les individus comme chez les groupements, une force, un appui, une règle, une direction, un esprit de suite, une mentalité. Supprimer tous ces étais grossiers n'est-ce pas s'exposer à tout renverser ? retirer à l'âme africaine tout ce qui faisait sa vie n'est-ce pas y creuser un vide affolant? Tout homme puise la vigueur et la continuité de ses actes dans la solidité et la permanence de ses principes.

Des observateurs attentifs ont signalé le danger; des faits sont venus, parfois tragiquement, souligner leurs avertissements. Personne d'autre part ne peut s'illusionner assez sur l'intellectualisme présent de nos noirs pour croire les individus capables de se construire un système raisonné de vie et les groupements en état de s'organiser, du moins tout de suite. N'oublions pas qu'il manque à nos indigènes tout un passé de civilisation et de progrès, qu'ils n'ont rien ou presque rien encore de cette discipline intellectuelle, morale et religieuse à laquelle nous avons été initiés depuis des siècles. La leur communiquer est notre devoir, car d'elle surtout dépend l'avancement de notre Afrique. Et l'on ne s'étonnera pas que nous mettions notre confiance, pour y parvenir, dans l'action mille fois reconnue efficace et profonde de la foi chrétienne.

Cela se fera surtout par l'école. L'école en Afrique comme partout sera l'agent par excellence des transformations individuelles et sociales. L'homme de demain sera ce que nous aurons fait de l'écolier d'aujourd'hui; l'Africain de demain vaudra bien plus par son âme que nous aurons aidé à perfectionner, que par un placage de connaissances ou d'habitudes qu'il se sera plus ou moins assimilées.

Ouvrir les âmes dans leur sens propre, en les perfectionnant, que ce soit donc l'idéal de notre pédagogie africaine! Pour le missionnaire, cela fut et cela reste toujours la suprême ambition.

H. M. DUBOIS, S.J.

Résumé

PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING APPLIED TO AFRICAN SCHOOLS GENERAL ideas on teaching were described in a preceding article, the writer now applies these principles to a rational education adapted for African schools.

It is recognized that the African is not merely an intuitive being but a man with reasoning powers, whose defects are not so much racial as the result of adverse

circumstances. The African child is exceptionally receptive until the age of puberty, when he frequently becomes incapable of further development and reverts to type. His mental and bodily resistance is inferior to that of the European, but this and many of his other faults are a direct result of the misery he has suffered through slavery and exploitation. His powers of initiative, undermined by the foreign yoke, could be reawakened by a system of progressive responsibility in school.

The African remains mentally a child for a long period, sometimes all his life, and it will therefore be necessary to modify our methods of teaching considerably. A child's education does not begin at school but starts in his home from the hour of his birth. Since the African child cannot learn habits of cleanliness and order and notions of morals and religion in his own home, he should learn them at school, and this primary education with the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic cannot be prolonged too long. It is of the utmost importance to implant in the child a sense of religion and morality which shall free him from that terror and superstition common to primitive peoples which Europeans lost centuries ago. This early teaching should be given in the mother tongue, but need not exclude the study of a foreign language. The best pupils should then go on to higher education and preparation for the professions.

It is a mistake to think that only teachers with excellent paper qualifications and research work to their credit are suitable for African schools. If such are not available ordinary people will be found adequate for giving that primary education which is usually received in European homes.

The school books used in Africa need revision. The right method of teaching is to proceed from the known to the unknown, yet frequently in the past we have attempted to use scenes, ideas, and words which are utterly foreign and therefore incomprehensible to the African child. Spelling-books are useful for reference, but the blackboard and chalk are the most effective means of teaching reading and spelling. Memory should be stimulated in childhood, the period when it is most active; rational discussions of arithmetical problems may well be left to the fifteenth or sixteenth year. The direct method of language teaching is good for the elementary stages; later, translations and the study of texts are indispensable. The African's aptitude for languages might be encouraged to a greater extent than hitherto, thus opening to him the career of interpreter, teacher, secretary, or administrative officer. If our aim is to assimilate the African, we must begin with the élite and gradually absorb the community.

Very little has been said so far about religion, but it is of the greatest importance to teach the Christian faith in school. Continuity of action and intellectual vigour and discipline is drawn from the stability of purpose and conviction which Christianity has for centuries inspired. We have destroyed the native's past and wonder at his inconstancy. Since a nation is judged by the character of her people and not on the ability of a few members to pass examinations, it should be our aim to mould the soul of Africa and restore to her peoples the sense of continuity which is the heritage of every nation.

THE STATE OF OUR PRESENT ETHNO-
GRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE GOLD
COAST PEOPLES

THE

By A. W. CARDINALL

HE publication of this journal must undoubtedly mark an epoch of importance in the history of the relationship between Africans and Europeans. It is therefore surely not amiss to survey our ethnographical knowledge and acquaintance with the African people. But such a survey could hardly be compassed within the confines of a single article. Possibly, however, one small portion of that vast continent might so be surveyed; and of all such small portions perhaps none offers better scope than the Gold Coast.

The country which labours under that romantic but unnatural designation includes the dependency of Ashanti and the Protectorate of the Northern Territories and the western portion of Togoland. It reaches inland to the eleventh parallel of northern latitude and in width is some 350 miles. But, as is the case with so many other European subdivisions of Africa, the country is in reality a purely arbitrary creation, a country that has no rational boundaries, no real frontiers, either physical, climatic, or ethnic.

A survey of the present state of our ethnographical knowledge of the Gold Coast must therefore perforce include in its vision considerable parts of the adjacent territories known to Europeans as the Ivory Coast, Upper Volta and Slave Coast. The actual area and its population can only be estimated, for so far there is no exact knowledge of the boundaries of tribes which in West Africa usually blend so imperceptibly that precision is impossible. Possibly some 200,000 square miles and 5,000,000 people form the subject of this article, although 90,000 square miles and 2,000,000 people are the respective totals for the Gold Coast proper.

Until 1875 practically nothing was known either of the people or the country. What little information there was consisted of the

casual observations of merchants stationed on the Coast and some observations made by Europeans sent on rare occasions to the capital of Ashanti. But the last quarter of the nineteenth century saw the scramble for Africa, witnessed the revival and intense encouragement of popular interest in matters African, the settlement of the various spheres of European activities, and the beginning of serious study of native languages and culture.

The languages had already been of interest to various students and missionaries. Indeed so long ago as 1673 1 there was printed a Fetu vocabulary, and nearly a hundred years later the Danes produced a Fanti and Ga grammar.2 Shortly after the latter production the missionary societies entered the field, and began that serious study and record of the Gold Coast languages on which all present-day vernacular teaching is based. This study is yearly becoming more intense and will undoubtedly be of the utmost importance to the political administration of the country. For until quite recently knowledge of the languages spoken was hopelessly inexact and it was commonly stated that if the Gold Coast consisted of a 'mosaic of petty States' its linguistic design was too intricate to describe. This false impression has now been dissolved. Professor Westermann has summarized our present knowledge of the languages and dialects of the Western Sudan, which he classified into six families, of which three are to be found in the Gold Coast. These are the Kwa, Ancient Togo, and Gur families.3

In the first family he recognized Ga, Ewe, Tschi, Guang, as distinct languages (that is to say that the speakers of one would not understand the speakers of another). The second are spoken in the mountains of Togo and are but remnants of languages fast disappearing under modern conditions, a disappearance noticed by their first student, J. G. Christaller,4 Twi or Ewe usurping their place. In the third he identified three language groups, Mossi, Grussi, and Gurma, 1 W. J. Müller, Die afrikanische auf der Guineischen Goldküste gelegene Landschaft Fetu... mit einem Fetuischen Wörterbuch.-Hamburg, 1673. 2 Ch. Protten, En nyttig Grammaticalsk Indledelse til Tvende hidintil gandske unbekiendte Sprog, Fanteisk og Acraisk.-Copenhagen, 1764. 3 D. Westermann, Die westlichen Sudansprachen, Berlin, 1927. + J. G. Christaller, in the Zeitschrift für Afrikanische Sprachen, vols. i and ii, 1887 and 1889.

4

none of which has as yet, excepting the first named, been seriously studied.

Professor Westermann's researches are carrying him further to the discovery of a root language to which all these belong, but for practical purposes he has established that vernacular teaching, to be universal, need in the Gold Coast be carried out only in the Ewe, Ga, Twi, and Mossi (or Dagomba). Indeed, had it not been for the unavoidable mischance which in the beginning confined missionary activities to the Coast line, Twi (or rather Akan) and Dagomba would have been the only languages necessary.

On the whole the linguistic condition, as considered from the point of view of instruction in vernaculars, may be described as exceptionally favourable on the Gold Coast. Two languages, Akan 1 (Twi-Fante) in the south and Dagomba in the north, are predominant, and will become more so in the future.2

But if there is a similarity in languages hitherto considered totally dissimilar, there seems also a great likeness in customs and religion, particularly in the latter.

Within the Twi group the head of affairs is the Omanhene, which word can be translated as the one who is over the Oman. The word Oman is usually translated to mean the 'people', and as a necessary corollary thereto the land in which the people dwell.3

There does not seem a great dissimilarity between the meaning of the word and the Dagomba Tindana, the one who is over the Tinga. For Tinga means 'land' and as a corollary thereto the people who dwell therein.4 But in all the Dagomba land the actual chiefs are of an alien race. They rule the people's bodies whose souls are in the care of the Tindana, and therefore a study of the people need not include a study of their chiefs; whereas in the Twi countries, where no alien is master, the chiefs and people are one.

But the similarity goes farther and we find in all authorities,5 as 1 Identical with Professor Westermann's Tschi. 2 Gold Coast Government Sessional Papers, V. 1927-8, A common Script for Twi, Fante, Ga, and Ewe.' Report by Professor D. Westermann, p. 6. 3 R. S. Rattray, Ashanti, pp. 220-1. Oxford, 1923. 4 Natives of the Northern Territories, pp. 15-16. London, 1920. 5 A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking People, 1887; The Ewe

speaking People, 1890. E. Perregaux, Chez les Achanti, 1906. J. Spieth, Die Ewe