EDUCATION IN THE COLONIES
Snt,—In the comments in your issue of July 27th under the heading "Education in the Colonies," you describe the issue that divided the majority and the minority of the Elliot Commission on Higher Education in West Africa as one of detail and not of principle. You then record your satisfaction that the standards of education in the Univerlities in the Colonies are to be as high as those in the United Kingdom. It is this consideration that makes the question of one University for West Africa against three University Colleges in Nigeria, the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone a matter of principle and not detail. It will be difficult enough in all conscience to attain anything approaching University standards in West Africa during the lifetime of the present generation. These standards will depend upon the standards of the teachers. If these are to be divided up into three separate groups, living many hundreds of miles apart from each other, and each dependent upon the good will of the Government of the Colony in which their particular University College is located, the task of maintaining real university standards will be well nigh impossible. Even a reasonable degree of academic freedom of dis- cussion and cdnunent, the second factor likely to have a great bearing upon standards, may well be prejudiced. The fact that the university colleges are to be divided not only territorially but also largely but not entirely by groups of subjects will further, under present-day conditions in West Africa, endanger standards by fortifying that tendency towards excessive technical specialisation which the divisions between the great specialist departments, the only other available source of advanced know- ledge, already foster. I notice that your comments are introduced by the words "As to Nigeria." Were they perhaps based on the idea that the proposals related only to one Colony and not to four separated by hun- dreds of miles from each other?—Yours very truly,
44 Gordon Square, London, W.C. i. NOEL F. HALL.
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