culture. Orality employed two senses, that of hearing and speaking. Writing added the sense of vision. Literacy produced changes in society, but these changes came to a point of crisis with the introduction of the Greek alphabet because of its “superior efficiency.” Vision was offered in place of hearing as the means of communication and as the means of storing communication. “The adjustment that it caused was in part social, but the major effect was felt in the mind and the way the mind thinks as it speaks” (Havelock 1986, 100).

Literacy wiped out the pressure to store language in memorizable form. As humans no longer needed to spend energy memorizing, their psychic energy was released for other purposes. There was a push to record their thoughts as well as epic poetry, but it was no longer necessary to record these thoughts in story form so that they could be retrieved from memory. The removal of the narrative pressure brought a choice of subjects other than people. Abstract thought, which had existed to a limited degree in orality, brought with it the ability to treat topics as a subject of discourse. “As language became separated visually from the person who uttered it, so also the person, the source of the language, came into sharper focus and the concept of selfhood was born” (Havelock 1986, 113). As readers composed a language of theory, they realized they were employing new mental energies of a different quality from those employed in orality. Pressure arose to give this mental operation a separate identity. These mental processes became known as the intellect (Havelock 1986, 115).

Havelock’s premises are extensions of the theories of Jack Goody and Walter Ong. Goody, on field trips to Africa, had recorded the language and observed the social behavior of some nonliterate societies. Although these societies had contact with literacy through Islam, Goody minimized Arabic’s influence. According to Goody and Ian Watt, literacy radically affected culture. They eloquently described the transmission of cultural elements as “a long chain of interlocking conversations between members of the group. Thus, all beliefs and values, all forms of knowledge, are communicated between individuals in face-to-face contact” (Goody and Watt 1968, 29). The “savage mind” had been “domesticated” through literacy because such written tools as the list, the formula, and the table could be used in problem-raising and problem-solving (Goody 1977, 162).

Walter Ong lists specific characteristics of thought and expressions in primarily oral cultures. He believes that thought is additive rather than subordinate, aggregative rather than analytic. It is redundant, traditionalist, and close to life. It is sometimes antagonistic, sometimes filled with praise. It is empathetic, homeostatic, and situational rather than abstract (Ong 1982).

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In the contemporary Western world, the term literacy has acquired connotations of knowledge and competence. Schoolchildren and adults work to become computer literate. Professors complain about waning scientific literacy. Studies link literacy and crime, literacy and infant mortality, literacy and health (Dubin 1992, vi). Now that widespread literacy has been achieved in much of the world, why do dramatic differences remain?

What the Research Shows

Humans acquire knowledge by a variety of means such as personal experience, observation, explicit instruction, and modeling (Olson 1977, 65). This knowledge is then stored in memory in cognitive frameworks called schemata (Rumelhart 1980, 34). These cognitive frameworks serve as the “file folders” of memory, storing relevant facts, emotions, and perceptions. Each “file folder,” or schema, is divided into subschemas with their own relevant information. Schemata content depends upon one’s experience and culture. For example, contained in a typical shopping schema are the following actions: going to a store where items are offered for sale, choosing an item, purchasing the item, and leaving the store. One can say, “I went shopping,” without having to explain each action in the event to the listener. The listener understands because of a similar, previously stored schema of what it means to go shopping. Each event, or subschema, in the shopping schema has its own series of events and can be divided into other subschemata. “Choosing an item” is easily divided into finding the correct department, analyzing availability, comparing prices on similar items, and making a decision. Thus, knowledge is stored as layer upon layer of schemata, all intricately interwoven into a tapestry of representations, inferences, and perceptions. Misunderstandings occur when individuals assume that everyone operates within the same schemata, or framework of knowledge. Cultural schemata “portray not only the world of physical objects and events, but also more abstract worlds of social interaction, discourse, and even word meaning” (D’Andrade 1990, 93). Culture can be seen as a body of knowledge contained in schemata whereby culturally appropriate behavior is generated. “Culture is not an entity with its own independent reality—the reality of culture lies in its realization as systems of knowledge in the minds of people” (Bilmes and Boggs 1979, 56).

The cognitive components of culture, based on a complex of learned schemata, can be characterized as an information processing system. In perception, schemata assimilate incoming information, working to recognize and process input. In memory, schemata provide organization for memory storage, possibly reorganizing these memories in the face of new information or changing goals. In recall, schemata fill in the blanks of “what probably occurred” when information is missing (Rice 1980, 153). Schemata develop rapidly in infancy, though more abstract schemata develop slowly as a result of life experiences. These schematic organizations activate automatically whenever the individual processes information (Mandler et al. 1980, 19-20).

Language has been the primary field of investigation in determining the relationship between culture and cognition (D’Andrade 1990, 68). Language is a system of categories interconnected with nonlinguistic categories of thought and culture. The so-called cognitive differences observed between cultures could be differences of category availability. A category that is less available does not mean one is incapable of forming it, but rather that it is not conventionally used (Brown 1986, 312). There is a relationship between a concept and its codability. One researcher showed that in Chinese, Latin, and English, there is a tendency for the length of a word to be correlated with its frequency of usage, with the shorter word a key to its more frequent use. “Automobile” becomes “car.” A “personal computer” becomes “PC.” A society’s failure to abbreviate concepts to words means the concept is less often used in that particular society (Brown 1986, 307-309) (Lillard 1998, 7). Different languages label different perspectives on the world. Anyone who speaks more than one language can testify to the fact that there are certain terms in one language that are not easily translated into a second language. Rather than a parallel word in the second language, correct translations often require several sentences. Since language affects the acquisition and use of schemata, different languages must affect a speaker’s repertoire of schemata (Hoffman, Lau, and Johnson 1986, 1098).

Researchers have discovered that a one-word concept, even if it is in a person’s second language, is more easily remembered than a concept in one’s native language that needs several words to be understood (Hoffman, Lau, and Johnson 1986). Studies such as this one suggest that language provides access to

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culturally-specific concepts (Lillard 1998, 8). Unfortunately, quick access to a schema can cause confusion as to whether particular information was actually presented or if it were assumed because it fit the schema. This finding coincides with results of experiments conducted by F. C. Bartlett in 1932. Bartlett had British students read a Native American folktale. The students were then asked to retell the story after varying time delays. The students omitted much of the story, changed many of the facts and added new information. The distortions were systematic, however. The subjects changed elements of the story to fit with their own cultural schemata. This and further research indicates that when subjects read a story that does not fit with their own schemata, “they will exhibit a powerful tendency to distort the story to make it fit” (Anderson 1995, 219).

In 1976, G. Elizabeth Rice performed an experiment where American university students were presented with two altered stories from Eskimo culture. When the students recalled the stories, the researchers found that the subjects had at least three strategies for dealing with missing or confusing structural elements of the story. They either deleted the incomplete episode, condensed two or more episodes, or imported other information to fill the empty space. For example, one element of American story schemata is the “happy ending.” Even though one story gave no evidence of this conclusion, at immediate recall, one subject added a happy ending. At the end of a week, however, five of the eleven subjects had added a happy ending. “The increase over time strongly suggests that the effect is due to schematic processes which interpolate this new material from what is given” (Rice 1980, 167).

Further research is necessary to determine the optimum conditions for accurate communication across cultures, but it is clear from this study that situations in which the schemata of the speaker and hearer are in conflict will result in distortion of the message and diversity of interpretation . . . Anthropologists working in educational or other developmental contexts in other cultures need to be aware of these potential conflicts and to design their materials with an awareness of the culturally appropriate schemata. (Rice 1980, 168)

Another form of schemata consists of information about the self, self-schemata. These are “cognitive generalizations about the self, derived from past experience, that organize and guide the processing of the self-related information contained in an individual’s social experience” (Markus 1977, 63). One series of studies shows that one’s self-schemata influence the processing of information about others. For example, the more positive the self-rating on a characteristic such as independence, the more important that dimension is in perceiving others. Researchers believe that individuals protect their self-images by convincing themselves that their good characteristics are important and their shortcomings are not (Lewicki 1984, 1177-1178). Travel, literacy, formal schooling, religious experiences, and exposure to other cultures cause new schemata to form and may cause alterations to old schemata.

Schemata hold one’s knowledge of various categories. Walter Ong claims that in a primarily oral culture, knowledge is unmanageable in elaborate, scientific categories. “Oral cultures cannot generate such categories, and so they use stories of human action to store, organize, and communicate much of what they know” (Ong 1982, 140).

Jerome Bruner, Jacqueline Goodnow, and George Austin in their book, A Study of Thinking, discuss categorizing and concepts. Categorizing is seen as the base of virtually all cognitive activity. Because of categorization, when confronting an object or event, an individual can go beyond the properties of the object and make inferences about other unobserved properties of the object or event. For example, a nonliterate man in Burkina Faso, West Africa sees a small round object that is green with dimpled peel on the ground at the foot of a tree. He infers that it is an orange. (An American might have difficulty with this categorization because ripe oranges in the United States are not usually green.) Even though he has never touched this particular orange, because the West African is familiar with the category “fruit,” he knows that when he picks up the orange that it is edible, juicy, and will eventually rot if left on the ground. The network of inferences that are set into play by an act of categorization is the working definition of a concept (Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin 1986, 244). For the West African, “fruit” is not the only category applicable to the orange. The West African knows that others will pay money for the orange. Thus, the orange also falls into the category, “things one can sell at the market.” The event of “selling things at the market” brings its own concepts. The man knows he must have more than one orange to make a trip to the market worthwhile, so he gathers a sack of oranges. The act of making inferences because of categorization, con-cept attainment, is an aspect of “thinking” (Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin 1986, 246).

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Categorization is important because it reduces the complexity of the environment while at the same time reducing the necessity of constant learning. The categories people use to break up their world reflect their culture. Language, religion, geography, and science are some examples of influences that can affect categorization. Life is filtered through cultural categories, shaping an individual’s history. (Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin 1986, 10-13). While American salespersons might categorize their clients by the shoes they wear, so an elderly Mossi woman categorizes a visitor by how low her visitor bows while shaking hands.

The ability to classify in an analytic, defining way is often seen as a consequence of formal schooling, literacy, or Western scientific thought. However, nonliterate, unschooled children in Nigeria, once appropriate material was used, showed the same type of classifications as middle-class American children. (Keil 1987, 179). Depending upon the context, nonliterates may show even greater abilities to analyze than a typical Westerner. Nonliterate herbalists in Bolivia use over 1,000 plants within a healing context (Bastien 1992, 39). Australian Aborigines have taxonomies of plants and animals in which they recognize 137 kinds of fish and 65 kinds of shellfish (Worsley 1997, 69). Brent Berlin, in his study of taxonomic categories among nonliterate people, noted that recognized classes of plants and animals are organized into a taxonomic hierarchy (Berlin 1978, 24). Why does the myth that nonliterate people cannot analyze continue?

Much of the myth concerning nonliterate categorization is based on work done by A. R. Luria. Luria worked with nonliterate Uzbekistan farmers over sixty years ago. Luria took the evolutionist view that not just the specific content but the structure of mental activity, the general forms basic to all cognitive processes, change with historical development (Luria 1976, 8). In Luria’s experiments, he would often present four objects, such as a hammer, saw, log, and hatchet, to a nonliterate subject and ask the subject to group those that were similar. Invariably, the subject replied that the items were all in the same category, because “If we don’t pick the log, we won’t have any need of the other three” (Luria 1976, 60-61). The subjects saw no need to compare and group objects in abstract terms and assign them to specific categories. Luria concluded that these subjects did not interpret words as symbols of abstract categories usable for classifying objects and that their thinking was wholly unlike that of subjects trained to perform theoretical operations. Those with just a year or two of schooling were able to shift from situational to abstract thinking. Luria believed that the nonliterates had the capacity to engage in complex, abstract cognitive activities, but refused to, insisting that such an abstract classification did not reflect the intrinsic relationships among the objects. The subjects, on the other hand, felt a person who adopted an abstract arrangement was “stupid” (Luria 1976, 54-55). Luria labeled the nonliterates’ desire to categorize items in a functional manner as “concrete thinking” (Luria 1976, 79).

Michael Cole led a cross-cultural experimental expedition to Liberia in the 1960s. His team conducted various experiments with the Kpelle ethnic group, including categorization experiments with nonliterate as well as literate subjects. He found that objects, all of which were from the Kpelle’s environment, were classified by the Kpelle on the basis of whether the items went with or operated on one other. For example, a potato was classified with a knife because one needs a knife to cut a potato. The nonliterates rarely formed a large group and virtually never justified a classification “in terms of the way things look or their common membership in a taxonomic category” (Cole et al. 1971, 79). The high school subjects, on the other hand, justified their choices in static, categorical terms (Cole et al. 1971, 87). However, Cole noticed that a common Kpelle game was identifying twenty to thirty leaves that were tied to a rope. The object of the game was to name and describe the function of each leaf. A long pause or error and the player was “out.” Cole designed an experiment where subjects classified leaves picked randomly from the forest into two groups, those that came from vines and those that came from trees. As subjects, Cole selected a group of nonliterate Kpelle adults and a group of literate Americans living in the area. The Kpelle performed two times better than the Americans. This led Cole to conclude that although functional pairing was a dominant means of classification, where taxonomic relationships are habitually used, classification is done by taxonomic class (Cole et al. 1971, 90).

Concerning the classification experiments with the Kpelle, Barbara Rogoff quotes an observation made by one of the researchers in the project, Joseph Glick. Glick noted that when the Kpelle sorted the objects into their functional groupings, they would often volunteer that “this is the way a wise man would do things.” One exasperated experimenter asked a subject to sort the items the way a fool would do it. The subject quickly made four neat piles with foods in one, tools in another, and so on (Rogoff 1981, 252).

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Culture determines the categories that a growing member of a society learns (Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin 1986, 232). The nonliterates in Luria’s and Cole’s experiments were focusing on their world where survival might depend upon the ability to use items together. When forced, they could classify things according to taxonomic groupings, but they felt it was useless.

Limited research has been done with nonliterates in the area of sensory memory. L. W. Doob in eastern Nigeria conducted one interesting study in 1964. Working among the Ibo ethnic group, Doob investigated the phenomenon of eidetic imagery. Eidetic images are visual images “persisting after stimulation, relatively accurate in detail, coloured positively, and capable of being scanned” (Haber and Haber 1974, 197). Doob’s study was based on the assumption that eidetic images are present among most children but the tendency to have eidetic images disappears as a child grows older in a literate society. No actual investigation of this kind had previously been conducted in any nonliterate society. In the experiment, the subject was seated twenty inches from a screen made of a blank piece of gray cardboard that was resting on a tilted easel. The subject was first told to fixate his or her eyes on a two-inch red square mounted on cardboard of the same color for ten seconds. The square was removed, and the subject was asked to describe what he saw upon the blank screen and the moment the image disappeared. The subject was then shown a series of four pictures and told to scan the picture for thirty seconds. The pictures were a mixture of either American or Nigerian scenes. Doob found that the “incidence of eidetic imagery in the sample as a whole, and especially among rural adults, is dramatically higher than that normally found in the West” (Doob 1964, 202). Apparently, it made no difference whether the pictures were the culturally irrele-vant American pictures or the Nigerian pictures. Again and again, the nonliterate subjects accurately traced the license numbers on the taxis in one of the pictures. Since they could not read, they must have been using the eidetic image as the guide for moving their fingers. In the villages, a crowd of spectators usually stood behind the seated subjects and observed what was happening. In one instance, the subject stated that the cat in the projected image was black only. Immediately, shouts of disagreement rose from the crowd. The investigator looked up from note-taking to find that the spectators were all concen trating upon the blank screen “as if a projector behind them were flashing the picture there” (Doob 1964, 203). When the people were questioned as to whether they were seeing the pictures after each exposure, fourteen out of the crowd of approximately eighteen adults and children lifted their hands. In response to Doob’s questions, the people told him that they were accustomed to reviving images. For example, some related that in the dark of their houses before falling asleep, they would recall and scan images of the day’s activities (Doob 1964, 203). In further studies (Doob 1966, 1970), Doob was led to speak of eidetic imagery as a cross-cultural “will-o-the-wisp” because of his inability to find high levels of eidetic imagery in other non-Western settings.

In a study of memory, F. C. Bartlett hypothesized in 1932 that rote memory, serial memorizing, is the preferred memory technique of nonliterate people. (Bartlett 1932, 267). Michael Cole disproved these theories in his memory experiments in Liberia in the 1960s (Cole et al. 1971).

Positron emission tomography (PET) may one day settle all the theoretical issues concerning cognitive processes. PET is used to study cognitive processes by monitoring a radioactive tracer that records change in neural activity. Already, experiments have shown that there are different working memory systems for spatial, object, and verbal information, with the spatial system localized more in the right hemisphere and the verbal system more in the left hemisphere of the brain (Smith and Jonides 1997, 5).

Two PET experiments have special significance for the issue of whether literacy restructures the mind. In 1995, a group of experimenters led by P.C. Fletcher used PET to locate the areas of the brain that were activated when subjects silently read three different kinds of stories. The results showed that with simple stories that did not require the readers to empathize with the characters, only three regions of the brain were activated, whereas with stories where the readers identified with the characters, four regions of the brain were activated. The experimenters noted that their results closely resembled an experiment done in 1993 by Mazoyer and others where subjects merely listened to stories (Mazoyer et al. 1993).

Importantly, the brain regions significantly activated in our study were the same as those activated in the Mazoyer et al. study already mentioned. This is remarkable since, in the present study, subjects read the stories in silence, internally answering questions about them,

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while, in the French study, subjects only listened to stories and had no explicit task to perform. (Fletcher et al. 1995, 122)

The same areas of the brain were activated whether the subjects were reading the story or merely listening to the story. In examining the stories used in Mazoyer’s experiment, the stories were found to contain intrigue, competition, and deception. The subjects became involved with the characters by thinking of the characters’ motives and mental states, similar to the way Homer’s nonliterate audience must have done.

Conclusions

Although many Westerners might eschew the concept of the evolution of culture, Western discourse tells another tale. Terms such as “developing nations,” “illiteracy,” and “democratic progress” point to the bias that exists. Western-educated literates often bring this bias with them when they work on West African soil, using such terms as “primitive” and “undeveloped.” Their self-schemata cause them to value Western qualities such as individualism and analytical thinking over West African qualities such as group cohesion and interdependence. Language difficulties often add to the worker’s frustration. As language is the key to understanding cultural schemata, lack of language skills will seriously hinder cultural understanding. Lack of understanding leads to assumptions about cognitive abilities. In any given population, some process information faster than others. Individuals have different cognitive abilities. Research has shown, however, that what appears to be differences in cognition often can be attributed to training rather than inherent ability (Scribner and Cole 1973).

If literacy does not affect one’s cognitive processes, why does there appear to be differences in nonliterate and literate cultures? Literacy increases the amount and kind of information to which one is exposed. Those societies which have had contact with literacy are greatly influenced by the technology of writing. Walter Ong pointed out that a literate asked to think of the word “nevertheless” cannot think of the word for sixty seconds without having some mental image of the letters in the word. “This is to say, a liter -ate person cannot fully recover a sense of what the word is to purely oral people” (Ong 1982, 12). Literacy, by allowing the formation of new schemata in memory, may dim former ones. However, contemporary cognitive psychologists have discovered to their chagrin that “most of us have a primitive mentality much of the time” (Shweder 1984, 36). Like nonliterates, even scientists are prone to dividing their time by social events rather than scientific categories, as they do when they say, “We’ll get together before dinner,” or “Talk to me after work” (Worsley 1997, 163).

One researcher, Jiajie Zhang, points out that writing, like beads on an abacus, is an external representation that serves as a cue to retrieve items from memory. External representations serve other functions besides that of memory aids. Diagrams, graphs, and pictures can affect decision making and problem solving. According to Zhang, external representations need not be re-represented as an internal mental model in order to be involved in problem-solving activities. These representations can directly activate perceptual operations. Thus, in concert with the internal representations, external representations facilitate problem-solving behavior (Zhang 1997, 180-187). This does not mean that the basic cognitive processes change, but that new resources enable the cognitive processes to work more efficiently. Writing, as an external representation that facilitates memory and problem solving, can also inhibit communication (Olson 1996, 100). Body language, for example, is an important key to communication. Oral communication one-on-one facilitates personal relationships and aids in socialization. Those who rely on writing for memory have difficulty negotiating in cultures where oral methods such as proverbs are the tool of choice for expressing cultural wisdom.

Even though literacy provides access to more information, it is the culture that determines what it will do with that information. Western culture uses literacy to advance its values of science, rationalism, and secularism. Other cultures, such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, though highly literate, value social rela-tions and holistic concepts (Choi, Nisbett, and Smith 1997). West African nonliterate communities share these same Asian values and have used traditional nonliterate methods to teach them to their children for thousands of years. In the next chapter, the topic of traditional African education will be explored.

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CHAPTER THREE: TRADITIONAL EDUCATION IN WEST AFRICA

In contemporary thought, the term “education” has become synonymous with Western institutionalized schooling. A. Adu Boahen in his book African Perspectives on Colonialism has so incorporated this idea of education that when describing Africans in the late nineteenth century he speaks of the “educated elite,” those who had attended Western-style missionary schools, as compared to the “traditional and illiterate group” (Boahen 1987, 17). Basil Davidson, in his book Modern Africa, has a section subtitled “The ‘educated few’” (Davidson 1994, 29). The implication is, of course, that the “tradi -tional and illiterate group” was uneducated. Certainly, they lacked literacy, but did they lack education?

Nonliterate education in the traditional African world integrates the individual into society. It includes vocational training as well as moral teaching in formal as well as informal settings (Ayandele 1979, 77). Although general educational principles will be discussed, it should be remembered that each West African society is unique. Some societies such as the Yoruba and the Mande have marked specialization in occupations, with particular political and social hierarchies (Callaway 1975, 26). Even within cultures that do not have social hierarchies, specific skill training will vary. However, general practices based on traditional educational principles can be found within many ethnic groups. Because Traditional African Religion is such an integral part of community life and provides the basis for traditional African educational philosophy, the major tenets of Traditional African Religion will be reviewed.

Traditional African Religion

John S. Mbiti is perhaps the foremost authority on Traditional African Religion. His book, Introduction to African Religion, provides the basis for the insights that follow.

Traditional African Religion is neither ancestor worship, superstition, animism, nor fetishism. It incorporates a belief in a supreme creator, God, who sustains his creation as he rules over the universe. God is seen as father and friend. He is good, just, merciful, holy, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. He is spirit, unchanging, and everlasting. He is also unknowable. In many societies, myths explain that in the beginning, God and humanity were in close contact. For various reasons, all the fault of man, this link was broken and God became distant. It is only through worship, which includes prayer, sacrifice, rituals, and offerings, that the relationship can be somewhat restored.

Prayer is the most common method of approaching God. Sacrifices, which involve the shedding of blood, are offered by the community in times of crisis. Life is closely associated with blood. One life is destroyed in the belief that this will save the lives of many. In the past, human sacrifices were made. Rumors abound concerning the continuation of this practice in some areas today. Animal sacrifices are much more common, however. Offerings that do not involve blood, usually foods or money, are made at holy places such as shrines, hills, sacred forests, or lakes. Sacrifices and offerings are not always given to God directly, since the people believe he does not need such things. Usually, they are offered to lesser spiritual beings such as divinities, spirits, and the spirits of those who have died. These are believed to be the mediators between God and humanity. Although the African people feel they have the freedom to approach God directly, because they feel small in God’s sight, many prefer to use human intermediaries such as priests, kings, medicine men, seers, oracles, diviners, rain-makers, and ritual elders. People go to an intermediary, tell him or her their needs, and usually offer a gift or pay a fee for his or her services. Besides human intermediaries, spiritual beings such as divinities, some spirits, especially those of former national leaders and heroes, and those of the dead who are still remembered are approached for their assistance. The idea of intermediaries corresponds with the African view of the universe where the invisible world, which is higher than that of humanity, has its own life and population. The dead are used as intermediaries because it is believed they speak both human language and the language of the invisible world. This practice of using intermediaries is reflected in social life, as well, as it is often the custom to approach someone of a high status through someone else.

There are many types of spirits, including sky spirits, earth spirits, ghosts, and the living dead. Because the spirits were created by God, they are used by him to do certain tasks. Spirits of the sky are

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associated with the sun, moon, stars, rain, thunder, lightning, and so on. Earth spirits, which are associated with natural elements such as forests, hills, animals and certain diseases, are thought to have human qualities and are spoken of as if they can be offended, pleased, informed, and so on. Life continues after death. Thus, “there must be myriads upon myriads of human spirits” (Mbiti 1975, 70). The majority of these spirits are no longer within personal memory. On the other hand, people who died recently are remembered by their families for up to four or five generations. These living dead are the spirits that matter the most to the family as they are still considered to be part of their families. They live close to their homes and are interested in the life of the surviving family members. The family remembers them by pouring out parts of their drinks or leaving bits of food for them. The living dead may visit their family in dreams or visions in order to give advice or make their wishes known. When they are unhappy, certain rituals must be performed to appease them. Diviners or medicine men are consulted to find out exactly what the ancestors desire. Certain spirits may be used by witches or sorcerers to cause misfortune, sickness, and even death.

There are various myths to explain the reason why death came into the world. Every time a person dies, however, the people look for who caused the death. Even though African people acknowledge death by sickness, accident, or old age, they believe that a particular person will only die from one of these causes because of a human agent. Most deaths are attributed to sorcery, witchcraft, or evil magic. Someone is often blamed for the death. In some cases the suspect may be killed, fined, or exiled. Funeral rites are extremely important and are performed meticulously. Burial usually takes place within twenty-four hours.

There are innumerable rituals and ceremonies in Traditional African Religion. Personal rituals touch all aspects of the maturing process from birth to death. Pregnancy rituals bless and protect the mother and unborn baby. Agricultural rituals insure abundant harvests. Health rituals protect against disease or infertility. Homestead rituals protect life in the home. Rituals involve taboos concerning food and behavior. Festivals are important opportunities to bring the community together in ritualistic fellowship.

Morals keep society from disintegration by dealing with the questions of good and evil in human conduct. African morals emphasize social conduct since a basic African belief is that the individual exists only because others exist. “What strengthens the life of the community is held to be good and right. What weakens the life of the community is held to be evil and wrong” (Mbiti 1975, 177). African families consist of hierarchies based upon age. Older family members have a higher status than younger family members. It is the parents’ duty to educate their children to respect and keep the morals of society. They do this through traditional African education.

The Purpose and Characteristics of Traditional African Education

The goal of traditional education is to discipline all the faculties of the individual to bring out his or her best human qualities at each life stage (Callaway 1975, 27). Because education is closely linked to the family and community, it is particularistic. The focus is on who one is rather than what one accomplishes. Information is valued not for the information itself, but because of who imparted it. Thus, the content of learning is inseparable from the teacher’s identity. Society and institutions are structured to permit children to acquire basic skills, values, attitudes, and customs (Scribner and Cole 1973, 555). Fulfillment comes from understanding one’s place in society. Knowledge is power, treated with respect, and often kept secret from all but those who are considered worthy to have it. A girl who learns secrets from her grandmother, such as recipes for herbal medicines, is not tapping into a store of general knowledge, but receives that knowledge because of her relationship (Riesman 1992, 153).

Education has a broad character. Religion and the sacred are present in all of life and are accorded a primary place of importance. In many societies, the chief and his sub-chiefs rule society because they are the most direct and senior descendants of the ancestors who founded the group. These ancestors, because they are thought to be close to God, have great power. Children are taught at a young age the importance of religious ritual and obedience. The belief that the ancestors will punish transgressors is a strong impetus to behave according to appropriate norms for society. Thus, the real force in society is religious belief. One sign of the power of this force is the absence of any police in traditional society. When chiefs or healers order people to do things, it is the religious belief of the people that compels them to obey (Turnbull 1966, 212-213).

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Education is in a sense complete when one understands and fulfills the responsibilities of being a relative.

Being a relative means showing deference and obedience to parents and elder siblings; it means visiting and talking with all relatives who share life in the same village as you; it means paying visits to relatives living elsewhere either just to see them or on the occasion of an important event, such as a death or a naming ceremony; it means calling on your relatives for help when you need it, and helping them when they do; and it means offering moral and material support to your children even while they begin to take on the job of maintaining you in your old age. (Riesman 1992, 183)

Understanding what it means to be a relative means developing social sense. Since children before the age of five do not understand their place in the family or society, they are watched but not always corrected. When parents correct young children, they do so gently and in an encouraging manner. Parents do not use force with young children because they believe all young children act in the same manner. Unlike Westerners who believe children’s characters are shaped by the parent, many West African ethnic groups such as the Fulani believe that the parents’ care or training has little impact on how a child will mature. Character is transmitted in some natural way or is given by God at birth, not shaped by culture or learning (Riesman 1992, 163). Mothers invest love, care, and effort in their children because that is what mothers do. Parents and child form a unit that will remain until death. The goal is not to rear a child to go forth into the world as a representative of his or her parents, but to live close by and maintain a lifelong relationship. Thus, the father who keeps his distance from his child is not trying to shape the child’s character, but their future relationship. By keeping his distance, a father ensures that the child’s fear of him will facilitate the child’s obedience when he or she is an adult. One older man who, contrary to his previous behavior, played frequently with his young son explained his actions by noting that he would be dead before the child was old enough for their closeness to cause problems (Riesman 1992, 174).

In Yoruba society, an elaborate code of unwritten rules prescribes how one can sustain correct relations throughout the visible and invisible world. Wisdom is the ability to understand this code and apply the rules in everyday situations as well as times of conflict or crisis.

Thus when a young man carried the load for a senior or a girl served an elder woman on her knees, these gestures were viewed not as mere routine courtesies but as visible signs that these young people were gaining an understanding of the conceptual patterns ordering the Yoruba universe and the related requirements for certain conduct. They were showing the beginnings of wisdom.(Callaway 1975, 28)

In the same way, Fulani consider an essential component of intelligence to be sensitivity to social context and the ability to choose the most appropriate course of action from a variety of possibilities (Riesman 1992, 170).

Young West African children go everywhere with their mothers, learning much practical knowledge. They have almost complete freedom to explore their immediate world. Older siblings or relatives are quick to help with childcare. It is when children begin to develop social sense, between the ages of five and seven, that adults change their expectations. Children of this age are given responsibilities. Adults show little patience with disobedience or disrespect. Knowing better means knowing who one is, that one is someone’s relative and thus that one’s behavior reflects on the entire family. Parents will yell at a disobedient child or threaten him or her in the presence of other adults, who will then make a big show of calming the parent. The child thus learns that he or she can depend upon the community for protection. Lack of verbal praise or specific rewards does not make children feel unloved. They know they are loved for who they are, relatives. Parents are responsible for protecting their children from harm and providing care. Once, however, parents have provided a material start in life and shared their knowledge, when their children are grown, they have fulfilled their duty as a parent. Adult children will maintain the family relationships because they have been reared to know their responsibilities (Riesman 1992). Intelligence and wisdom are expected to match one’s age. Thus, those who have experienced life the longest are expected to know more than younger people. The elderly remain productive throughout their lives. (Williams 1987, 165).

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Traditional African education provides no excess skill, no idle hands, and no unemployment. The curriculum is not compartmentalized into separate courses that are taught on specific dates and times. Training is continuous because teachers are always available (Ayandele 1979, 290). Because children are not only a benefit to their parents but to the community at large, it is the community that is the primary educational agent (Brown and Hiskett 1975, 22).

The organizational structure through which traditional society functions is the age-grade or age-set. All persons born in the same year or in a block of certain years are considered to be in the same age-grade. Each grade has its own social, economic, and political roles. The interlocking responsibilities of the various age-sets helps society to function smoothly (Williams 1987, 166). Mentoring is an important aspect of the educational process, with the older taking responsibility for educating the younger.

In traditional African education, nothing in the universe of adult behavior is hidden from children. The social sphere is differentiated only in terms of one’s capacity. Thus, from the beginning, children are oriented to the same reality as their parents. Children do not need to be encouraged to take part in economic and social activities. They are eager to imitate their parents (Fortes 1970, 205).

Because traditional African education is tied closely to the environment, integration with productive work is established at an early age. Every experience, even play, becomes a learning experience (Désalmand 1990, 126-127). Among the Tallensi of northern Ghana, for example, children of five or six accompany their parents as they take care of the crops. They will help scare the birds from the fields and begin to use a hoe in the company of older siblings in a sense of half-play, half-work. Parents seldom interfere, except perhaps to show them how to hold a hoe properly (Turnbull 1966, 60-61). By the age of six to nine, children’s duties are fully established. Boys help in building houses, herding cattle, and farming. If the boy’s father is a craftsmen, the boy will observe his father and provide assistance when asked. Girls care for infants and smaller children. They help in tasks such as food preparation and may search for wild edible herbs. By the age of twelve, a girl can usually be entrusted with all domestic duties and may even be sent to the market to buy and sell. By the age of fifteen, marriage is a near prospect (Datta 1984, 4-5).

The Yoruba language specifies two learning methods. Learning by imitation of older youth and adults is termed awoko, whereas learning by active instruction of adults is termed ifiye. Active instruction is given in number sense by instructing the child in addition and subtraction using stones. The child is also taught to use various weights and measures. In the evening, the father or an older member of the family will gather the children, tell them stories, and pose riddles. As a test of memory, children are asked to repeat the previous night’s episode. They are thus given the opportunity to develop narrative skills. This active instruction introduces children to a wide range of oral art including myths, proverbs, and epic poems. Such instruction gives young people a heightened awareness of the comic and tragic dimensions of human life besides teaching them moral values. (Callaway 1975, 29).

Oral Forms of Knowledge Transmission

Part of developing social sense is learning to use language as a tool to denote one’s status. Most West African cultures have some form of greeting ritual. Some, like the Wolof of Senegal, use elaborate greeting rituals to signal and negotiate status relations. The person of lower status initiates the greeting and continues to initiate subsequent, optional, verbal sequences. This person may be younger, of a lower social class, or assuming lower status in order to show respect to the other. Prolonging these verbal sequences emphasizes one’s lower status as does the selection and sequence of formula sentences. Stress, pitch, rate, and verbosity are all used within an encounter to signal demeanor and willingness or unwillingness to broach other topics. Thus, messages are passed between the participants that have little to do with what is actually said (Bilmes and Boggs 1979, 68-69). Some ethnic groups have different greeting rituals for the different sexes. Most formula sentences change with the time of day. For example, in the Jula language, the morning greetings consist of, “Good morning.” The standard reply is, “Did you pass the night in peace?” “Peace,” is the reply. “How is the family?” “They are fine.” “How is your wife/husband?” “Peace.” “How are your children?” “They exist.” These questions can continue indefinitely. It does not matter if one’s wife is on her deathbed, the answer will always be “Peace,” or “She is fine.” When one signals by his or her demeanor that the greetings are coming to an end, the participants are then free to discuss the actual

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condition of the family members. Many ethnic groups also use body language during greetings to transfer social information. Most groups shake hands. Some show respect by shaking the right hand while folding the left hand across the chest or grasping one’s own right wrist. Between Mossi women, for example, the one wishing to show respect to the other will bow in a type of curtsy. Occasionally such greetings turn into contests to see who can bow the lowest. The expression of status is less a reflection of one’s personal feeling about one’s self as it is a desire to show respect to the other. Refusing to greet someone or go through the formula sentences is considered a serious snub in West African culture. In traditional education, children must learn the social maneuverings as well as the formula sentences, often in the form of blessings, that are spoken at particular events such as births, illnesses, or deaths.

Another way of communicating status through speech is the “joking relationship.” This institution is prevalent in many West African ethnic groups such as the Fula, Wolof, Songhai, and those ethnic groups associated with Mande culture. A joking relationship is characterized by stylized insolence.

Joking relationships are social contracts that allow individuals to hurl insults at each other in a benign, often public environment where retribution takes the form of additional insults . . .Because there are arrangements between clans, the history, reputations, and general worthiness of each participant’s family or clan membership are often held up for enormous amounts of ridicule. (McNaughton 1993, 10)

Joking relationships signal alliances. These alliances unite and oppose people at the same time. Such relationships sometimes begin when an individual assists someone else from a different ethnic group or clan. The debt and repayment extends beyond the original actors, uniting the represented groups in a mutually beneficial alliance. Often, those in joking relationships will be good friends. Sitting together in the evening hours, they exchange derogatory legends about one another, “often to the accompaniment of uproarious laughter” (McNaughton 1993, 10).

Traditional African education includes a rich tradition of oral art. Lyrical poetry encompasses every stage of life for the person as an individual, in his or her social relationships, daily activities, solemn occasions, and festive celebrations (Belinga and Minyono-Nkodo 1978, 4). Some languages, such as Yoruba, are so saturated with metaphors that normal speech often resembles prose. Parents teach their children praises to the ancestors. Farmers and artisans call out verses to the rhythm of their work. Hunters’ special forms of verse dedicated to the adventures of hunting are often spiced with humor. Special occasions are celebrated with poetry. Professional bards sing praises to the rulers, improvising on current events and on the actions and character of those in control (Callaway 1975, 30).

It is through epic poetry that children learn of the exploits of cultural heroes. The Mande language group, for example, has an extensive tradition of political epics recounting the rise and fall of the great West African kingdoms and the adventures of their associated heroes (Bird and Kendall 1980, 17). The epic poet creates and recreates the poem as elements of mythology, history, legends, and praise songs are combined. The poet may isolate a particular time period, such as a war, giving a long elaboration of the happenings during that period. The typical structure of an epic poem includes comparisons, a structured beginning and ending, repetitions of particular short verses, and descriptions of the various scenes in the poem. The poet will spend time explaining to the audience why the story is worthy to be repeated. The recitations are almost always given with musical accompaniment. Some experienced poets are able to improvise and recite in an instant (Belinga 1978, 27). Heroic poems may have originated thousands of years previously, but they are constantly reshaped for the contemporary context. The songs speak of behaviors and ideologies that are currently relevant (Bird and Kendall 1980, 21).

Legends and myths are important parts of the education process. Mythology is a collection of sacred stories about a society’s history. Some myths deal with religious beliefs, divine or supernatural beings, and family ancestry (Boateng 1985, 114).

Fables, stories that convey moral lessons, are frequently used as teaching devices. Many of these tales were constructed to teach cultural values to children without “necessarily and formally telling them what to do and how to do it” (Boateng 1985, 111). One fable from Burkina Faso, for example, tells how each of three men from different ethnic groups crossed a pond by relying on an item associated with his particular culture. One man cut a path through the water with his sword, another unrolled his turban and pulled himself across, and the third formed a bridge by shooting arrows into a tree. The moral of the story is

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expressed by one of the men, “Each of us is as clever as the other” (Conseil International de la Langue Française 1985, 74). 

“A wise child is talked to in proverbs” is a Twi maxim that illustrates the importance of proverbs in traditional African education. “The male cat is not one man’s pet” is often told to children who complain that too many adults are sending them on errands or requesting their services (Boateng 1985, 118). Proverbs are a way of fixing in memory those truths that are necessary for successful social relationships. “One’s relatives are a cloak of nettles” is a Fulani proverb that stresses the idea that even though relatives cling and can hurt one, they also prevent one from being harmed by others (Riesman 1992, 150). Proverbs are easily remembered and are often cited by the elders or chiefs as points of law. “A judge in an oral culture is often called on to articulate sets of relevant proverbs out of which he can produce equitable decisions in the cases under formal litigation before him” (Ong 1982, 35). The lessons inherent in proverbs are easily adaptable to the situation. Consider the proverb, “One looks at a path before setting foot on it.” A friend may quote this proverb to a young man who is asked to do a job that is challenging but which the young man is not certain he can accomplish. If the young man is unable to complete the job, the same proverb could be quoted to him as a reproach by the person who asked him to do the job. The same proverb also could have been cited by the young man as an excuse for hesitating to do the job (Cauvin 1980, 38).

The French term griot is a general term for a professional oral artist, though the term has different connotations in various local contexts (Schulz 1997, 462). In Mali, for example, griots played an important role in the past as public speakers, family historians, and musicians. Their presence lent legitimacy to the rule of various kings and chiefs. At public events, griot men expounded elaborate speeches concerning the noble origins and legendary pasts of their patrons. Griot women sang songs praising the accomplishments of eminent family members. “If necessary, griots would rearrange the history of a chiefdom, omitting the less praiseworthy details of a patron’s family history” (Schulz 1997, 443, 445). Bards manipulate historical details in order to motivate their audiences. Mande bards, jeliw, have the task of filling the people with the desire to live up to their potential so that society remains solid and vigorous. Because words are considered to be full of special energy, they can be dangerous if they are misused. Bards are believed to possess great power which they are trained to manipulate. This power frequently manifests itself through the sting of sarcasm and the bite of social commentary. Because the people hold professional bards in awe, jeliw have social, economic, and political clout. Some bards have toured the United States and Europe and acquired worldwide followings. Many also enjoy sizable incomes (McNaughton 1993, 6-7).

Formal Settings for the Transmission of Specialized Knowledge

Formal education is any process of knowledge transmission that is deliberately organized to fulfill a specific purpose or transmit specialized knowledge, placed in a setting away from daily life, carried out according to specific routines, and made the responsibility of the larger social group (Scribner and Cole 1973, 555). Western institutionalized schools fit this definition. In traditional African education, apprenticeships, initiation ceremonies, secret societies, and divination schools also fit this definition. In traditional African education, however, learning is not depersonalized but is linked to the social status of the teachers.

In the apprenticeship system, boys and girls are taught practical skills and the techniques of specialized arts and crafts by older family members or, in some cases, by outsiders (Williams 1987, 166). Colonialists misunderstood and thus banned the Yoruba tradition of iwofa, thinking the Yoruba were selling their children. The Yoruba viewed the tradition differently. A man who needed money would borrow a sum and pay the interest by giving his brother or his child for service. When the principal was paid, the period of labor ended. This tradition involved a legal transaction protected by customary law. A rich man who wanted his children to learn good work habits would use iwofa as a means of disciplining his children. A father who wanted his son to learn a particular trade would apprentice him to a craftsman. Iwofa thus provided a credit system, labor service and apprenticeship opportunities (Callaway 1975, 31).

One researcher who investigated the apprenticeship system among tailors in contemporary Liberia noted that a master tailor usually has one or two apprentices at a time. Over a period of ten years, the master tailor may produce three or four masters of his own. Tailors teach their nonliterate apprentices traditional arithmetic methods that they use successfully. The researchers concluded that there was no

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support for the idea that “a skill learned incidentally in the course of daily activities necessarily leads to less general understanding than one learned ‘from the top down’ in school” (Reed and Lave 1981, 452).

In Western cultures, as children make the transition from youth to adulthood, the sexual maturing process is often accompanied by varying degrees of conflict and difficulty in intergenerational communication. In traditional African societies, initiation ceremonies help African youth to avoid this break in communication and all the attendant negative reactions. African parents do not evade the issue of their child ’s approaching adulthood, but share the responsibility of providing counsel with the rest of the community. The child is not singled out for “parental advice” but shares the ordeal with his or her age-set (Boateng 1985, 118-119). Some societies’ initiation rites are designed only to provide a distinct transition from childhood to adulthood. Other societies include in the initiation process admittance to secret societies. Initiation into secret societies differs according to the beliefs and practices of the particular community. Generally, to undergo initiation, a boy or girl, after having reached puberty at about age eleven, enters the secret society. The long and complicated ritual that ensues is a form of intensified education which formally opens the gates of adulthood. Instruction usually takes place in training camps or schools that are isolated from the community and may include learning complicated ritual dances, secret languages, sacred myths, and magical practices. Dramatic rituals impress community traditions deep into the young initiate’s consciousness. Tests of endurance, courage, and skill may also be included. For boys, these may entail hunting, circumcision, prolonged silence, and exposure to the elements. Girls learn cultural secrets that will help them be good marriage partners. Often, the youths undergo privation and physical pain. (Boateng 1985, 118-119). Some initiation schools last as long as four years whereas others are only a few days. Some include instruction and experience in sexual practices (Scanlon 1964, 23). In some societies, such as the Lobi, both boys and girls attend the initiation camps together. If a child dies during the initiation school, his parents are not allowed to mourn but must pretend that the child never existed.

It is because of the physical suffering as well as the spread of Islam that some youths have rebelled. One such rebellion occurred in the 1940s, in the community of Korhogo in Côte d’Ivoire. “One way or the other the rebels held their ground, refusing to give in to threats or beatings, and demonstrating, by their very survival, their triumph over the mystical powers of the lo societies. This example sparked off a movement that led in a decade to the abolition of virtually all the Dyula initiation societies in the region” (Launay 1992, 65). Secret societies still exist throughout most of West Africa, however. Some, such as the Poro, a secret society for men, and the Sande, a secret society for women, continue to wield significant political power.

In divination schools, such as those in Yoruba society, diviners estimate the length of time required to complete the apprenticeship program as a minimum of ten to fifteen years. Training begins when the trainee is separated from his home, initiated into the relevant cult, and placed under distinct authority. Several years of continuous training in rituals and occult realities are required before the student is allowed to divine by himself. The systematic program of instruction continues virtually throughout a diviner’s lifetime (Akinnaso 1992, 88-90).

Conclusions

Much can be learned from traditional African education. In chapter 5, suggestions on how the Western-educated literate can use traditional methodologies to enhance his or her instruction will be discussed. Unfortunately, with the spread of Western education and the increasing urbanization of West Africa, there is a growing breakdown in traditional African education.

Approximately one thousand years before the coming of Western education, another system of education was introduced into West African life. This educational system, Islamic education, will be explored in chapter 4.

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CHAPTER FOUR: ISLAMIC EDUCATION IN WEST AFRICA

Islamic education is a product of Arabia, not West Africa. When it appeared on West African soil, it blended with the environment such that today, the sight of a huddled mass of young boys under the shade of a mango tree reciting the Koran to their teacher is considered a typical African scene. How did Islamic education grow from being a foreign import to a characteristic feature of much of African life? What characteristics made Islamic education uniquely suited to West Africa?

Islam is an Arabic word meaning submission, submission to the will of God. A Muslim is one who submits. Muslims believe that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad was Allah’s messenger. In orthodox Islam, there are no central doctrinal authorities and no priesthood. Because all Muslims are equal before Allah, God, any Muslim can lead prayers and give sermons. Each individual is responsible for his or her actions (Lippman 1995, 1-3). Muslims believe that God revealed his will to humanity through a written message brought by apostles. The Koran, a transcript of a tablet preserved in heaven, is considered the last revelation and a completion of Jewish and Christian scriptures (Guillaume 1956, 55, 63). Dictated by God through an angel to Muhammad, the Koran is the earthly manifestation of God’s presence. It is believed to have been dictated in a single language, Arabic, in approximately twenty years. As Muslims only recite the Koran in Arabic, learning to read or recite Arabic is fundamental to Islamic education (Lippman 1995, 57).

Some Muslims insist that Muhammad was nonliterate, communicating orally to different audiences. This fact helps to explain the repetitiveness of the written text of the Koran, an effect similar to the formula repetition in Greek epic poetry where phrases and themes recur throughout the text. Koranic verses are in a style of rhymed prose. Though the verses are not metrical, they usually end with rhymes or similar sounds (Lippman 1995, 37, 60-64). Koranic verses are not merely read or spoken. Instead, they are chanted, often by men who spend years studying recitation as an art form. Koran recitation is considered a profession as evidenced by an international association and members who review one another’s credentials. Many of the reciters are blind. Read aloud in Arabic, the “Koran commands attention and is more powerful in spiritual impact than the mere meaning of the words can convey” (Lippman 1995, 64, 59).

West Africa’s first contact with Islam was probably made in the eighth century when Muslim traders began to work their way from North to West Africa. In A. D. 745, the search for gold prompted the governor of what is now Tunisia and part of eastern Algeria to order that wells be dug along the trade routes across the western Sahara to West Africa (Clarke 1982, 8-10). The Arabs called the land south of the Sahara “The Land of the Blacks,” or “Bilad-as-Sudan.” Historically, the broad belt of savanna located between the Sahara Desert and the tropical forest and between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea was termed the Sudan. Today, this area roughly covers all or part of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Northern Nigeria, Chad, and the Sudan (Osae, Nwabara, and Odunsi 1973, 13).

Muslims from North Africa lived in almost all of the cities of the Sudan, as merchants, clerics, or men who combined both skills. They imported not only goods to be sold, but also Islam and Islamic culture. Although they were in the minority, Muslims were highly influential. Their Arabic literacy and administrative skills were prized in the various Sudanese kingdoms. In the Kingdom of Ghana, the majority of the kings’ ministers, as well as his interpreters and the controller of his treasury were Muslims, though the kings themselves resisted Islam (Osae, Nwabara, and Odunsi 1973, 17-19).

The Purpose and Characteristics of Islamic Education

Islamic education began in West Africa from the time Islam was first introduced. Mosques served as centers of learning. Unlike traditional African education, Islamic education did not teach practical skills using the vernacular language. Instead, Islamic learning centered around the Koran and learning the language of the Koran, Arabic. Islam is a holistic, all-embracing religion. Islamic education thus deals with humanity’s duties to God and society. Islamic education serves as the backbone of the Muslim faith and culture, inseparable from the religion itself. Students must become thoroughly acquainted with the rituals of worship, principles of theology, and Islamic law. Thus, Islamic education, distinct from traditional African or Western education, is designed uniquely to lead to a greater understanding of Islam (Lasisi 1995, 12-14).

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Then, as now, knowledge is expressed as a thorough mastery of the Koran followed by an understanding of authorized traditions and specialized disciplines. Knowledge is also self-knowledge, “entering the domain of mystical experience by the paths of numerology and divination” (O’Brien 1988, 15). The quest for religious knowledge, ‘ilm, is every Muslim’s duty. Those who seek knowledge are considered to be on a path to paradise. Angels are supposed to spread their wings to facilitate the mission of the scholar, and learned men are considered successors of prophets (Tibawi 1997, 8).

Islamic scholarship is about both service and power. Power is seen as coming primarily from God. Thus, to be a servant or friend of God is to have potential access to that power. Scholars who have undergone years of apprenticeship are seen to have the keys to unlocking not only God’s power, but the power that God has locked into his creation, be it plants, minerals, animals, human beings, spirits, or even words (Last 1988, 187). This power is seen to emanate from tradition. “Tradition implies the sacred, the eternal, the immutable Truth; the perennial wisdom, as well as the continuous application of its immutable principles to various conditions of space and time” (Nasr 1987, 13). “Tradition, therefore, is like a tree, the roots of which are sunk through revelation in the Divine Nature and from which the trunk and branches have grown over the ages. At the heart of the tree of tradition resides religion, and its sap consists of that grace or barakah which, originating with the revelation, makes possible the continuity of the life of the tree” (Nasr 1987, 13). Barakah, or charisma as some have called it, is a sacred power that emanates from Muslim saints, their tombs, their descendants, or anything associated with them (Trimingham 1968, 10). It can also result from special acts, such as keeping charitable deeds private (Jalloh 1997a, 80).

Islamic society is not based upon individualism. Rather, it is an extended network of religious, economic, and familial relationships. “Islamic society is one in which the individual is related to an organic social manifold within which he finds meaning and support” (Nasr 1987, 117). In the late nineteenth century, for example, leaders of various ethnic groups in Freetown, Sierra Leone came together as Muslims to pursue particular policies with the colonial authorities. The vast social network encouraged the spread of Islamic learning as traders’ resources enabled them to reach out to non-Muslims, extending and reproducing their social and cultural practices (Howard 1997, 49, 45).

Part of what enabled the Muslim community to grow was the use of one language, Arabic. There is no trustworthy record of any Arabic literature before the Koran. In Arabia, prior to the Koran, bards repeated history from generation to generation in the form of verse (Guillaume 1956, 5). Because Muslims believe that Arabic is the language of God, the language has a charismatic and sacramental nature. There is no parallel in the Christian tradition (Brown and Hiskett 1975, 94). In Nigeria, the history of writing in Arabic extends over a period close to eight hundred years. In Sierra Leone as elsewhere, because Muslim scholars were used as scribes and interpreters in the late eighteenth century, Arabic became the language used for political and diplomatic correspondence. In many of the northern areas of Sierra Leone, scholars were also used as mediators in disputes between the ruling clans (Skinner 1997, 10). Today, the use of Arabic as a literary language and as a general language of written communication has become more widespread, even as the use of English and certain African languages increases (Hunwick 1997, 1).

Besides Arabic, two other strengths of Islam are its communal rituals and its comprehensive character. Much of the basis of Islam is community. Various public or private rituals, which encompass all human relationships and action, bind the community together (Skinner 1997, 8). Islam is absorbed and maintains its hold because it is not just a system of beliefs but a way of life. “It teaches and binds by ritual, and issues forth in the relatedness and conduct of the community, and is organized and perpetrated in the institution . . . Heresy can only be practical, in other words, nonconformity with accepted forms of behavior” (Trimingham 1968, 53). As in Traditional African Religion, ritual is the connecting link between daily life and eternity. It is socially significant in that it brings the community together at regular times for customary observances, “thus confirming to its members and affirming before the world its significance as a religious unit” (Trimingham 1968, 54).

Because of the sense of community created through ritual and common beliefs, Muslims have a common bond with Muslims of other ethnic groups. Wherever they travel, Muslims can find hospitality with other Muslims. Across the centuries, Muslims have benefited economically from their religious ties. During the colonial period in Sierra Leone, for example, interpersonal relationships developed among the Fula merchants that were based on loyalty and trust grounded in Islam. Credit was extended to other Muslim traders, such as the Jula, because of this trust (Jalloh 1997a, 68).

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The Forms and Methodology of Islamic Education

Threads of similarity run through Islamic education practices throughout the different West African countries. From the early days of its inception in West Africa until today, Islamic education has been divided into three levels. The first level, the only compulsory level, can begin for a child as young as three or four. In this level, the Koran is introduced in Arabic. This level is divided into courses, with some teachers having four courses and others six. During this level, pupils learn how to observe the daily prayers, study the history of the life of the Prophet Muhammad as well as other prophets, and learn various aspects of Islam. Pupils advance to the next course or level at their own rate of learning or may choose not to continue if they so desire (Lasisi 1995, 14). It is in the first level that children learn that the Koran, the book itself, is the “holy of holies.” One never drinks, smokes, or converses while it is being read aloud. A talisman against evil, the book must always rest on top of other books, never beneath them. In many places, children learn all of its approximately 6200 verses by heart. Other schools require memorization of select passages (Guillaume 1956, 74).

The second level of Islamic education consists of learning the meaning of the Koran in the local language. Many times it is only those who wish to become teachers themselves who pass to this level. Although most pupils prefer to look for another teacher, learning may take place under the same teacher. During this level, pupils begin receiving instruction in Islamic divination, medicine and astrology (Lasisi 1995, 14). Because of this instruction, students have the possibility of earning money from selling charms or amulets.

The last level, and one that can continue for a lifetime, is one of specialization. It is not easily distinguished from the second level. Students may seek special knowledge in the traditions surrounding Muhammad, known as the hadith, or in areas of Islamic jurisprudence or mysticism. Pupils often travel great distances to study with a particular scholar. In the past, scholars themselves traveled from place to place in search of students. A scholar’s esteem was often linked to the amount of travel he had done. Because of this aspect of study, when Islamic education began in West Africa, it was not long before communities of scholars developed throughout the Sudan (Lasisi 1995, 14).

Different ethnic groups may have different stipulations for their scholars. Among the Jula in the twentieth century, the term for teacher, karamoko, is used only for those who have completed the study of three specific works. These works consist of an advanced Koranic commentary, an ethical work based upon the life of Muhammad, and a comprehensive work on Islamic law. The works are frequently read together under the tutelage of one teacher. A student seldom starts work upon them until thirty years of age. The scholars prefer to recruit only those who have shown evidence of both piety and social responsibility. Students may remain attached to their teachers for many years as they assist in teaching elementary Koranic groups. They usually study three to four hours a day for five days a week, spending the rest of the time farming, in private study, or prayer. When the study has been completed, the student is presented with a written certificate and is allowed to wear the turban, a tradition going back to the fifteenth century. The newly acknowledged karamoko will usually enter the teaching field, though some go on to further studies after which they are entitled to carry a staff and wear a decorated robe. Being a karamoko is a matter of achievement, not a matter of birth. Individual karamoko may even be non-Jula (Wilks 1968, 168-170).

The Fula use their own language for oral exposition and rhetorical training, emphasizing vernacular exegesis along with reading and writing in Arabic. Through the work of the Fula scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Fula language became “a half-way house between the penalty of primitive stigma and the merits of revealed truth” (Sanneh 1997, 133). The use of the vernacular was the only way to rapidly disseminate Islamic knowledge to nonliterate West Africans. Islamic verse preceded prose in both the Fula and Hausa languages. Since Islamic scholars competed with traditional poets and bards for the attention of the people, some have suggested that the scholars resorted to similar techniques. As Islamic verse became more elaborate, however, it became more like classical Arabic poetry (Levtzion 1994, VII 27).

Koranic schools, the first level of education, have a long history in West Africa. In 1900, the British estimated that there were 250,000 students in Koranic schools in northern Nigeria alone (Azarya 1978, 242). Schools are often centered around mosques but also appear in courtyards, under trees, beside a busy

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street, or in elegant buildings, wherever there is a teacher willing and able to lead a class. They are “something like a moveable feast” (Sanneh 1997, 132). Often someone will begin teaching his own chil-dren, then neighbors will send their children. Schools are generally small, with usually less than twenty pupils. As teachers do not charge for instruction, teachers may also farm or have other occupations. The pupils’ parents give the teacher gifts, however, as their children pass various levels of learning or on festive occasions. The teacher may also add to his income by making charms or amulets. In cities, schools may have three sessions during the day. In village schools where there is farming to be done, lessons are given early in the morning and in late afternoon (Trimingham 1968, 60). The children help with chores such as gathering wood for a nightly bonfire whereby they recite the Koranic verses they have copied on their slates during the day. In an autobiographical sketch of his experience in Koranic school, Lamin Sanneh speaks of this nightly ritual.

Teacher would have us believe that our fire was different than heathen fires. The heathen, he said, treat fire as an object of worship, their egos absorbed in its rage as they fret distractedly after salvation and immortality, rather than being tamed with the word from high. . . at the Last Day, when all the souls were assembled before the judgment throne of God, the flames of the Qur’an school would rise before God as our witnesses to plead for mercy and forgiveness. He said that on the strength of that plea God would wipe out our sins, increase our merit, and count to our benefit all the good works we had done on earth. (Sanneh 1997, 131)

There are various accounts as to the opportunities for girls in Koranic schools. Much depends upon the community. In references to Islamic education in the provinces of Sierra Leone in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, there was only one specific reference to a class of girls. The researcher attributed this neglect to the fact that Islam defines women by their roles as wives and mothers. Thus, education beyond a few years of primary Islamic education is sometimes considered a waste of time (Ojukutu-Macauley l997, 93).

The obvious text used in the schools is the Koran, from which the pupils learn to read and write. Memorization is by the rote method. Reading consists of chanting the Koran according to specific rules of Koranic recitation. The pupils recite their lessons aloud until the teacher approves their memorization. They also write passages of the Koran on a wooden slate with a special pen and locally made black ink (Jalloh 1997b, 57). A common practice is for the students to collect the water with which they wash their slates, putting the water in a bottle to be used as medicine. The teacher may point out the sections of the Koran that are useful in this way (Sanneh 1997, 137). The teacher is highly esteemed because of the belief that he is a source of barakah. Parents, eager for their children to receive this power, entrust their children into his care (Jalloh 1997b, 58). The teacher’s task is to lead and educate, with discipline, vigilance, and often a bamboo cane to back up his barakah. “Without the cane the gathered children would be a mere herd, good for the wild but scarcely for the garden of learning. Teacher valued the cane for that reason and carried it, often across his shoulder, as a professional emblem” (Sanneh 1997, 127).

Besides Koranic schools, Islamic education is known for its centers of learning. The earliest centers of learning in Nigeria date back to the 1480s. In Timbuktu, Mali, a center of learning comparable to a medieval university developed around the Sankore mosque. The mosque, built during the time of the Mali Empire, did double duty as a university as well as a place of worship (July 1992, 55). Students and teachers came from all parts of the Sudan as well as from abroad (Osae, Nwabara, and Odunsi 1973, 18). Leo Africanus, an Arab who visited the western Sudan in 1510 (Imperato 1989, 22), described the numerous libraries of Timbuktu, noting that more profit was made from the sale of books than from any other line of business (Hargreaves 1967, 25). Towns such as Timbuktu and Kano drew scholars from throughout the Sudan, men who came to sit at the feet of more learned men and “increase their wisdom through the study of books” (Goody 1968, 218). Paper or books imported from North Africa or Egypt were expensive. Some-times scholars would make copies of important texts during their pilgrimages. Others copied manuscripts locally, occasionally summarizing or blending material from several texts into a new work. Teachers also versified some of them to facilitate rote learning (Hunwick 1997, 9). In a nonliterate society, even restricted literacy boosted the prestige of the Muslims, individually and collectively (Levtzion 1994, VI 13).

As mentioned previously, Islamic scholars were very mobile, making pilgrimages and traveling from place to place to study and preach. Because of their travel, they were often strangers to the local rulers. Their detachment from the local political scene enhanced their possibilities for employment as scribes or

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advisors to the local rulers. The great majority of these peripatetic clerics were Fula. They thus controlled the most prestigious religious positions (Azarya 1978, 44). Jack Goody notes that the system of a scholarly man traveling to study with another is an indication of the restricted level of literacy, as “the movement of media has not yet effectively supplemented the movement of people essential to oral transmission” (Goody 1968, 208).

Islamic education held its own during the colonial period, dominating Western schools. Those Muslim students who attended government schools continued to go to traditional Koranic schools (Azarya 1978, 100). Sokoto, in northern Nigeria, was an Islamic state that had been established in the early 1800s by the Fula scholar Shehu Usuman dan Fodio following a successful jihad, a holy war. The state was to have been an example of a perfect Islamic state. By the time of British colonialization in 1903, however, the Sokoto religious leaders were no longer following the Shehu’s command to search after knowledge as far as China and communicate this knowledge to make the land a land of informed Muslims. “The reforming Muslim Fulani, who in the past had freely criticized the Hausa rulers, had themselves become the Establishment with all the worldly responsibilities, and need to compromise that this entailed. And then the British came from the ‘infidel south’ and the Muslims felt that all which had given their society defi -nition and meaning was threatened” (Trevor 1975, 247-248). Because the British ruled through the Muslim political leaders, the Emirs, the local leaders were shielded from the criticism of Islamic scholars who had traditionally criticized them for being too worldly. The Muslim leaders met the British governor for Northern Nigeria, Sir Frederick Lugard, with their customary diplomacy. “It was and still is their custom to meet a would-be innovator with tact and charm and so put him at his ease (and off his guard), while they estimate his worth” (Trevor 1975, 249). Lugard respected the moral discipline of the Islamic education system. Whereas the government had left the educational initiatives in southern Nigeria in the hands of Christian missionaries, in northern Nigeria, the colonial government took over the responsibility for schools in the Muslim areas. The purpose of British schools was to educate the sons of Emirs in order to equip them to be clerks for government posts. The Muslim religious leaders questioned the idea that new methods would help maintain the stability of a traditional culture. Jean Trevor records a conversation she had with an elderly man of Sokoto.

I made a terrible mistake when the British Resident asked me to send my son to school. I did not want him contaminated by the Christian system so I sent my slave’s son, pretending he was my own. Now the slave’s son has modern knowledge so that he is a high up Civil Servant and he gives my son orders and he has to obey. Imagine that – my own slave giving my son orders. (Trevor 1975, 250)

When asked if he felt Western knowledge kept a people from being good Muslims, the man replied that it was the attitudes and individual competitiveness that went with the knowledge rather than the knowledge itself. He also expressed concern that the girls in a Western school might be tempted not to give their full attention to their proper roles as wives and mothers (Trevor 1975, 250).

By 1903, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Muslim leaders had worked with the colonial government to establish six primary schools where Muslim children could learn Arabic and English. These Muslim schools, called madrasahs, combined Islamic and British education (Jalloh 1997b, 60). The government made no efforts to establish similar schools in the provinces of Sierra Leone, however (Ojukutu-Macauley 1997, 95).

In those countries occupied by the French, Franco-Arabic schools were established where the French language and culture could be taught in combination with Arabic and Islamic subjects. The French intended to create an elite class equipped with the skills to serve in the colonial administration. Muslims were preferred over the Western educated “upstarts” who were considered troublemakers. Both French and British administrations believed progress had to be gradual (Clarke 1982, 191).

Conclusions

The early spread of Islam was the result of spiritual, economic, social and political factors. Islam offered the people something new in terms of a vision of life, of man and of God. There was a close affinity between the Islamic and African worldview, on approaches to explaining and interpreting natural and

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supernatural events. Other points of contact were the importance and interpretation of dreams and the performance of public rituals and community celebrations (Clarke 1982, 260-261).

It is significant that much of the teaching and conversion took place in bustling cities established for trade. Farmers coming to the city to sell their crops could not help but be impressed by the wealthy propagators of this new religion, whose daily prayers could be observed by all and whose children were taught to chant an unknown language in rhythmic poetry. The new city-dwellers, uprooted from their local traditions, were more open to a religion that appeared so well adapted to an urban way of life. “To them, Islam must have seemed very much like the cult of traders, and Allah the God of merchants” (Stride and Ifeka, 1971, 138). In the provinces of Sierra Leone, for example, Muslim traders meant jobs for the people as porters or guides (Ojukutu-Macauley, 1997, 95). As Jula merchants and Fula scholars and cattle herders traveled throughout West Africa, they displayed their faith through public prayer and verbal witnessing. Non-Muslims were impressed with this new religion that offered so much. Lamin Sanneh recounts how it took the presence of a Christian medical mission among non-Muslim Fulani to open the door for the entire community to convert to Islam. When Fula and Mandinka scholars came to the clinic for treatment, they stayed with their non-Muslim relatives, teaching their faith. “By the time they finished treatment, they had converted the entire village to Islam, thanks to the Christian missionaries who opened a path for them” (Sanneh 1997, 133).

In the social arena, Muslims, with their formal system of education, were held in high regard for their literacy and knowledge. The peripatetic scholars and charismatic individuals added to the attraction. Muslims were easily identifiable by their mode of dress and choice of food as well as public prayer. Using local materials, Muslims could quickly set up a mosque or a school wherever the people congregated. African Christians have noted that the Christian concentration on building stone edifices and the tendency to confine prayer and worship to the church premises was an inhibitory factor in its dissemination (Clarke 1982, 260-261). Muslims were suspected to have supernatural powers as a result of their literacy. In isolated Muslim communities where Islamic education was limited, the written word became prized for its magical qualities rather than for the message it contained. The Koran, rather than being read, was treated as a sacred object (Levtzion 1994, IV 100). The inability of many to understand Arabic increased its magical quality as well as the power of those who could read it (Goody 1968, 11).

In the area of politics, because of their trade connections and literacy, Muslims were seen as a modernizing force with the necessary skills for efficient administration of developing empires. Islam’s international dimensions, integrative qualities, and effective legal system attracted rulers who had to govern large empires that were culturally and politically diverse. Last, but not least, the bloody jihads undoubtedly impressed many to become loyal converts (Clarke 1982, 260-261).

Islam does not view development or progress in the same way that many Westerners do. Those who have received Western education view development as activity directed toward a particular goal. In Islam all human activity must be carried out in accordance with God’s will as defined in Islamic law. Aspects of development that deal with human welfare, such as the provision of food and housing, can be justified according to Islamic law. However, the “indefinite growth associated with man considered merely as an earthly creature, an economic animal” is to be deplored (Nasr 1987, 116). Muslims see the goal of Western development as essentially materialistic, an attitude which tends to create a philosophy of life centered on man rather than focussed on God. For Muslims, society is a religious community governed by God’s law. In contrast, individualistic Western societies are seen as aggregates of “atomized units bent on producing and consuming at an ever greater speed,” a mix of individuals who do not see God as an all-powerful presence, dominating every moment of human life (Nasr 1987, 118). According to Muslim philosophers, the Western idea of development disrupts the Islamic balance between the spiritual and material aspects of human life, the need to have more eternal priorities and live with a certain degree of detachment from earthly things (Nasr 1987, 116).

It is with this view that Islamic education confronts Western education and its attendant concept of Western development. For Muslims, Western education and Christianity are inextricably linked. Because Christian missionaries were the pioneers of Western education in Africa, Muslims naturally reacted against this form of education because of their belief in the interrelation of religion and society. Islamic education already was distinguishable from traditional African education. They opposed their system being sup-plemented by or substituted for an alien system associated with Christians, whom they considered to be

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infidels. Muslim scholars realized that a school where the Koran is taught as only one subject is not a Koranic school. Islam, rather than being the focus of the educational system, becomes just another subject in the curriculum. Islamic law, rather than the subject of lengthy discourse, becomes the topic of study for a few specialists (Trimingham 1968, 118-119). It is for this reason that African Koranic schools, until the mid-1940s at least, remained largely apart from the national system of education.

A thriving network of Muslim influence undergirds the social, political, and economic structures of West Africa today. Islamic education is the heart of Islam. The Koranic school is more than a place to learn Arabic or study the Koran. It is an institution for the inculcation of cultural values and discipline, a place where a child learns what it means to be a Muslim, where he or she becomes Muslim. A young teacher in a Western school is not held in the same regard as a scholar who has spent his life accumulating barakah to share with his pupils. Islamic education teaches pupils to be content with their lives and to revere tradition. Western education teaches pupils to be creative and to value ingenuity. In Islamic education, knowledge is transferred from the old to the young. In Western education, the young are encouraged to seek knowledge for themselves. Islamic education teaches that community is the basis of society. Western education teaches that individuals are the basis of society.

The Western-educated literate in the traditional West African nonliterate community must come to grips with the values of the people if he or she is to be effective in the transfer of knowledge.

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CHAPTER FIVE: TOWARD AN EFFECTIVE TRANSFER OF KNOWLEDGE

When a Western-educated literate is invited to enter a traditional West African nonliterate community for the purpose of disseminating information, the worker is faced with a multitude of challenges. The primary challenge is becoming effective in the transfer of knowledge.

The Western-Educated Literate Becomes Worthy

One of the first steps in becoming effective in the transfer of knowledge in a traditional West African nonliterate community is for a Western-educated literate to understand his or her inadequacy in the world of orality. Humility is a valued trait in West African society as evidenced in Traditional African Religion. In the greeting rituals, status is ascribed, not taken for oneself. It is not one’s words but one’s actions that are judged. The people have already developed “Western-educated literate worker” schemata from personal experiences they have had with other workers, stories they have heard, or from what they have heard on the radio or seen on television. Depending upon these experiences, their schemata may be favorable or unfavorable. It is the worker’s responsibility to help them form new schemata concerning him or her by giving them adequate opportunities. The worker who hides in his or her house or spends time only with a limited group is not giving the people adequate opportunity to form appropriate schemata.

Because in traditional African education knowledge is not separated from the giver of that knowledge, the character and comportment of the worker are of the utmost importance. It is who one is rather than what one knows that earns respect. Bad manners, quick tempers, lack of respect for traditional leaders, all work to nullify the worker’s message. The aid worker who gets drunk and makes a scene on the weekend or who openly criticizes a member of the community cannot expect the people in his or her class on Monday morning to take the instruction seriously. The people will attend. It is, after all, entertaining to see a foreigner. But the validity of the instruction will be destroyed. The same is true of the female worker who wears slacks or shorts in a community where no other women dress in this manner. Much of traditional African education is learning to behave properly in one’s role ascribed by society. For women, this role changes when one moves from a group of all women to a mixed group of men and women. Intelligence in West African society is evidenced by the ability to negotiate the world of social rela -tionships without mishap. An intelligent worker will therefore observe the comportment of those in the community of his or her same age and sex for guidelines on proper behavior.

Character is also tied to one’s family. The worker who arrives as a stranger will be treated hospitably, but because the worker has no ties with local families, will not be accorded much status. Traditional African education has no place for a “loner.” The people may feel the worker has shamed his or her family and thus been abandoned by them. The worker must thus work to create a family schemata by showing pictures of his or her family, telling stories about them, and allowing the people to see the worker doing things that show respect to his or her family. Simple acts such as telling a group, “I must go write a letter to my mother,” or, “I’m buying this rope because I want to give it as a gift to my father,” will help to validate the worker’s character. As soon as possible, the worker should attempt to become attached to a particular family or clan. By asking the chief for an African name, family links will be initiated. The worker can explain to the chief that because he or she is far from home, a local family is needed. The worker must realize that when he or she becomes an adopted family member, there is an added burden to behave in a manner that will not bring shame on the adoptive family. Inherent in being an adopted family member is the responsibility for the worker to contribute to the family, be it through physical labor or financial assistance.

In some instances, rather than becoming an adopted family member, it may be best for the worker to maintain separate living quarters and be somewhat aloof from the rest of the community. In the coming of Islam, the Islamic scholars were valued even though they remained apart from the indigenous people. They were respected for their good manners and contributions to the good of the community, however. They lived their lives publicly, not shut up in their compounds. They provided jobs. They respected those in authority and followed local laws. In so doing, they gave the people adequate opportunities to create positive schemata concerning them.

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In both traditional African education and Islamic education, much time is spent teaching respect for God. If the worker does not have a strong belief in a creator God, the West African community is not the place to express his or her disbelief. Whereas the people will accord the worker the right to believe as he or she will, the worker’s credibility will become immediately suspect.

Traditional African Religion teaches that whatever strengthens the community is good, whatever weakens it is evil. The worker who enters a community and criticizes the elders or other groups within the village, who focuses his or her work on a particular age group such as youth, and who does not contribute to community resources, will reap few listeners when he or she wishes to disseminate information. One way for the worker to remain humble is to learn the local language.

A key to understanding a culture’s thought is to understand its language. Language learning encompasses more than just learning vocabulary. As in the greeting rituals, language is used to denote status and intentions. Appropriate body language must also be learned. Learning the greetings should be the first priority. West Africans are shocked when foreign workers greet them in the correct manner in the local language. In Western culture, one often hears that “time is money.” This maxim is true in West African culture as well. It is just that as in West Africa money is spent for the good of the family, so time should be spent in learning the language and building social relationships. One should analyze the language to see which concepts are coded in one-word terms. These words are keys to the cultural schemata of the group. For example, the language of the Mossi has no parallel term for the English word “grace.” Explaining the concept takes many Mossi sentences. In Jula, there is no parallel word for “brother.” There are how ever, one-word terms for older brother or younger brother. This fact illustrates the importance of social hierarchy in that culture. Part of language study is learning the categories that people use, the clans, the joking relationships, and the local foods. Particular attention should be given to becoming proficient with proverbs and local poetry. Learning the language will enable the worker to develop cultural schemata with which to disseminate his or her information. If translators are used, the worker can never be sure if the word the translator is using is accessing the proper schemata in the people’s minds.

Traditional African education teaches that normal knowledge transfer is from older to younger. It would thus be helpful to seek language helpers that are older than one’s self. Intermediaries are an important part of West African culture. Even though one should develop relationships with the chief and elders immediately upon arriving in the community, it may help to go through intermediaries when asking for particular favors. In the same way, much friction will be avoided if those who approach the worker with various physical or financial needs are courteously referred to an elder for a decision about their need. Workers with financial means may be tempted to make such decisions on their own rather than seeking the advice of the elders. This can be a mistake, as the elders are aware of the genuine needs of the community.

Transferring Knowledge

The worker must decide how to disseminate his or her information. In traditional African education, certain knowledge is shared in formal settings such as initiation camps. Camps for young people are therefore a good possibility. As has been discussed, knowledge shared through conferences with the hopes that the hearer will share that knowledge is not always effective. Knowledge is kept secret as a means of empowering the owner.

The worker might consider training one individual who will be a resource person, not to share the knowledge publicly, but to serve as a supplier to those who need that particular knowledge. For example, if the worker wishes to disseminate information on making the rehydration drink to help in the treatment of diarrhea, the worker may train one person to make the drink. The mothers in the community whose children contract diarrhea, can then come to that particular person for the drink. As has been discussed, people seek someone to blame when death occurs. The person, therefore, who dispenses the drink must be above reproach. It would be best if the community, rather than the worker, selects the person since the character of the person dispensing the information is so important.

If a worker must disseminate information to an older age group, it should be done with an attitude of respect and humility. African young people who have become literate are often proud of their achievement.

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They may question established authority. The worker can be a role model for them by showing respect to the elders of the community.

Although nonliterates can analyze information, their preferred method is to group information functionally. Thus, for maximum effectiveness, teaching material should be presented in context with special emphasis on its usefulness to the community. Long verbal discourses should be avoided. For example, a flipchart session on how to prepare a certain food is not adequate for an effective transfer of knowledge. Mothers need to touch the food, examine its weight and texture, and taste it. They need to watch it actually being prepared. They need to prepare it themselves. Verbal instructions are not enough.

The information that is to be disseminated could be put into poetry or stories. Stories should use familiar characters and settings, such as those used in the culture’s fables. As was discovered in research with positron emission tomography, stories should be dramatic with developed characters to encourage empathetic responses from the listeners. Lessons could also be put to music or expressed through dance. Repeating short sentences and paragraphs throughout the session will make the presentation sound lyrical. The addition of proverbs will further “Africanize” the presentation. Because riddles are an important part of West African oral art, rhetorical questions are often confusing. Holding up an object such as a bandage and asking, “What is this?” will cause the audience to either laugh at the “foreigner’s stupidity,” or huddle together as they discuss possible answers to the riddle.

For information that should not be contextualized, rote memorization is the best method of learning. Islamic education has proven the worth of this method as thousands of young people have memorized Koranic verses. Adequate opportunities must be given for memorization. Mnemonic devices should be used, and the material will be more easily retained if it is lyrical.

In traditional African education, young children learn from games. Games can thus be devised for disseminating information. The research on eidetic imagery showed that many nonliterate people have acute visual sensory perception. Many review the activities of the day by visualizing the events before they go to sleep. Fixing information in this manner apparently aids in recall. Games that utilize the senses would therefore be useful.

Literacy, like beads on an abacus, serves as a problem-solving tool as well as a memory aid. Concrete visual aids should be presented along with the information to serve as mnemonic tools. If the information consists of a process with specific steps, different colored beads on a string may serve to remind nonliterates of the different steps. Measures should be given in containers, such as bottle caps or sauce cans, that are familiar to all.

In neither traditional African education nor Islamic education are rewards earned for individual accomplishments in learning, except for major scholarly achievement in Islam. Singling out individuals for recognition can cause jealously and disrupt the group. In traditional African education, everyone learns at his or her own rate, with no pressure to perform a particular skill by a particular time. Tests, other than endurance tests during initiation, do not exist. In Islamic education, students will be called upon to recite before an audience, but only after they have learned their subject well. Exams or tests are Western methods that have little place in traditional, nonliterate communities.

One of the reasons Koranic schooling has been so successful is that the school is easily adaptable to the environment, meeting under trees, on sidewalks, or wherever space is available. The teaching is done publicly so that the parents and community leaders can check on what is happening. The Western-educated literate worker should be flexible. Holding classes in an air-conditioned room rather than outside under a tree, may make the worker more comfortable, but it does not enhance the dissemination of the information being taught. In the same way, in traditional societies, individuals are rarely banned from attending community activities. Teaching sessions held “by invitation only” are therefore to be avoided. In traditional African education, the community is responsible for education. The entire community thus has the right to hear what is being taught. Because traditional African education separates the sexes, separate meetings for women or men are not considered unusual.

Because young children are used to accompanying their mothers, they should not be hindered from attending any teaching sessions. The mother always has the choice of leaving a child with another caregiver should she so desire. The presence of young children at one’s sessions is a sign that the mother feels the information is valuable and wishes to expose her children to it.

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The worker should be cognizant of the rhythm of the community. Harvest time is not a good time to begin an extended teaching session. The worker should observe the times when the people appear to be at leisure and thus able to attend meetings. Because traditional African education occurs naturally in context, it is unreasonable to assume that teaching can occur on a 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. schedule. The worker should be flexible, mingling with members of the community at all hours of the day, looking for teaching opportunities.

Mentoring is an important teaching method in both traditional African education and Islamic education. Young people learn by observing and using their senses. The people should be given the opportunity to apply the information to their lives in a concrete manner through modeling. Older children can be held responsible for teaching younger children what they have learned.

Western culture is often relaxed and informal. Rituals have little importance. In traditional African education as in Islamic education, ritual has a privileged place in society. Incorporating ritual in one’s instruction will aid in remembrance of the lesson. For example, teaching materials could be kept in a special box that is opened by the eldest member of the group before each session. Perhaps, one could have a special chair for the eldest person in the group. Since prayer is a familiar ritual in Traditional African Religion, Islam, and Christianity, one could ask for God’s blessing at the beginning and end of each session.

Because of the worker’s self-schemata, he or she will probably value the same qualities valued by Western societies. These include freedom of choice, individualism, independence, Western schooling, and the concept of “rights.” It is important that the worker remember that these are Western values and not necessarily cultural universals. The worker will want to see immediate results from his or her teaching. Yet, in traditional African education, in divination schools for example, it may take fifteen years before a student is considered knowledgeable enough to practice on his own. In higher Islamic learning, the Jula Islamic scholars prefer to have students who are in their thirties because older students have proven their worth to society. The worker should keep these facts in mind when evaluating a program or considering whom to choose to head a particular project.

Although the emphasis in this study has been on how the Western-educated literate can effectively transfer knowledge, it must be stated that knowledge transfer is a two-way street. If the worker approaches his or her assignment with humility and a willingness to learn, he or she will leave the assignment having gained incredible insight from the African people on life, reality, and the value of friendship.

Edward Blyden realized long ago that Africans have much to offer the world. Blyden, a West Indian by origin, settled in Liberia in 1851 where he became a Greek and Latin professor eleven years later at the newly formed Liberia College. Believing that Africa’s role in the world was service to humanity, harmony with nature, and communion with God, Blyden made the following remarks after touring several Western countries.

When the civilized nations, in consequence of their wonderful material development, shall have had their spiritual perceptions darkened and their spiritual susceptibilities blunted through the agency of a captivating and absorbing materialism, it may be, that they may have to resort to Africa to recover some of the simple elements of faith. (July 1992, 299)

Western civilization has much to learn from the nonliterate and the transfer of knowledge in West Africa.

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BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

LaNette Weiss Thompson was born in Waco, Texas on 1 October 1953. She was graduated from high school in Upper Heyford, England in 1971. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Baylor University in December 1974, majoring in the communication field of speech. She has certification to teach secondary school speech and English. In February 1985, following a career in public relations, she and her husband were appointed to the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. They and their three children lived and worked in Burkina Faso, West Africa from July 1986 until June 1998. LaNette W. Thompson, who is fluent in French and Jula, is the author of the book Sharing the Message Through Storying which was published in Burkina Faso in 1996. She and her husband will begin work in Côte d’Ivoire in September 1998.

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