Studies in Trends in Nigeria's Educational Development: An Essay on Sources and Resources

Extract

This bibliographical essay, it is hoped, will lead to an uncommon view of the opportunities for study of the trends in Nigeria's educational growth from its modest and feeble beginnings in the 1840's to.the elaborate and radical changes that are taking place today. The topics and problems discussed are not restricted to those bearing on schools, teachers, and formal instruction, but touch on all the questions that arise from the effort to understand the process and content of cultural transfer in early Nigerian education. It must be pointed out, however, that this work is not an attempt to provide a synthetic organon of topics whose investigation will complete the study of all facets of education in Nigeria, nor is it an attempt to present a definitive bibliography. It is, rather, an annotated listing of what I consider to be the key writings whose examination will lead to an understanding of the main developments in the trends. The comments I have added to a number of items are notes, not pronouncements ex cathedra. At best, a bibliographical essay of this nature may serve as a storehouse and a guide to a chest of tools from which each person must select for himself those items best suited to his work. If this essay should help investigators to take into account some relevant facts, questions, or materials which otherwise might not have come so soon to their attention, it will have fulfilled its primary purpose.