Our First Research Trip to Africa, 1957-58...
Our First Research Trip to Africa During 1957-58, As Told to Uplands Retirement Village, Pleasant Hill, TN., Children’s Summer Campers on June 6, 2018, by Franklin Parker and Betty Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net
Frank: Good morning, children. We old Uplanders love seeing you children happy in your 2018 Uplands summer camp activities.
Betty: We were asked to tell you about our first research trip to Africa. We made that first trip from Sept. 1957 to May 1958—60 long years ago. Here are highpoints of what we remember of that first overseas trip.
Frank: I was then age 36. Betty Parker was then age 28. We tell you our story because as you grow and study and learn you, too, might be encouraged to try to do really big good things.
Betty: We first met at Berea College near Lexington, Kentucky, in September 1946, were married in 1950. We taught for two years, 1950-52, at Ferrum College, near Roanoke, Va.; then studied for higher graduate degrees at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 1952-56. We taught one year at State University of New York, New Paltz, 1956-57.
Frank: We were two ambitious teachers, wanting to visit other countries and to write about their national schools systems. I was a member of a teachers honor society named Kappa Delta Pi and had applied for Kappa Delta Pi’s competitive grant of $5,000 to study and write a report to be published on education of black African children in then British-ruled Southeast African country named Southern Rhodesia. When it became independent in 1980 it was renamed Zimbabwe, which had been its original African name. (Hard to believe but Google.Com records that $5,000 in 1957-58 in today’s money (2018) is $44,660.14.).
Betty: What fascinated Frank about Southern Rhodesia was that in 1953 the three adjacent British-ruled, English-speaking countries in South Eastern Africa (Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland) formed a multicultural federation. How would this new multicultural union manage their three racially separated school systems: 1-the best supported schools for white children of white British Civil Servants and white British farmers; 2-the much less supported massively growing and poorest black African schools, plus 3: moderately supported schools for Asian and other nonwhite children.
Frank: I had just been hired to teach at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, when I learned I had won Kappa Delta Pi Honor Society’s $5,000 grant to study African education in Southern Rhodesia.
Betty: Frank asked for and University of Texas officials approved his leave of absence to accept the Africa research grant. We asked my former Berea College Labor Office supervisor and part-time travel agent, Ben Welch, to make our plane Reservations with stopovers at major African capital cities. Those brief stopovers gave us a good first introduction to Africa and its people.
Frank: Southern Rhodesia was named after British-born South African political leader Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902). Cecil Rhodes had convinced the Zambia’s African leader that his country would benefit greatly by British help under British rule. When Southern Rhodesia became independent in 1980, as mentioned, African leaders restored Southern Rhodesia’s original name of Zimbabwe. Betty, why did we choose to study African education in Southern Rhodesia?
Betty: We chose Southern Rhodesia first of all because English was the official language, and we speak only English. Cecil Rhodes encouraged white British people to settle there where they would find rich farm land and cheap African labor. Some Rhodesian white farmers raised tobacco as a cash crop. Africans raised mainly corn because their basic diet is a corn meal mush they call “Sadza.” Cecil Rhodes invited white Christian missionaries and gave them land to open churches and schools and provide some health care. Several of our retired Uplands were missionaries who worked in Zimbabwe. One was Fletcher resident Dorothea Bowling, who will be telling you her story. Frank, what did we plan to do with the information gathered about Rhodesia’s African education system?
Frank: The Kappa Delta Pi honor society required that we write a short book as part of their series on international education. Ohio State University Press, titled, published our book in 1960: African Development and Education in Southern Rhodesia.It is now out of date but it was useful for some years after 1960.
Betty: In what other ways did you and I use the information we gathered about Southern Rhodesia’s various school systems?
Frank: As a university professor I taught about education in other countries. Southern Rhodesia was a good example of a British colony with separate schools for 1-white children (small in size with best supported school buildings, skilled teachers, text books, and libraries); 2-African schools for black African children; large, ever growing, and less well supported, plus 3-some schools for Asian children (moderately supported). Besides teaching a comparison of national school systems (British, African, Japanese, etc.) you and I together also wrote articles for several encyclopedia yearbook articles about political events in fast changing Zimbabwe and other African countries.
Betty: Frank and I had never before been to Africa and we needed help in planning how to do our research in Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe). Frank, who helped us most in planning our research?
Frank: We read everything we could find about African education in British territories. I soon learned that the Carnegie Foundation in New York City had greatly aided African education in British-ruled African countries. So by letter I asked for advice from the New York City-based Carnegie Foundation president, Alan Pifer.
Betty: We spoke to Alan Pifer, who gave us most helpful information, names, and addresses. Frank wrote offering to work as a researcher without pay on the Education faculty of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland located in the capital of Southern Rhodesia, Salisbury, and later renamed Harare. The head of that University College Education Department, Professor Basil A. Fletcher, gave Frank an office there and essential backing.
Frank: Before leaving the U.S. in late August 1957, we attended a conference held in Hartford, CT, to meet and talk with missionaries who had worked in Southern Rhodesia. We then flew to England to attend a conference with government officials who worked in Southern Rhodesia. In early September 1957 we headed for Africa in a slow moving propeller-driven airplane, which made many refueling stops.
Betty: Our first refueling stop was Benghazi in Libya, then Khartoum in Sudan, and then in Nairobi, Kenya, where we spent two days sightseeing. We saw lions, leopards, giraffes, and other game in a nearby animal reserve park. A driver we hired took us to view the Great Rift Valley, which extends north and east through Africa to the Middle East.
Frank: From Nairobi, we flew to our final destination, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, later called Harare, Zimbabwe. Having described our purpose in a letter to the newspaper editor of the Rhodesian Herald, we mentioned our need for housing and we were lucky enough to live in several houses at low rent while their white civil servant owners were on long vacation. And to get around the town and countryside, we bought a second-hand British-made car. We learned how to drive on the left side of the road as is done in Britain and in Rhodesia.
Betty: Rhodesia’s African Education Department Inspector took us to visit many African elementary and secondary schools. Some were mission-run. Some were white-government managed. We were accepted as researchers at the Rhodesian National Archives in Salisbury. There we read many official reports from mission and government officials about African education in past years. We ultimately had a fairly good grasp of African schools successes, shortcomings, and failures, and African leaders’ needs for the country’s inevitable future independence.
Frank: As our leaving time approached, we wanted very much to contribute something really useful. Betty and I found just the thing that was needed. Approved and backed by the British University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland we organized an interracial conference on “Improving the Teaching of English as a Second Language for African Students.” Expert experienced teachers, white, Asian, and black, from the three territories, met, discussed, and recorded better ways to teach English to African students.
Betty: We were surprised at how well that conference went. It was the first ever such interracial conference of white, black, and Asian teachers from the three territories of Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland. The published report results of this conference became surprisingly reasonably known, read, and much appreciated. Frank, Why was this, our first Africa research trip, so important for us?
Frank: It led to two articles we wrote and had published: 1- “An African School in Southern Rhodesia,” Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 2 (Summer, 1959), pp. 23-26). And 2: “The Inception of the Department of African Education in Northern Rhodesia,” Paedagogica Historica, IV, No. 1 (1964), pp. 149-162’’
Betty: More importantly it led to a Kappa Delta Pi published book: Franklin Parker, African Development and Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1960. Columbus, Ohio, 165 pages.
Frank: Before leaving, we showed, explained, and let the Upland summer camper children handle our Africa carvings of lion, elephant, and giraffe; our maps of Africa, and Africa’s place on a World Globe, showing it to be the second largest of the world’s continents.
Betty: The children then asked questions, which we tried to answer. We thanked them for being there, thanked them for asking good questions, told them that we old Uplanders were proud of them. We urged them to study, learn, and improve themselves so as to make our country and the world better. END.
Post Script. To access our writings, most of which can be read in part or full, type the following in full on Google.com or any other major search engine and click on:
Franklin Parker, 1921-, bfparker@frontiernet.net, Full Writings of.
For listing of the above mentioned Conference on the teaching of English, click on;
https://books.google.com/books/about/Report_of_a_Conference_on_the_Teaching_o.html?id=uWPjtgEACAAJ
Also click on:
https://www.google.com/search?ei=ZrkZW6qxBunK5gKB3L34CA&q=Teaching+of+English+conference%2C+Rhodesia+and+Nyasaland&oq=Teaching+of+English+conference%2C+Rhodesia+and+Nyasaland&gs_l=psy-ab.3...7986.42512.0.44184.56.55.1.0.0.0.110.4525.50j5.55.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.40.3313...0j0i131k1j0i67k1j0i131i67k1j0i22i30k1j33i22i29i30k1j33i160k1j33i21k1.0.IT7B-m95CVI
--and click on (long wait):
http://wvu.academia.edu/FranklinParker
Post Script. We welcome any known sources about Leeds University (England) Professor Basil A. Fletcher.
End. bfparker@frontiernet.net
