Making Men in Ghana

3. Forms of Education: Apprenticeships and Schools, 1919–1947

48 3 FORMS OF EDUCATION: APPRENTICESHIPS AND SCHOOLS, 1919–1947 In colonial Ghana European forms of education were dominated by mission societies, particularly the two Protestant churches, Presbyterian (former Basel Mission) and Wesleyan Methodist, as well as the Catholic Church.1 There is a broad consensus in gender studies on the importance of missionary activities, especially the introduction of formal education, in shaping notions of masculinity and femininity among Christian converts across colonial Africa. Schools were sites where gender values were “produced and disseminated.”2 Scholars have focused on missionaries as agents in reconstructing African men and women, and have tended to neglect the contributions of teachers and catechists of African descent.3 Most scholarship has been less concerned with local forms of instruction like apprenticeships outside the structured context of mission schools, or Islamic education.4 There is little documentary evidence about such apprenticeships . Yet, for many in Ghana, particularly in rural areas where school education was not as available or as compelling, the relationships between apprentice and master proved important to the formation of the masculine self. As the men at the center of this study engaged with their masters and teachers, they perceived norms of behavior and expectations for men which they weighed against their familial and precursory influences; that most of these figures were African gave greater weight to their examples, even when the values were colonial or foreign. Akan ideals of senior masculinity were conveyed in formal and informal apprenticeships; ideas of “Presbyterian masculinity” were dominant in a mission church and its schools. These notions of masculinity were decisive in- fluences for the interviewed men. Whether undertaken by choice, compulsion , or economic necessity, these educational experiences transmitted by both individuals and institutions during this formative period when they were first learning what constituted masculinity covered great societal and personal 49 Forms of Education change. What they learned here remained strongly present throughout their lives. As childhood gave way to greater responsibility of work and formal education, the need for some resolution among contested ideals became more urgent. For instance, according to Presbyterian masculinity, pupils were expected to become monogamous husbands who privileged their wives and children over their abusua (matrilineage), and to become men guided by strict discipline expressed in regular work, Christian devotion, and deference to secular and religious authorities like the colonial state, local chiefs, and the church leadership. Apprenticeships In her pioneering history of Ga women in Accra, Claire Robertson suggested that most apprenticeships “were informal between relatives,” daughters learning skills of housework, child care, or trading from their mothers or grandmothers or stepmothers, or even from more distant relatives . A few apprenticeships were formally organized involving fees along with nonrelatives as mistresses, particularly in the crafts of sewing, bread baking, and bead polishing. Such arrangements gave the mistress the right to exploit the labor of her apprentice, who was not permitted to keep any profit and could only work with the mistress’s tools. Some girls also apprenticed in mission schools.5 Apprenticeships were sites where young men and young women became aware that certain crafts and occupations were gendered. In precolonial Asante, as in other Akan areas, most pottery was made by women, while men engaged in crafts like goldsmithing, weaving, and wood carving. Skills were usually handed down either from mother to daughter or from father to son, often at an early age. Despite the matrilineal descent practiced among Akan people, male patrilineal succession existed and included offices at the ahenfie (chief ’s palace) and occupations like drumming and hunting.6 R. S. Rattray reported an informant’s observation of early-twentieth-century Asante: “If you have any dwumadie (profession), e.g. are a hunter, weaver, drummer, or blacksmith, you will train your son to be that too, and this without his uncle’s permission.” But, the informant added, should the son not obey, the father could “send him away to his uncle.” Rattray considered this an “ex-parte” statement reflecting the father’s point of view, since an uncle could remove his wɔfase (nephew, niece) if the father was “too poor to bring up the child properly.”7 In the course of the twentieth century these practices changed. In Asante 50 MAKING MEN IN GHANA a father could not only apprentice his son in his own craft but could “pay to apprentice him to someone else,” a paternal cash expense...