🎹 Achimota and the Teaching of African Culture in the Gold Coast 🎹 By *Cati Coe* (Professor of Anthropology) Rutgers University *Achimota* was an elite school which signaled the commitment of the colonial government to the provision of *education* and the concomitant belief in education’s role in managing the future of the nation. Within the dominant western frame of Achimota, *“African culture”* had to be transformed and reified. The practices of the school were the result of interaction between the differing expectations of colonial officials, “traditional experts” brought in to teach *customs and arts*, local intelligentsia, expatriate and African teachers, and the students themselves. *Achimota* therefore provides a lens on the nuances and tensions within the colonial enterprise in Africa. In Africa, formal schooling was historically established by *missionaries*, and through schools, Africans assumed new identities as Christian and modern (Berman 1975). Early African schoolchildren entered the total socializing realms of *boarding schools and Christian Communities*. Schooling—especially literacy and fluency in the colonial language—became the route to new roles within the changed economic landscape, as the *newly educated took on positions as clerks and teachers.* By the beginning of World War I, schools had come under greater government supervision since the *Educational Ordinances of 1882 and 1887*, a process accelerated by the expulsion of the Basel and Bremen missionaries in 1917. *Achimota* symbolized the greater involvement of the British colonial government in the provision of education in the Gold Coast. During the 1920s and 1930s, *the colonial government was not interested in mass education,* which became a project under the first Nkrumah government after 1951 under *“self rule”* but prior to independence in 1957; rather, colonial governments in Africa *limited access to education and focused on the education of the elite* (Ball 1983). In part, this was due to nationalist pressure from local elites for universities and secondary schools. Achimota was to be a *“model of all education” and “a centre in which a standard will be set” for all Gold Coast schools* (Annual General Report 1925-1926:p46). Thus, the concern for *quality education* in the Gold Coast was concentrated on *Achimota,* which drew a disproportionate share of the Education Department’s resources; *education for the country’s leaders* was differentiated from that for the rest. With *Achimota*, the government showed its interest in guiding the future of the Gold Coast through *education*. From this time onward, the state increasingly began to support and direct education in the Gold Coast, rather than relying on *mission schools* which had the different project of evangelism. Influenced by the American *Phelps-Stokes Educational Commission*, which visited the Gold Coast in 1920, and its survey of African education (T. Williams 1964; Wraith 1967), *Guggisberg* set up an educational committee, whose report in 1922 recommended that *the vernacular* should be the medium of instruction in the primary schools, that *the teaching profession* receive further training, and that a *government secondary school* be founded. Guggisberg saw *chieftaincy* as the breakwaters defending native institutions from Western civilization: *the new secondary school of Achimota* would be a school for Chiefs’ sons, who would later assume the reigns of government. *Achimota* was the product of the new romantic thinking on the part of some colonial officials, including the new governor, about the importance of *“national traditions”* for the future progress of the people of the Gold Coast. *Achimota* was founded in a polarized environment, where *“intellectuals”* were opposed to “Chiefs,” and “Civilization” to “Tradition.” *Achimota* was meant to bridge and combine these oppositions. Through it, the colonial government hoped to create a different kind of educated elite in the Gold Coast that would be able to replace *both traditional Chiefs and the intellectuals,* but was in “touch with the great illiterate masses of his own people.” In 1924, the co-educational boarding school of *Achimota* was established to give *teacher training, technical training, and* *general secondary education.* Although Christian, unlike mission schools it was non-denominational. The *first six staff were hired before there were buildings,* and they spent a year to 18 months studying the local languages, building up local public interest for Achimota, and teaching in Gold Coast schools (Ward 1965). *Achimota* officially opened in 1927. The guiding principles of the school were summarized as follows: "Achimota hopes to produce a type of student who is *‘Western’* in his intellectual attitudes towards life, with a respect for science and capacity for systematic thought, but who remains *African* in sympathy and desirous of preserving and developing what is deserving of respect in tribal life, custom, rule and law." [Achimota College Report 1932:14 para. 28] The founders were concerned that *educated people were separating themselves from “the tribal organization* which nevertheless remained the basis of their social and political life” (Achimota Review 1937:6). If Indirect Rule were to work, then the *educated must be incorporated into the rest of society,* but clearly incorporated in a hierarchical way as leaders separate from but respectful of “the people,” who were viewed as uneducated peasants untouched by Westernization and abiding by “traditional” customs. It was initially begun as a *school for those children in line to become chiefs themselves,* although chiefs’ sons did not necessarily inherit their fathers’ positions, especially among the mainly matrilineal peoples of southern Ghana. In fact, the composition of students at Achimota was much broader than this, a fact that teachers and administrators recognized. It became increasingly clear that because an *Achimota education was privileged* so highly, those educated at Achimota would in fact replace the chiefs and run the local councils. First principal *Fraser* emphasized that schools were not the only agent of denationalization present in the colony; he defined denationalization as *“irreverence for and ignorance of one’s own* *nation and culture and of the* *things chiefly now affecting it”* (1925:75). Although he felt that the school could not undo the work of denationalization, to set reverence for the things that are passing, to show the students the true and good in them, and much more to get them to look for and find them, there is a great part of the way to success in the training of true leaders. *Without that respect for their traditions* the young are largely cut off from sympathy with the older folk. (1925:73) Although there was occasionally a sense among Achimota’s staff that the African “past” was dying and slipping away, especially from teachers *W. E. F. Ward and H. V. Meyerowitz*, this does not seem to be a dominant anxiety at Achimota. The teaching of *African customs* to students was not considered a mode of heritage revival, but rather a method of preparing African leaders who would be able to sift through the welter of alternatives offered and pick “the best.” This focus reflected the colonial government’s ambivalence about *the Gold Coast intelligentsia*, who were agitating for reform; in Achimota, they hoped to create a new elite that was not “denationalised” but could serve as appropriate brokers between “civilization” and “the masses.” *Achimota* attracted young teachers from different parts of the British empire (England,Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and Canada) who were interested in *promoting and studying African culture* (Report on Achimota College 1930 1931). *W. E. F. Ward,* perhaps the most prominent teacher at Achimota, was interested in African music and history. He felt that his aims were *‘“to teach young Africa to understand and appreciate its past” and “to foster a true pride of race”*’ (Jenkins 1994:177). *H. V. Meyerowitz* came from South Africa in 1936 to promote and study the arts and crafts of the Gold Coast; he fiercely believed that the Gold Coast had something unique to teach the rest of the world (Meyerowitz 1937). The *Government Training College* in Accra was incorporated into *Achimota* in 1928, bringing its staff, *Rev. R. Fisher,* an Anglican missionary; *Mr. C. S. Dey*, in charge of Art; and *Mr. J. H. Asare,* in charge of Woodwork. At the Government Training College, *Fisher* had encouraged the cultivation of African arts and crafts, dress, traditions and customs, introducing “tribal drumming” (Achimota Review 1937:36; Agbodeka 1977:55; Report for Achimota College, 1924-26 1927). The importance of *hobbies* was also transferred from the habitual culture of Government Training College to Achimota (Report on Achimota College 1928-29 1929). In the life of Achimota, two modes of dealing with *“African tradition”* can be seen. One was to bring it into a sequential, planned curriculum that ended in examinations: *knowledge about Africa* thus became a genre of school knowledge, to be transmitted in schools according to its techniques and technologies. The other was to insert *“African tradition”* into organized extracurricular activities as entertainment and “hobbies.” Ward considered that there were five ways that education at Achimota kept in touch with African life: *through history, the teaching of four local languages (Gã, Twi, Fante, and Ewe), agriculture, art, and music. * (Achimota Review 1937:20). Achimota teachers worked hard to bring the first three into the curriculum and make them examinable; the latter two became *hobbies and entertainment,* although occasionally the forms are subjected to both modes of translation into a school context simultaneously In the teacher training course, students studied two local languages— *their mother tongue and a second language* —because the educational policy in the Gold Coast at that time required *the vernacular* to be the sole medium of instruction in the first six years of primary schooling. The most important work of Achimota in the area of vernacular language was producing *textbooks and convincing the Cambridge Exams council* in the 1930s that four languages from the south *(Fante, Twi, Ewe, and Gã)* should be recognized as subjects for the School Leaving Certificate examination (Agbodeka 1977), and by 1940, these languages were also recognized for matriculation at London University. After 1930, students at the teacher training college had to write a *thesis* in the fourth year either in the vernacular or in English. “Among the subjects treated were *native folk-stories, music and games, local history and customs*, as well as methods of teaching the various school subjects. The enthusiasm of the students and the high standard of most of their theses prove the value of this innovation” (Report on Achimota College 1930 1931:13). Thus, we see the way that *vernacular forms of knowledge became school genres of knowledge*, that could be examined, researched, tested, and written about in school essays and theses. Similarly, in the history curriculum, taught by Ward, the first two years of history included *Gold Coast history and modern European history*, while the last two years concentrated on the growth of Britain and its empire (Achimota Review 1937:28). He felt that students should start with *local history* before moving on to world history (Zachernuk 1998:489), and worried about whether the teaching of Egypt and Babylon was salient enough for students, although he felt they led into the teaching about *African empires like Asante and Benin* (Report on Achimota College 1931 1932) The other way that *African culture* was incorporated into Achimota was through extracurricular activities. One example is that in March 1929, *some students went on treks to “villages”* that were mini-research excursions. In the first week, the students did nature work, and in the second, “villages near were visited by different groups and the history of the village was obtained by talking to the chiefs and elders” (Report on Achimota College 1928-1929 1929:11). The next year, the trek during the inter-term fortnight was spent doing *social service, fixing gutters and cleaning roads*. So that what had begun as learning history from elders quickly turned into doing communal labor, an activity not associated with “intellectuals,” although schoolchildren certainly labored on school grounds. *Woodcarving* was taught by African craftsmen (Report on the Teacher-Training Classes of Achimota College 1931:13). Students carved, of their own choice, *state swords, chiefly stools, small animals, soup ladles and mortars* for pounding fufu (Report on Achimota College 1931,1932). Later, in 1937, the chief wood-carver of the Asantehene taught wood-carving at Achimota and trained others as demonstrators. Students also learned *“Ashanti weaving,” tailoring, bookbinding, metalwork, and silversmithing* (Report on Achimota College 1928-29 1929:3). During the 1930s, the master-weaver from the Ashanti weaving center of Bonwere came to Achimota (Agbodeka 1977:84; see also Osei 1998). *Meyerowitz* described great turnover in woodworking instruction (Achimota Review 1937:39). Likewise, in 1927 and 1928, *Enoch Azu*, the grandson of a Krobo paramount chief, was hired as a temporary member of staff and “came every week from Accra to give *the Gã children lessons in drumming*, but nobody could be found for the other tribes, and the experiment was given up” (Achimota Review 1937:36). However, the visit of the 1932 inspection team provided the occasion for the stimulus of *tribal drumming* again because of intensive rehearsals for that purpose: because of those rehearsals, “it became more consciously recognized as an art and less as a mere pastime” (Achimota Review 1937:36). Although it seems that *African culture* primarily occurred in these recreational spaces, as hobbies or drumming and dancing, it is important to note that these recreational activities were generally *“very highly organised,”* as an Inspector noted in 1932, with times on the schedule set aside for these activities (Report on Achimota College 1932 1933:10). The commitment to teaching *African customs was undermined by the predominantly British staff,* who were appreciative of but relatively *ignorant of indigenous culture*, as African intellectuals were quick to point out. After Aggrey’s death in 1927, there was *only one African member of staff,* and a junior one at that. In December 1929, Achimota staff were pleased to report that they had *12* African teachers, *3* senior and *9* junior, out of a total of *50* members of staff, *40* senior and *10* junior, because they had had no senior African staff in March of that year (Report on Achimota College 1930 1931). A training scheme to Africanize the staff began in the 1930s. However, when *Africans* returned from their training program in Britain to teach, they were considered the cream of the educated crop and were drawn into other positions such as *the civil service* (Agbodeka 1977:55). Instead of *recommending more African staff*, the Inspection Team called for more anthropological research to be done. *Teachers at Achimota* had already done some research: around 1931, they collected *folklore, proverbs, and other material for language teaching;* and W. E. F. Ward collected *royal histories, music, and folklore* in the Volta Region in 1925 and in Akyem Abuakwa and southern Asante in 1928 (Agbodeka 1977; Report on Achimota College 1928-29 1929; Ward 1991). To fill in the senior teachers’ gaps in knowledge and skill, *African specialists* were brought in from outside to train students. *“Chiefs and other leading Africans”* occasionally gave lectures at the College on “tribal history or customs on African constitutions or customary law, on manners and etiquette, on local traditions or any other topic of national or local interest” (Achimota College 1932:36 para. 99). Bringing in *outside experts as junior or part-time staff members* pointed to the contradictions of teaching African customs in an elite school. *The senior teachers were not expert themselves.* Also, the outside experts had learned their craft in different contexts than a school. Asking them to “teach” schoolchildren in the manner school knowledge was usually taught *(planned, sequential, oriented to a child’s development)* proved outside their sensibility, which was more attuned to apprenticeship practices in which one learns through participation on the margins and slowly assumes greater responsibility for various tasks. This disjuncture is alluded to by *Ephraim Amu,* an African member of staff and composer of African music, who might have been the most sensitive of his colleagues to the process of passing on knowledge associated with *“African customs.”* He noted in Achimota Review (1937) that *Achimota had difficulty finding skilled craftsmen:* while they could come and do their work, they were not able to “teach” the children" In the absence of *expert adult teachers* who taught through direct instruction rather than demonstration, especially in the case of drumming and dancing, *students* who were knowledgeable through their family background taught their peers, resulting in a adolescents’ view of “culture,” absent of more secretive or ritual elements. *Ephraim Amu* noted about drumming that the students were not specially instructed in the art by any expert, but the intelligent ones among them pick up as much as they can from their people and thereby become the *leaders and instructors of their fellow students*. This is why there are many deficiencies in their drumming. He himself had learned how to drum from his *students at the Presbyterian teacher training college* in Akropong at which he had taught prior to coming to Achimota (Agyemang 1988) Despite Ward’s statement about the various ways that *“African culture”* was incorporated into the school’s curriculum, what was most highly indexed as *“African culture”* within the publications of Achimota and the memories of its students were *the performing and visual arts*. At Achimota, as at other elite schools in West Africa, *African performance arts* were used for entertainment purposes during extra-curricular activities. *Dramatic performances* were among the features inherited from the Government Training College in Accra; *plays were performed on Saturday nights by the various houses,* including the girls’ house, with fierce competition between them. At first, bearing a resemblance to concert parties (Cole 2001), *the plays were in the vernacular* with simple plots and no written parts; the principal character was often a buffoon (Achimota Review 1937:66-68; Agbodeka 1977). Sometimes, the students sang *one or two African songs* at the beginning of the performance. However, after the staff performed a play in *English*, the students decided never to do plays in the vernacular again (Achimota Review 1937:37) *Founders’ Day* at Achimota was also a time when African cultural traditions were displayed (Amissah 1977:8). Professor *Mawɛre-Opoku,* who attended Achimota (1931-34) and later taught there as an artist, recounted that on Founders’ Day, *each ‘tribal group’ of Twi, Fante, Ewe, and Gã, presented a dance new to their area.* He said that two Saturdays a month at Achimota, *they had tribal drumming and African nights*. “Tribal drumming was taking lessons in drumming and dancing” (1997). On *“African night,”* the students were divided into the four principal “tribal groups.” *“For the Gãs*, arrangements were made for Gãs to come to talk and discuss things, to chat as one would in a village community, with experts from the Gã area” (1998). Or they would tell stories in their language (1998). *“All the four principal languages or peoples [of southern Ghana] were taken care of.* They couldn’t do more than that, because there weren’t enough people. With that, people who had come from *mission schools,* who didn’t know anything, who had been prevented from doing so [by the church], were forced by the circumstances to learn to dance” (1997). *Mawɛre-Opoku* remembered that each house was required to put on a play and variety entertainment, but the specific performances he recalled were *“The Pickwick Papers,” “The Mikado,” and “The Pirates of Penzance,”* speaking to the shift from vernacular comic plays to English drama by the early 1930s. *Joanna Laryea*, a retired schoolteacher and development worker in her sixties, first remembered *the daily and weekly schedule* from her student days in Achimota (1947-1954): all time was structured. More than forty years later, she could tell me the schedule for every day of the week. By this time, counting the houses, she thought *there were about 900 students, with twice as many boys as girls.* When I asked her about *“African culture,”* she said that they had *entertainment on Saturday nights:* maybe a movie or students were gathered in “tribal groupings” and taught drumming and dancing. As a *Fante* from Cape Coast, she joined the Fante group, learning the latest dances and hymns in Fante, taught by the *Fante teachers*, but occasionally they brought in outsiders who knew how to dance and sing. However, she quickly passed on to the differences between *the Anglican services* she was used to and *the Methodist services* she attended at Achimota, which she considered “rowdy.” As for Founders’ Day, the night before was strongest in her memory, *when the boys would come around singing late at night, around 11 p.m.* (they were used to going to sleep at 8:30 at night). The first year she was there, she found their singing “very moving.” She and the other girls crept to the windows to listen and when *the house prefect asked if they were in bed,* they scampered back. Early the next morning, the girls were supposed to go singing. One Founders’ Day, *they did not want to sing the hymns in Fante* because they thought they were being laughed at by the headteachers. She explained that *the missionaries had first thought that everything “indigenous” was “pagan,”* but when the teachers persuaded them they were not laughing, the girls did indeed sing (Laryea 1997). *Students and teachers who passed through Achimota* seemed to be primarily from upwardly mobile families: in 1931, despite a worldwide depression and a decline in the price of cocoa, a surprising *40%* of students were paying the school fees in whole; the rest were on *whole or partial scholarship.* Although Achimota was intended for the sons of chiefs, this segment comprised the smallest proportion of students. In 1931, of 500 students, *122* were from the merchant or shopkeeper class; *102* had agricultural connections (probably, for the most part, cocoa farming); *82* were from families of teachers; *57* had families in the clerical professions “including subordinate government servants”; and *32* were the sons or wards of paramount or other chiefs. Speaking to the fame and prestige of Achimota, *8* students came from outside the Gold Coast (Report on Achimota College 1931,1932:12). In March 1933, out of a total of *388* students, ranging from the middle school to the university, *78* were young women, or about 20% (Report on Achimota College 1933 1934). Although *Achimota* made a conscious attempt to help students appreciate *African culture*, the dominant frame of the school was *both Christian and British*, both in the curriculum (through the teaching of the history of the British empire) and in extracurricular activities (English drama). *“African culture”* was made to fit these frames, as a substitute for existing categories from English school life, such as more anglicized entertainment or British history. Professor *J.H.K. Nketia*, who had not attended Achimota but was Mawerɛ-Opoku’s contemporary, said that Achimotans *“appreciated traditional culture from an intellectual point of view.”* They learned “to tolerate traditional culture.” They could appreciate it but they would not do it (1999). This insight is supported by archival documents and descriptions of Achimota: within a dominant Anglicized frame, *“culture”* was relegated to extracurricular events and defined as *language, history, and the performing and visual arts.* *Appreciation and respect of traditional life* were more important than competent performance and participation within it, and, due to the lack of experts willing to teach through direct instruction rather than demonstration, *students often ended up learning from one another*, contributing to a more superficial and less ritualistic depiction of culture, creating *“culture”* from an adolescent’s perspective. Students took on a stance towards *“tradition”* borrowed from their teachers, generated amongst themselves, and appropriate to their new status as educated elite: they were able to *appreciate and evaluate “tradition”* from a critical distance, but not necessarily participate in it as a lived form, as competent adults. Thus, *the production of “African culture”* at Achimota was the result of the interaction between *expatriate teachers*, romantic about a pastoral and communal “Africa”; *African students and teachers* aiming for upward mobility and civil service positions; and *African craftsmen and drummers* whose ways of imparting their skills did not resemble the instruction regularly given in a school. *Achimota* aroused many passionate feelings and criticism within the Gold Coast. Many educated Africans felt that it was unnecessary and a disservice to Africans to have *one kind of education for Africans and another for Europeans,* and suspected that the reasons for teaching *local arts, language, and customs* were to keep Africans in inferior positions. Thus, they pushed for an academic education and a focus on the English language. In 1935, prominent political nationalists attacked the way Ward taught African history, in an attempt to reveal that this liberal school was an *imperial institution* (Jenkins 1994). They were also critical of the *lack of senior African staf* at the school, and wanted Achimota to provide *university education* (Ward 1965). *African Christians* disliked converts being forced to participate in what they saw as pagan practices such as the *drumming and dancing on “African nights.”* They were also suspicious of the *non-denominational character of the school,*'and teachers at Achimota felt they had to defend their school as providing a Christian education. *Others in the colonial service* felt that Achimota was a center of subversive political propaganda, fostering criticism of the British empire. Furthermore, *Achimota* was often at odds with the colonial Education Department (Jenkins 1994; Ward 1965). Another criticism was its expense; *Achimota sometimes used up a quarter of the educational budget for the entire country*, thus limiting the provision of more basic education (McWilliam and Kwamena-Poh 1973:62). *Achimota* was therefore pulled in many different directions by various parties and was at the center of many political debates, about *Christianity, education, and colonialism.* McWilliam and Kwamena-Poh (1973) argued that because it was not identified with a particular mission society, *Achimota became a national possession as other schools could not*; it brought together elite students from all over the Gold Coast Colony and Asante. For extracurricular activities and language instruction, students were divided into the four major ethnic groupings and languages of the south, but the lingua franca of the school was a *creole Twi that mixed Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi, and Fante, with Gã words* occasionally used (Mawɛre-Opoku 1999; see also Aims and Methods of Language Teaching in the Gold Coast 1930). Isolated from their families and communities, on a campus in what was then countryside just north of the capital city Accra, the students had *intense relationships with one another, friendships that lasted into old age, and flirtations that turned into marriages* (Laryea 1997). An elite is maintained by their close interaction, including the *connections and shared culture created by boarding school* (Cohen 1981). *Achimota* did successfully create a southern elite, disproportionately represented in the next generation of *politicians and policymakers, and generated a new elite culture* characterized by cross-cultural borrowing, respect for a reified, *non-religious “African culture,”* but awkwardness about actually participating in it. In many ways, the postcolonial governments of Ghana have inherited the colonial discourse about culture and modernity. *“African culture,”* reified and split into different segments (music, language, etc), continues to be subjected to evaluation for its compatibility with progress. The segments most able to be inserted into this frame continue to be *the performing arts.* After independence in 1957, the government of *Kwame Nkrumah,* who had attended Achimota teacher training college in the early 1930s, continued to *promote “African culture,”* as a particular selection of the totality of lived experience, particularly focusing on *drama, music, and dance*. In the 1990s, these *performing arts* continued to be displayed on the outskirts and margins of Ghanaian schools, through school cultural competitions and on school anniversaries, pointing to the difficulties of integrating a particular idea of *“African culture”* into schools so closely tied to a particular notion of “modernity” associated with *fluency in English, Christianity, and social mobility.* Sources/ References Cited: 1. Achimota Review, 1927-1937. 1937. Achimota: Achimota Press. Ghana National Archives. CSO 18/6/62. 2. Agbodeka, Francis. 1977. 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Comparative Education Review 15(2):132-45. 12. ———. 1975. African Reactions to Missionary Education. New York: Teachers’ College Press. 13. Boahen, Adu. 1996. Mfantsipim and the Making of Ghana: A Centenary History, 1876-1976. Accra: Sankofa Educational Publishers. 14. Coe, Cati. 2000. “Not just Drumming and Dancing”: The Production of National Culture in Ghana’s Schools.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania. 15. Cohen, Abner. 1981. The Politics of Elite Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.