Education and Swollen Shoot
Sis,—The disturbing news that Gold Coast farmers are opposing the steps taken to arrest Swollen Shoot disease is not surprising to anyone who has lived in West Africa and has the least idea of the economics of the cacao trade. Many, it not most, of the cacao farmers are to debt, and to deprive them of what they consider, even if wrongfully, to be the means of keeping their heads above water is obviously a desperate measure where they are concerned.
The heavy expenses of litigation in which Gold Coast Africans are wont to indulge on the least provocation arc one of the reasons for the incurring of these heavy...debts. Yet there is another side to the picture. Unenlightened economically as the African farmer may be, he is an indi- vidualist and, in an age of Communism, such individualism should at all costs be preserved, for it is the strongest bulwark against the acceptance of the Communist ideology which makes so strong an appeal to the so. called " intelligentsia " and the underprivileged masses of the-large towns.
Has every means been tr:ed to educate the African as to the need for the measures adopted and the advantages he will later gain if Swollen Shoot is annihilated ? For instance, is the care and tending of cacao farms yet a subject of instruction in the primary schools and, more important still, an examination subject ? My own experience in West Africa was that the nature study course gave little if any practical instruc- tion, and still less in the care of cacao farms, on which the whole economic structure of the colony depended. Surely it is time that such instruction was given in any boys school which receives government assistance, out- side the big towns.—Yours faithfully, W. M. A. JONES (One time Provincial Inspector of Schools, Ashanti, Gold Coast). The Royal School, Raphoe, Co. Donegal.
Previous page
