Native Education
In order to ascertain the work done by Europeans, the Government and the Missionary Societies in schools for the natives of their various African possessions, the German Colonial Institute in 1911 sent out to the colonies over 2,000 printed questionnaires, with a request to the authorities to return answers according to the state of the schools on June 1st in that year. From the information filled in and returned, Herr Missions-Inspector Schlunk, of Hamburg, was able to publish a voluminous report on the subject, and the state of affairs thus revealed is illustrative of the best and worst features of the Teutonic colonising system. The facts in themselves concerning the educational work accomplished in the way of providing the natives with schools and teachers are remarkable.
In Cameroon the first educational work among the natives was begun by the London Baptist Mission in 1845, and in 1885, the year in which the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America entered the field, the London Baptists resigned their organisation to the Missions Gesellschaft, of Basel. Two years later the first Government School was opened in Duala, and in the following four years the Apostolic Vicariat Kamerun, of Limburg on the Lahn, and the German Baptists, of Steglitz, established schools in the colony. In Cameroon, as in Togo, the Government were behind the missions in the number of schools and scholars, having, in 1911, only eight elementary schools, as against the nine of the American Presbyterians, thirty-eight of the German Baptists, eighty-six of the Roman Catholic, and 275 of the Basel Mission. Altogether there were in the colony 499 elementary schools, with forty-two European and 611 native teachers, and 32,056 pupils; twenty-one higher schools, with thirty-three European and thirty native teachers, and 1,802 pupils; eleven industrial schools, with twenty-two European and five native teachers, and 259 pupils; or a total of 531 schools, with ninety-seven European and 646 native teachers, and 34,117 pupils. Of the teachers 3·3 per cent. and of the pupils 8·1 per cent. were females.