By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
Missionary education in Ethiopia developed rapidly throughout the
nineteenth century. One of the first missionary schools of the period
was founded in Shawa, in the 1830s, by the London-based German
Protestant missionaries Isenberg and Krapf. The language of instruction
was Amharic. A generation later three other Protestant missionaries,
Flad, Brandais and Staiger, operated small schools in and around
Bagemder. One such place of study was at Emperor Tewodros’s capital,
Maqdala. Such schools had an average enrolment of perhaps thirty to
fifty students. All, or almost all, of them were, at first, boys.
Schooling for girls developed somewhat later.
Swedes
The Swedish missionary organisation Evangeliska-Fosterlands
Stifelsen, which had been established in Stockholm in 1856, also set up a
mission station at the Red Sea port of Massawa in 1866. The
missionaries
soon afterwards established a small school at the nearby
village of Monkullu, and did some teaching further west, among the
non-Christian Kunama people towards the Sudan frontier. (In most of the
rest of the country it was a case of European Christians teaching, and
trying to convert, Ethiopian Christians!)
Later in the century the Swedes founded a school in the north of the
region, at Zazega, in Eritrea, but subsequently transferred the
establishment, in 1897, to Asmara, the then capital of the Italian
colony. The school had four classes, as well as a handicraft annexe, for
instruction in typography, bookbinding and carpentry. A school for
girls, also run by the |Swedes, was likewise set up at Monkullu, but was
moved to the Eritrean village of Belessa in 1890. This school taught
Tigrinya reading and writing, and a little Italian, as well as
housework, needlework, spinning and weaving. A second girls’ school was
set up further south, in Adi Ugri. Two further schools, one for boys and
another for girls, were founded to the west, in the country of the
Muslim Mensa people, in 1889 and 1903 respectively. These institutions
gave formal education – in Tigrinya (or Tigre in some areas), Amharic,
Italian and Ge’ez, in the mornings, and instruction in manual work, in
the evenings.
The above schools had a total enrolment, by around 1905, of about a hundred students.
Tamrat Emmanuel
One of the best known missionary students of this period was Tamrat
Emmanuel, a young Falasha, or Beta Esra’el pupil, who subsequently
entered Ethiopian Government service, and immediately prior to the
Italian Fascist invasion ran a school in Addis Ababa for members of his
community.
Roman Catholic Education
One of the principal centres of Roman Catholic missionary education
was at Keren, where a seminary was established in 1872. By 1880 this
institution had an enrolment of thirty-five to forty boys. There was, by
that time, also a day school at Keren, attended by fifty to sixty boys
and girls, and an orphanage with thirty to thirty-five inmates.
A Contemporary Report
Educational progress at Keren was later described by a British
traveller, F.L.James, who reported, in 1883, that there were seven
Lazarist Fathers and nine Sisters of Charity. He adds:
“They clothe, feed and educate 80 boys, all of whom live in the
establishment. We were conducted over the dormitories which were very
airy and scrupulously clean; each child had an angareb [i.e. bed] with
the bed-clothes belonging to it neatly folded up and placed at the foot.
We were shown one large room, in which was a printing press, where
religious books were printed in the Amharic language”. By then some 500
day children were at school, many of them learning sewing.
“The most disheartening part of the mission”, James concludes. “was,
as the Fathers and Sisters confessed to us, the difficulty of finding
situations for their proteges after they had reared and educated them.
Outcast from their own people and unable to find emplyment among
theMussulman authorities [i.e. Egyptians] they are thrown on their own
resources, which proves more fatal to the women than the men”.
Other Lazarist Education
The Lazarists at this time also ran a school at Akrur in Akale Guzay,
where some twenty boys were taught to read and write, in both Tigrinya
and Amharic. The brightest students were sent thence to the Keren
seminary. Small schools were also set up by the Lazarists at Massawa,
Halay and Harar. Some of the students at the first of these
establishments included freed Oromo slaves.
Missionary education in Harar, at the end of the century, was in the hands of five Sisters.
War with the Dervishes.
The last decades of the century witnessed several important
developments, which had their bearing on education. Fighting with the
Dervishes obliged the Sisters of Charity temporally to withdraw from
Keren, in 1885.
Italian Colonialism
The subsequent establishment of the Italian colony of Eritrea in 1890
led, before long, to the exclusion of the Lazarists, who, as Frenchmen,
were considered inimical to Italian colonial ambitions. This was
clearly stated by the Italian Prime Minister Crispi, who wrote to
Baratieri, the Italian governor of the colony, in 1894, saying:
“Of the work of the French Lazarists, I confess to you frankly, I
have no confidence. It is obvious that the Lazarists cannot be
eliminated by the stroke of the pen; it is an elimination which must be
carried out slowly and with prudence”.
The Pope
The desired missionary change was duly accepted by the Pope, who, in
September 1895, formally consigned Eritrea to the Capuchins. The latter,
as Italians, fitted better into the Italian colonial schema.
In the following year, 1896, the Italian colonial government in
Eritrea officially banished both the Lazarist Fathers and the Sisters of
Charity.
Other Lazarist Education
Lazarist schooling nevertheless continued in the rest of Ethiopia. A
Lazarist school for boys was thus founded at Alitena as early as 1847,
and another, for girls, was later set up, in the same place, in 1898. A
second Lazarist boys’ school was also established at Gula. By the turn
of the century the Alitena boy’s school had an enrolment of about fifty
students. They were taught Amharic, Ge’ez and French, as well as
singing, elementary science, and music. Pupils were said to come from
“all parts” of Ethiopia.
Literacy
Literacy in Ethiopia, throughout the nineteenth century, was far from
extensive, and was indeed generally not considered important.
Letter-writing was for example widely looked down, as a degrading, or
indeed considered by chiefs and soldiers as a shameful occupation.
This attitude is seen for example in a popular contemporary Amharic proverb, which declared:
“The worst of animals is a scorpion; the worst of men is a scholar” Or again: ”Intelligence is better than study”.
Most Ethiopian noblemen of this period are said the have been
largely, if not fully, illiterate, and employed Church-educated youths,
or others, to carry out their correspondence.
A British visitor to Ethiopia at the turn of the century, Major Austin, reported, in 1900:
“One could not help being struck with the comparatively few officers
of rank we met who were capable of either reading or writing in their
own language. This work was always done by special clerks who were
retained for this work alone, and had necessarily to be the confidants
of their masters!”.
Four years later another British observer, the linguist Armbruster made the following comment, after a visit to Gojjam:
“I have met with a great many individuals who could read and write
Amharic after a fashion, but with comparatively few who could read it
fluently, and only three or four who could write it without continually
making gross mistakes in spelling. (Armbruster, I may add, was a great
dictionary-maker, whose original manuscript is deposited in the
Institute of Ethiopian Studies. His Amharic dictionaries are so large,
that some wits call him not Armbruster, but Armbuster!) A third British
visitor, A.E. Pease, reported shortly afterwards that many Rases at that
time could neither read nor write.
The German envoy Felix Rosen, on the other hand, took the entirely contrary view that most of the aristocracy was literate.
What Dr Merab Thought
So much for “off-the-cuff” opinions of contemporary European
observers, on whom we have so often to relay. But what was the view of
the Georgian physician and Addis Ababa pharmacy-owner Dr P. Merab, who
remains one of the most acute foreign observers of early twentieth
century Ethiopia?
He declares that there was perhaps 90% illiteracy in the Ethiopian
empire as a whole. The situation was at its best, he thought, in the
central provinces. Literacy there was running at around ten per cent,
but was at its worse in the south and west, where he believed illiteracy
was around 99% (Yes, dear reader, the estimates don’t add up – but I am
only citing what he wrote!). The above quotation was also implicitly
rejected by the Swiss traveller, and later Fascist, Montandon, who
claimed, at about the same time, that many Oromos in the Jimma area were
able to read the Holy Qoran, in Arabic.
As for Emperor Menilek’s government, Merab, who knew most of the
Council of Ministers personally, declared that only half could read and
write with ease, that three could do neither, and that two others knew
no more than to sign their names – though this was not necessary as
officials invariably used seals instead of signatures.
Among Ethiopian women, apart from the princesses, those who could
read and write, in 1913, could, he believed, be counted on one’s fingers
– and accounted for only one in a thousand.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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