Colonial Education in Somalia
2:12 PM
Edit
Colonial Education in Somalia
Colonial education in Somalia was, as elsewhere in Africa, designed and pragmatically implemented for the administrative and low-level technical needs of the imperial powers. To that effect, as Rodney (1974) points out, the colonial school system ‘was to train Africans to help man the local administration at the lowest ranks, and to staff the private capitalist firms which meant the participation of few Africans in the domination and exploitation of the continent as a whole’ (p. 240).
To qualify this last argument, one may have to refer to some previously unintended benefits from colonial education, especially the training of some of the continent’s most prominent nationalist leaders. These leaders, one could argue, primarily because of their Western education, organized the liberation struggles that have eventually led to Africa’s independence. To name a few, these included Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Somalia’s first President Aden Abdulle Osman and first Prime Minister Abdirashid Shermarke, as well as the current President of South Africa Nelson Mandela. And this will still be the case even when one realizes that some of these leaders have eventually been rightly accused of having installed dictatorial regimes, thus thwarting democratic systems of governments and truncating the development potential of their peoples.
In Somalia, colonial education demonstrates a systematic conformity to the general colonial education system with imperialist governments training low-level administrative personnel to help them administer the colonial territory effectively. As education is shaped by the social forces that surround it, colonial education then signifies the type of learning that is conducive to the general themes of subordination, exploitation and inverse development relationship between the colonized and the colonizer (Rodney, 1974; Memmi, 1991). Ironically, though, colonialism was ‘justified as an attempt to make the non-industrialized societies (which were seen as primitive) advance to a more developed stage’ (Ghosh, 1994, p. 4).
One of the first formal colonial schools operating in Somalia was opened by the Italian Dante Alighieri Society in 1907 to teach Somali children the Italian language (Laitin, 1976). Later, more colonial schools were opened with the number of pupils reaching 1265, but with Somalis not going beyond grade 7 (Laitin, 1976). This testifies to the overriding character of colonial education where, despite the claim of civilizational, developmental and educational motives, the essence of that education ultimately fulfils the real objectives of imperialism. In the case of Somalia, as elsewhere in the colonized world, a grade 7 education was apparently sufficient for administrative and low-level technical duties assigned to the natives. The type and the level of education that should lead to critical citizenship and social analysis would have been a danger to the longevity of colonialism, and apparently, colonizers were not unaware of that.
With the beginning of the struggle for Somalia’s independence in the mid-1940s, and with the formation of the Somali Youth Club (SYC) in 1943, which became the Somali Youth League (SYL) in 1947 (Laitin & Samatar, 1987), modern education was a priority on the agenda of the new liberation organizations and their leaders. Some of the SYC’s main objectives, according to Markakis (1987), were ‘to promote modern education and to adopt a script for the Somali language’ (p. 53).
The prioritization of modern education and the implementation of a local language script are, as Gellner (1983) and Kedourie (1993) point out, important factors for identifying, upholding and sustaining a modern national system. In Somalia’s case, the situation was more urgent in terms of using education as a tool to diminish the role of tribalism and tribal conflict which, when unchecked, could lead to the current nation-state destruction in Somalia and elsewhere. The Somali liberation groups, therefore, were seeing education as an indispensable building block to fight clanism and to create a clan-transcending Somali nationalism (Markakis, 1987; Laitin & Samatar, 1987).
To qualify this last argument, one may have to refer to some previously unintended benefits from colonial education, especially the training of some of the continent’s most prominent nationalist leaders. These leaders, one could argue, primarily because of their Western education, organized the liberation struggles that have eventually led to Africa’s independence. To name a few, these included Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Somalia’s first President Aden Abdulle Osman and first Prime Minister Abdirashid Shermarke, as well as the current President of South Africa Nelson Mandela. And this will still be the case even when one realizes that some of these leaders have eventually been rightly accused of having installed dictatorial regimes, thus thwarting democratic systems of governments and truncating the development potential of their peoples.
In Somalia, colonial education demonstrates a systematic conformity to the general colonial education system with imperialist governments training low-level administrative personnel to help them administer the colonial territory effectively. As education is shaped by the social forces that surround it, colonial education then signifies the type of learning that is conducive to the general themes of subordination, exploitation and inverse development relationship between the colonized and the colonizer (Rodney, 1974; Memmi, 1991). Ironically, though, colonialism was ‘justified as an attempt to make the non-industrialized societies (which were seen as primitive) advance to a more developed stage’ (Ghosh, 1994, p. 4).
One of the first formal colonial schools operating in Somalia was opened by the Italian Dante Alighieri Society in 1907 to teach Somali children the Italian language (Laitin, 1976). Later, more colonial schools were opened with the number of pupils reaching 1265, but with Somalis not going beyond grade 7 (Laitin, 1976). This testifies to the overriding character of colonial education where, despite the claim of civilizational, developmental and educational motives, the essence of that education ultimately fulfils the real objectives of imperialism. In the case of Somalia, as elsewhere in the colonized world, a grade 7 education was apparently sufficient for administrative and low-level technical duties assigned to the natives. The type and the level of education that should lead to critical citizenship and social analysis would have been a danger to the longevity of colonialism, and apparently, colonizers were not unaware of that.
With the beginning of the struggle for Somalia’s independence in the mid-1940s, and with the formation of the Somali Youth Club (SYC) in 1943, which became the Somali Youth League (SYL) in 1947 (Laitin & Samatar, 1987), modern education was a priority on the agenda of the new liberation organizations and their leaders. Some of the SYC’s main objectives, according to Markakis (1987), were ‘to promote modern education and to adopt a script for the Somali language’ (p. 53).
The prioritization of modern education and the implementation of a local language script are, as Gellner (1983) and Kedourie (1993) point out, important factors for identifying, upholding and sustaining a modern national system. In Somalia’s case, the situation was more urgent in terms of using education as a tool to diminish the role of tribalism and tribal conflict which, when unchecked, could lead to the current nation-state destruction in Somalia and elsewhere. The Somali liberation groups, therefore, were seeing education as an indispensable building block to fight clanism and to create a clan-transcending Somali nationalism (Markakis, 1987; Laitin & Samatar, 1987).