Abstract

Comparative Education Volume 19 No. 3 1983 341 The Adaptation Concept in British Colonial Education UDO BUDE INTRODUCTION: THE PHELPS-STOKES COMMISSION REPORTS The question whether it is pedagogically reasonable to transfer educational ideas and methods from one culture to another without alterations is always a point of debate if the results fail to meet the expectations. The situation of colonial education in Black Africa in the early 1920s was characterised by increasing disappointment in mission circles at the Africans' rejection of the churches' attempts to provide a more practice-oriented education and the growing experiences of the colonial administration that the Western-trained African elite demanded more political rights to determine their affairs. In this context an old controversial topic was taken up again: What kind of education was the most suitable one for Black Africa? Drawing on experiences with a specific type of education that was developed for ex-slaves after the American Civil War, with emphasis on the development of practical skills geared to the requirements of rural black communities in the Southern States, and backed by empirical data on their felt needs, Jesse Jones derived at a theory which justified a kind of education for blacks differing from that