Education and Colonialism in Kenya

Before abandoning past practices and patterns, the new leaders recognized the need to examine the inherited structures in order to better comprehend the strengths and limitations of the educational systems now firmly entrenched in their countries. This is especially the situation in former British Africa where no uniform policy existed. Each territory supported its own educational program and each governor had his own ideas on how to educate the natives. This British diversity contrasts with the practice of the French and Portuguese, who consistently transported their own cultures and orthodox methods of teaching them to their colonies. The diversity in British Africa ranged from educational policies that imposed the English model and all its components on the African to policies that attempted to develop an educational program based on the African's own environment and on his own way of life. This lack of uniformity in British educational policy led to a great deal of controversy. On one side were those Europeans who favored rapid Westernization of the African. They argued that old African values must be replaced since, whether educators approved or not, overwhelming social change was obliterating