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Abstract
The Seychelles, one of Britain's more remote Indian Ocean colonies, long suffered a totally inadequate system of schooling based mainly on the Roman Catholic mission. This article traces how education policy was challenged in the 1930s and changed in the 1940s. Emphasis is placed on the decisive role of the colonial governor in initiating and implementing a change in policy and the absence of any sense of overriding direction and control emanating from Whitehall.
In a recently published paper I argued that contrary to popular belief inspired by a variety of armchair critics of British imperialism like Martin Carnoy et al, there never was a British colonial education policy in any sense of a prescribed course of action adopted and deliberately implemented throughout the colonies, with the primary aim of maintaining British supremacy.2 The colonial empire was far too diverse and far-flung for that. Moreover, as Lord Hailey commented, British colonial administrators were traditionally pragmatiste at heart and the Colonial Office treated each colony as a unique separate entity responsible for its own destiny.3 This approach was endorsed in February 1940 in the Statement of Policy on Colonial Development and Wefare:
From London there will be assistance and guidance, but no spirit of dictation. The new policy of development will involve no derogation from the rights and privileges of local legislatures .... The whole effort will be one of collaboration between the authorities in the colonies and those at home; there must be ready recognition that conditions vary greatly from Colony to Colony, and that Colonial Governments, who best know the needs of their own territories, should enjoy a wide latitude in the initiation and execution of policies, the primary purpose of which is to promote the prosperity and happiness of the peoples of the Colonial Empire.4
There were several basic guiding principles that shaped education in Britain's colonies, for example, the free reign given to voluntary or nongovernment schools and the right of parents to choose the education of their choice for their children, but specific policy was invariably left to local colonial administrators to determine often at the specific direction of the governor. To verify this thesis I suggested that more detailed case studies of individual colonies were needed in...