A NEW PERIOD in the political and social history of the Congo opened after World War II. Events elsewhere in Africa and their resultant international pressures, a growing dissatisfaction among the evolués (the "middle class," who were the products of the post primary schools), and new views concerning administration for the Congo which came from Belgium all combined to set the country on a new course. It was a period of rapid change. Education became a central issue both to the evolués and to the newly elected governments in Belgium, and was as much affected by the change as any aspect of Congolese life. Church-State Relationships New School Aid Requirements The old framework of church-state relationships in education broke down. In 1946, a new requirement for aid to mission schools went into effect: All the teaching staff must know French and must complete a teacher-training program in Belgium. "Foreign," that is, Protestant, missions were thus able to qualify for government subsidies, and the Roman Catholic missions lost their almost complete monopoly of these subsidies. Education still remained, though, largely a church function, and the heaviest blow to the traditional system did not come until later. First Official Schools for Congolese Replacing the Roman Catholic government in Belgium, the 1954 Liberal-Socialist coalition government almost immediately clashed with the Church on the issue of education in the Congo. Appointed by the new Colonial Minister, a commission on educational policy in the colony severely criticized the church's educational methods there and proposed that lay schools be established and subsidies to the missions be cut. The ensuing conflict had wide ramifications, offering the Congolese evolués their first opportunity to express their views and weigh their influence and marking the onset of the breakup of the three-sided alliance in the Congo of Church, Government, and Big Business. In education, the Government intervened more directly than ever before. As a result the special position of the Roman Catholic missions was further weakened. For the first time the Government established official schools (écoles officielles) for Congolese, schools not only financed by the Government but also staffed by government officials. Despite these changes, only about 4 percent of all pupils in the Congo were attending government secular schools at the time of independence, June 1960; and more Roman Catholic than Protestant missions were receiving subsidies. New Educational Programs for Congolese During this post-World War II period, the traditional Belgian policy regarding the kind of education to be provided to Congolese was reversed. For the first time they had an opportunity to go on to full secondary and higher education. The change came in two stages. First Stage 1 The 1948 educational reform initiated the first stage. The new regulations for independent schools issued that year 1 stated two goals: (1) the mass of the people should be prepared to play a useful role in their environment; and (2) an indigenous elite should be created. For the first time, the creation of such an elite had become a stated goal of Belgian policy. Implementing this policy goal, the regulations called for the establishment of the first full-length 6-year secondary schools for Congolese and foresaw the establishment of higher education institutions. The Minister for the Colonies, Pierre Wigny, explained that by establishing such schools for the Congolese, the Belgian Government wanted to prove that it was not giving Belgian children any monopoly 1 Congo Belge. Service de l'Enseignement. Organisation de l'Enseignement Libre Subsidié pour Indigènes avec le Concours des Sociétés de Missions Chretiennes. [Bruxelles]: 1948. An English translation of pp. 7-31 of this document appears in the following: Scanlon, David G., ed. Traditions of African Education (Classics in Education No. 16). "of a high intellectual training and, as a consequence, of the professions to which it gives entree."2 The policy and the steps actually taken were more cautious than this statement suggests. The regulations make it clear that the Government's aim was to give the majority of Congolese secondary school pupils both general and specialized training so that they might enter employment on completing their 6-year secondary course and to prepare only select groups for university and other higher education. The regulations provided for establishment of two types of 6-year secondary schools: (1) modern secondary schools giving 3 years of general education and 3 years of more specialized education oriented toward some vocation to prepare the majority of students for employment and to prepare a select group for nonuniversity higher education; and (2) Latin secondary schools giving 6 years of general secondary education (roughly modeled on the Belgian humanities, but not including Greek) to prepare a select group for university education. Also, the regulations make it clear that the Government did not intend to give any of the Congolese secondary school pupils the same secondary programs it gave Belgian children in the Congo. Rather, it intended to give them less intensive and different secondary programs which (1) would not take them as far in academic subjects as the Belgian programs took Belgian pupils, but (2) would give them a knowledge of their own country and people as well as of European civilization so as to insure that the future elite would be qualified from both the African and European point of view. Thus, the regulations stressed the need to adapt subject matter to local requirements and to reduce the volume of subject matter to the minimum compatible with the aims sought. They also called for an emphasis on the Congo in the teaching of history and geography and for the inclusion in the curriculum of a course in indigenous language and another one on indigenous culture. The curriculum was also to include an extensive manual work course to instill respect for work and a deontology course to teach manners and promote understanding between the Congolese and the Belgians. The first full-length secondary schools in the Congolese system offered programs both different from and slower paced than the programs offered in the other system. Accenting more than ever before the distinction between selective and ordinary education, the regulations called also for a major reorganization of primary education in order to provide adequate preparation for pupils selected to go on to secondary education, while at the same time continuing ordinary elementary instruction for the masses. Pierre Wigny. Belgian Congo. A Ten-Year Plan for the Economic and Social Development of ine New York: Belgian Government Information Center, 1950. cho thò pofum, the second stage began. Catents of sert lary and higher educacese. Most of the official schools to use the 1834 offered Belgian programs and anet is proattended) a general movement in the sys Emulating these new official instituta beer offering only Congolese programs began de began programs. In other words, as students enthey began immediately with those programs, a strana z me bier classes were finishing the Distress as well underway when legal Tas made in 1959 In the nette, after 1952, Let Meraz standards gut subkets and thus son ses orside the Congo Tu Sise, op. cit. p. Congolese the In 1954 Lovanium began to offer higher education programs comparable to those offered in Belgium. It started its first preuniversity program in January of that year and in the fall, with 21 students enrolled, its first university program proper. Reflecting the Government's decision not to leave higher education entirely to a private institution, the Official University of the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi, created in 1955, opened its doors in November 1956 to its first 79 students. Two years later, when the movement toward higher secondary school standards was well underway and both universities were offering Belgian-type programs, the Government enacted the very important decree of November 25, 1958, on the awarding of academic degrees in the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi. By this time the Government's overriding objective was that university degrees awarded in the Congo should win recognition as the equivalent of those awarded in Belgium. In July 1958 Belgian representatives at the annual International Conference on Public Education in Geneva, Switzerland, when explaining the nature of university education in the Congo, stated: ". . . the Africans demand first of all qualifications equivalent to those in metropolitan universities." 5 . It is not surprising that the decree provided for higher education very closely modeled on that of Belgium. By laying down Belgian university admission requirements as permanent ones in the Congo, the decree also in effect provided that the Belgian academic secondary programs were to be taught in those secondary schools of the Congo that prepared students for university admission. There is evidence that a reform not of the 6-year secondary schools only, but of the entire structure of secondary education, was intended at this time. Thus, on November 25, 1958, only about 18 months before independence, the Belgian Government legally provided for secondary and higher education in the Congo exactly-with few exceptions-like such education in Belgium, the "metropole"-a type of education never even existing in the Congolese system until 1954. The reforms spelled out in the decree and the earlier reforms of the 1950's came so late, howe |