Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986 [1 ed.] 9781782388814, 9781571812131

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PRESERVING ORDER AMID CHAOS

Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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PRESERVING ORDER AMID CHAOS The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971–1986

o Copyright © 2000. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

John Rhodes Paige

Berghahn Books NEW YORK • OXFORD Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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Published in 2000 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2000 John Rhodes Paige All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berghahn Books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Paige, John Rhodes. Preserving order amid chaos : the survival of schools in Uganda, 1971–1986 / John Rhodes Paige. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 1-57181-213-X (alk. paper) 1. Education, Secondary—Uganda—Kabarole District—History— 20th century. 2. Education and State—Uganda—Case studies. I. Title. LA1567 .P25 2000 373.6761—dc21

00-026127

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.

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CONTENTS

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List of Maps Preface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Maps Introduction: An Overview of the Study Background, 1 An Experience of Contrasts, 2 The Survival of Schools, 3 Research Questions and Field Sites, 6 Key Concepts, 8 Internal Functioning of Schools, 8 Baseline Conditionalities, 8 Organizational Survival, 10 Organization, 11 Summary, 13

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1. A Socio-historical View: The Context of Ugandan Education The Historical Legacy, 17 The Social Legacy, 19 Economic/Political/Cultural Issues, 19 Military Issues and Education, 24 War and Violence Issues Affecting Education, 26 Conclusion, 28

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2. A View from the Past: Traditions of Ugandan Education The Historical Legacy, 31 Pre-colonial Education, 31 Missionary Education, 32 Colonial Educational Development: Interbellum Years 1919–39, 35 Pre-independence through Independence, 37 The Current Educational Scene, 39

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3. The Story: A National View The Amin/Obote II Years and Ugandan Schooling, 42 Amin’s Economic War, 42 Departure of Expatriate Teachers, 44 Departure of Ugandan Professionals, 45 Rapid Africanization of the Schools, 47 Transportation, 48 Food, Firewood, Furnishings, and Facilities, 49 Morale in the Schools, 50 Obote II Politics and the Schools, 51 War, Insecurity, and Violence, 54 Quality of School Life, 55

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4. The Story: A View from the Ground in Kabarole School Sites in Kabarole District, 59 Christianity and Colonialism in Tooro, 60 Kyebambe Girls Secondary School, 61 St. Leo’s College, Kyegobe, 62 Nyakasura School, 65 Mpanga Senior Secondary School, 68 The Survival of Kabarole Schools, 71 Systemic Support for Schools, 72 Amin’s Regime and Education, 72 Obote II and Education, 76 Western Region Education and the Interim NRM Government, 78 The Influence of the Church on Schools and Society, 80 Natural Resources, 81 Tribal/Ethnic Tensions, 81 The Role of Parents and Boards of Governors, 83 The Social Fabric, 85 Regionalization, 88

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5. The Story: Viewing Initiatives and Internalities in Kabarole Local Initiatives in Schools, 91 Individual Leadership, 91 The Experience of Educational Actors, 95 Kabarole Public Library, 97 Entrepreneurial Projects, 98 Strategies and Procedures Implemented in the Schools, 101 Policy and Practice: Teachers, 101 Policy and Practice: Local School Organization, 104 Policy and Practice: Governance, 108 Policy and Practice: Finance, 109 Policy and Practice: Interventions, 110

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Contents | vii

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War, Violence, and the Effect on Children, 111 The Role of Kabarole Schools in Wartime, 112 6. Discussion: The View of an Outsider Conditionalities Enabling Kabarole Schools to Survive, 118 Government Non-interference in Schools, 118 Ingrained Cultural Values, 121 Opportunity Structures, 137

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7. Discussion: A View toward the Future Did the Schools Survive? Interpretations, 145 Organizational Survival, 150 Strategies and Practices, 151 Institutional Persistence, 155 Public-Private Responsibility for Education, 158 Conclusion, 162 Baseline Conditionalities, 162 Recommendations for Action, 165 Summary, 172

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Appendix I: A Viewing Lens—the Study Methodology Appendix II: Calendar of Important Events in Uganda’s Educational History Glossary References Index

174 194 196 197 205

List of Maps 1. 2. 3.

Uganda Uganda Districts 1969 Uganda Districts after 1976

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PREFACE

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T

o say that education in Africa is under stress appears to be a redundancy. News reports from that continent seem to describe only war and violence, poverty and malnutrition, corruption and mismanagement, or natural disasters that destroy or threaten already frail infrastructures; most news from Africa is bad news. Hence, when an African education system registers consistent growth under adverse social conditions, that phenomenon is worthy of note. When that system survives in a country like Uganda, long subjected to the whims of despotic leadership, it warrants an investigation. This is a study of four senior secondary schools in Kabarole District, Uganda, during a time of war and intractable social conflict. Three of the schools typify the traditional mission-founded boarding school establishments; the fourth is a pioneer among the now-prevalent day school foundations. Each of these schools existed prior to the conflicted time of the Amin/Obote II regimes, 1971 to 1986, and managed to survive Uganda’s consequent exodus of professionals, economic collapse, material shortages, moral decline, and reign of terror. These difficulties took their toll, but there was no faltering. Individual practices of educational actors —parents, teachers, administrators, and students—and communal strategies initiated by education, church, and village leadership sustained efforts that in some cases produced change, and at other times preserved tradition. Ultimately, this study of Kabarole’s secondary schools preserves a record of African voices describing how these schools survived and why that might have happened, areas of interest for the oral/educational historian and ethnographer. The conditionalities supporting institutional stability and change that surface in the testimony of informants also help the organizational historian understand the how and why of organizational survival. While the focus of this study remains on secondary schools in a Ugandan up-country region, the findings may help educators understand

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Preface | ix

more about inherent conditions that undergird school survival in general. With the current initiatives for educational expansion in Uganda and the developing world, lessons of past success may well serve to inform future policy and planning. This story of the survival of Kabarole’s secondary schools is best told as a narrative. The opening chapters present an overview and set the political, social, cultural, and institutional legacy of Uganda, in which this study is nested. The middle chapters tell the particular story of school survival in Kabarole, Uganda, identifying difficulties these schools faced during the 1971-86 period, and describing what they did to cope and to survive this period of trial. The concluding chapters offer interpretations revealed in the narrative and comment on their implications. An appendix reviews the multiple research perspectives and interdisciplinary methodology employed in this research. This is an African story, utilizing the direct testimony of the people who persevered through this conflicted time in Uganda and lived to tell about it. To protect these informants from possible future harassment, pseudonyms have been used when citing information gained from personal interviews or personal correspondence. Every effort has been made to report the experience of Kabarole’s schools in as balanced and fair a manner as possible: descriptive information was corroborated whenever possible; interviews were audio-taped and transcribed to ensure accuracy; school archives, publications, pamphlets, and brochures were perused. Conditions identified as critical to school survival arose from the firsthand experience of those who lived and schooled there at the time. While coming to this scene from another culture, and searching for factors that might account for school survival, I try to portray both positive and negative aspects of school life during this period. Moreover, I attempt to recognize and note the particular bias an informant might bring to the narration.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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I

t surely is appropriate to thank some of the people who enabled me to undertake this project. The Congregation of Holy Cross, Eastern Brothers’ Province, provided me with the sabbatical time and financial resources to complete this dissertation research. The Gerald H. Read Laureate Doctoral Scholarship for research in international and comparative education, awarded by the Kappa Delta Pi Educational Foundation, and a grant from the Minority Affairs Fund of the University of Maryland Graduate School provided additional funding. Members of the Holy Cross District of East Africa welcomed me into their midst and helped me feel at home away from home; the Jesuit Community at Xavier House, Kampala, also offered me ready hospitality and encouragement during my forays in the capital city. Research Secretary Patrick Madaya of the Makerere Institute of Social Research provided invaluable assistance in helping me comply with government requirements for conducting scholarly research in Uganda. Current site school Heads—Brother John Flood (St. Leo’s College), Alice Turyahikayo (Kyebambe Girls Secondary School), Henry Mehangye (Nyakasura School), and Rwakijuma Kantu (Mpanga Secondary School)—welcomed me to their campuses, included me in school activities, personally hosted school faculty information sessions, provided access to school records, and assisted me with the identification of potential informants. Conrad Mbanzabugabo, Kabarole District Education Officer, and Gertrude Tibakanya, Fort Portal Assistant Municipal Education Officer, were particularly supportive of the research work I was doing in the schools under their jurisdiction. Archivists Jackie Dougherty of the Indiana Province Archives and Brother Laurian LaForest of the Eastern Brothers’ Province Archives greatly assisted in locating newsletters, chronicles, and correspondence of the American Holy Cross religious in Fort Portal. University of Maryland, College of Education, faculty guided me throughout this project with skill and encouragement:

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Acknowledgments | xi

Dr. Dennis Herschbach, faculty advisor and dissertation chair, was a most interested and supportive colleague, walking faithfully and enthusiastically with me through the project; Dr. Barbara Finkelstein first introduced me to the history of education and oral history, helping me pursue my interest and develop the skills needed to investigate this evolution of Ugandan education; Dr. Robert Birnbaum and Dr. Richard Hopkins paid particular attention to detail and logic, greatly assisting me in the proposal and reporting stages of the study. Dr. Tony Whitehead, Department of Anthropology, and the late Dr. B. Marie Perinbam, Department of History, helped me develop a theoretical and practical understanding of ethnography, and offered sound advice on the cultural and practical details of fieldwork in Africa; Dr. John Van Brunt, Counseling Center, offered sage counsel and directed very helpful dissertation support group sessions, helping me to complete this work within the time frame of my sabbatical. In the United States, African scholars Stephen P. Heyneman, Joel Samoff, Ash Hartwell, and Patrick Fine took time to offer me specific advice on doing research in Uganda; on the Uganda side, professors C. F. Odaet, John Munene, the late Joseph Carasco, and K. J. Parry were especially helpful in their critique of my findings. Finally, I am very grateful for the support of Berghahn Books. Marion Berghahn and Jonathan Bowen encouraged my efforts and facilitated production. Shawn Kendrick did a masterful job of copy editing. Because of the special help provided by all these people, along with the students, teachers, staff, administrators, parents, board members, and civic and religious leaders in Uganda, this study in many ways should be regarded as a collective enterprise. In the matter of interpretation of facts, however, the judgments expressed herein are entirely my own.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ADF CBR CIA CMS COU DC DEO DP EBPA EPRC FBI HSC IDA “IGM” IMF IPA LRA MISR MOE MP NCDC NCHE NGO NRA NRM NUSU O.B./O.G. PLE PTA TTC UACE UCE UEB UNCST UNEB

Allied Democratic Forces Center for Basic Research U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Anglican Church Missionary Society Anglican Church of Uganda District Commissioner District Education Officer Democratic Party Eastern Brothers’ Province Archives: Valatie, NY, USA Education Policy Review Commission U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Higher School Certificate International Development Agency (World Bank) “I got mine” International Monetary Fund Indiana Province Archives, Notre Dame, IN, USA Lord’s Resistance Army Makerere Institute of Social Research Ministry of Education Member of Parliament National Curriculum Development Center National Council for Higher Education Non-government Organization National Resistance Army National Resistance Movement National Union of Students of Uganda “old boys”/“old girls” associations Primary Leaving Examination Parent Teachers Association Teacher Training College Uganda Advanced Certificate Examination; A-level exam Uganda Certificate Examination; O-level exam Uganda Electricity Board Uganda National Council for Science and Technology Uganda National Examinations Board

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Abbreviations | xiii

UNESCO

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UNLA UNLF UPC UPE USAID WFP

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Uganda National Liberation Army Uganda National Liberation Front Uganda People’s Congress Universal Primary Education United States Agency for International Development World Food Program

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MAPS

Map 1: Uganda (Hansen and Twaddle 1998: x)

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Maps | xv

Map 2: Uganda Districts 1969 (Karugire 1980: vi)

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xvi | Maps

Map 3: Uganda Districts after 1976 (Hansen and Twaddle 1998: 260)

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INTRODUCTION An Overview of the Study

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When I came back [to Makerere University] in 1991 … I found a group of extremely brave and daring young people. At that time, even paper to take notes was difficult to get, books had been looted, and students killed. There was murder there. It was murder of the mind, of books, of the university. But great institutions always refuse to die. Like churches; kill them and make martyrs out of them. Professor David Rubadiri, Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the U.N. from Malawi (Muwanga-Bayego and Nannozi 1997)

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his is a study of four senior secondary schools in Uganda during a time of war and intractable social conflict. How were these schools able to survive? The answers discovered in the stories of these schools bear testimony to the legendary desire of Ugandans for education and to their ability to preserve order amid chaos.

Background Nearly everywhere in Africa schooling expanded rapidly after the end of European rule. The newly independent countries saw education as a prerequisite for nation-building, and schools as the route to social benefit and progress. However, the task was enormous, the resources severely limited, and the legacy inherited from the colonial period flawed. The heady optimism of independence succumbed to the reality of rapid decline into political, economic, and social chaos (Samoff 1993).

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Uganda,1 a Wyoming-sized country straddling the equator in East Africa, was established as a protectorate in 1894 by the British government and gained independence in 1962. In succeeding years, supporters of a centralized state vied with those in favor of a loose federation with a strong role for tribal-based local kingdoms. The struggle ended in 1966 when Prime Minister Milton Obote suspended the constitution and assumed full governmental powers. In 1971, General Idi Amin overthrew Obote in a coup, declared himself president, and amended the constitution to give himself absolute power. During Amin’s eight-year rule, the economy went into deep decline, and social disintegration and massive human rights violations occurred.2 In 1979, assisted by Tanzanian armed forces, Ugandan exiles waged a six-month war of liberation that caused much destruction. Amin and his remaining troops were expelled. The next seven years saw continued political and economic unrest. In elections generally considered rigged, Obote was returned to power in 1980, and a guerrilla war against his regime began. This meant that parts of the country were in rebel control, and other parts subject to devastation by the Ugandan army in a scorched earth campaign. At times schools were attacked and looted, and teachers and pupils either fled or were killed. Even leading schools with a national reputation did not escape: Gayaza Girls’ High School, for example, was attacked in 1983, and nine girls were killed (Furley 1988). Uganda had inherited a small but highly organized education system, recognized as one of the best in sub-Saharan Africa. But since the mid-1970s, this tradition of excellence has declined, largely due to such political and civil disturbances, and to subsequent economic deterioration (USAID 1995). Under such conditions how could an education system possibly develop or even survive?

An Experience of Contrasts In January 1985, I was invited by American missionaries to conduct religious workshops and serve as a visiting lecturer in science and mathematics at several schools in western Uganda. Despite official warnings by the U.S. State Department that my security could not be assured, I opted to go. The visit evolved into an experience of most striking contrasts. Among Uganda’s indestructible assets are fertile soil and a good growing climate. In a continent increasingly afflicted with widespread drought and famine, this is an exceptional advantage. The 300-kilometer journey from the shores of Lake Victoria to the

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Introduction | 3

snow-capped Mountains of the Moon was a veritable cyclorama of verdant scenery: gentle hills lush with banana groves, mountains and valleys engulfed in rain forest growth, vast stretches of tall grass savanna, long-horned Ankole cattle grazing under the watchful eye of peasant herdsmen, women and girls balancing water jugs and dry goods on their heads, men and boys bicycling to market laden with huge bunches of matooke (banana) or a catch of Nile perch to barter. Ever-abundant flowers in bloom splashed this scene with color and tropical fragrance, rendered even more pleasing by a temperate climate due to the mile-high altitude. When nature gives Uganda such an advantage over other places, it is an appalling tragedy that the country should suffer deprivation through human cruelty. This same journey was interrupted by twenty-one army roadblocks, set up not only to check the identity of people, but also to intimidate and to extract money from those who pass, including school children (Kajubi 1987). In our vehicle, two of us were white Americans, two were black Ugandans; the soldiers did not harass us because “if white people disappear there tends to be an investigation,” said our Ugandan companions. That assurance brought little comfort as teenage soldiers pointing submachine guns demanded to check our papers at each stop, and an overnight stay en route featured an evening punctuated by gunfire outside our compound. When we reached our destination in the Kabarole District town of Fort Portal—where electricity was sporadic to none, where meals were cooked on charcoal stoves, where running water was a memory of days long past—forty Advancedlevel senior secondary students eagerly awaited a fortnight of physics and applied mathematics instruction from the “visitor.”

The Survival of Schools While the general breakdown of legal authority in Uganda had a disastrous effect on the whole economic infrastructure of the country, the collapse characteristic of the Ugandan economy and many functions of government did not occur in education. Though subject to the general fiscal constraints and breakdown of civil order, both public and private investment in education continued to grow. Between 1969 and 1979 primary enrollments rose from 600,000 to 1.2 million, requiring additional facilities and furnishings for an average of 230 new schools per year during the period. The capital cost of these facilities was borne wholly by private citizens. Even so, the supply could not keep up with demand. In primary education, only 56 percent of the primary age group was in school by 1980 (Furley 1988; Heyneman 1983).

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4 | Introduction

In secondary education the government provided some of the capital construction costs. The number of students and schools doubled between 1969 and 1979, from 30,000 to 61,000, and from 117 to 210, respectively. By 1984 there were 430 grant-aided secondary schools with 127 of them offering A-level as well as O-level courses,3 for an enrollment of 144,527 students. This latter increase came about because of the government’s decision to break with tradition and concentrate on a community-based day school system, thus underwriting only the teachers’ salaries and partial grants for recurrent costs. The parents would have to make up the difference (Furley 1988; Heyneman 1983; J. Tumusiime 1993). Consistent growth under adverse social conditions is one indicator of a sector’s ability to survive. The Ministry of Education, acknowledged to be one of the more efficient ministries in this period, was responsible for making great efforts to reform and Africanize the curriculum. Another remarkable feat was its ability to perform the complex administrative functions of national examinations. Despite extraordinary limitations on foreign exchange, despite multiple changes of government since independence, despite unprecedented levels of internal strife, each year the Primary Leaving Exam (PLE) was administered on schedule and without scandal (Furley 1988; Heyneman 1983). Why is this so remarkable? From 1971 through 1986, Ugandans lived through seven changes of government; none of these governments interfered directly with schools. This situation differs considerably from that found in other countries. In Democratic Kampuchea—as Cambodia was known from 1975 to 1979—education as an institution and as a body of personnel was targeted. Formal schooling of the Western kind was eradicated: books, facilities and equipment were destroyed; teachers and students were sought and interned; and by 1979 the formal public education system in all subsectors had effectively disappeared (Duggan 1996). During the civil war in Mozambique more than 2,000 schools—60 percent of those in the country—were destroyed, robbing 500,000 children of the opportunity for education (Garbarino and Kostelny 1996). By 1996 twentyfive teachers in Liberia had been murdered in a bloody civil war; although 3,000 teachers were officially reported as working, 5,000 more were estimated to be in exile. In Namibia and Eritrea, soldier-teachers carried guns while they taught in schools. In Rhodesia, government security forces attempted to frighten school children into not supporting the liberation force fighting for an independent Zimbabwe by parading kids before corpses, or

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Introduction | 5

corpses before kids (Harber 1996). In the aftermath of the Soweto uprisings in 1976–77, police shot and killed some 1,000 students. During the 1980s the schooling system for blacks in South Africa virtually collapsed due to widespread school boycotts, which were frequently accompanied by police brutality and killings (Archer and Moll 1992; Harber 1996). During the Intifada, West Bank schools and institutes of higher education were frequently closed, either collectively or in response to protest disturbances against Israeli occupation. Awwad (1992) claims that such collective closures were based on the conscious belief held by Israeli authorities that educational campuses were breeding grounds for revolutionary intrigue. Despite similar political and economic chaos in Uganda, despite war and social disruption, government did not interfere with schools; schools persisted! Such persistence was not without cost, however. Uganda’s tradition of excellence and educational quality declined severely from the mid-1970s owing to the sudden departure of expatriates, the hostility and violence shown by the military toward the intelligentsia, and the terrible shortages of equipment, materials, and even food and water for some schools. Buildings and plant deteriorated drastically, made worse by destruction and looting in the 1979 Liberation War (Furley 1988). Even by the 1990s, only 53 percent of school-age children were enrolled in school, and approximately 50 percent4 of those who did start school dropped out before they had mastered basic reading, writing, and arithmetic (USAID 1995). Furley (1988) concludes that the education system survived, but it was almost a skeleton. The sheer uniqueness of Uganda’s school survival case, however, motivates further investigation. Heyneman’s initial research in Uganda, completed in 1971–72, dealt with primary schools. His resurvey of several of these school sites a decade later inspired his provocative article “Education during a Period of Austerity: Uganda, 1971–1981” (Heyneman 1983), in which he reports that education did not collapse despite the conventional wisdom that most every social institution in Uganda had good reason to cease functioning. In a sense, his is the first definitive article on Uganda that addresses the question of school survival, albeit in the negative, i.e., demonstrating empirical evidence of non-collapse. My informal visit to Uganda in 1985 also found survival to be a fact in the government-aided secondary schools in Uganda’s Kabarole District, despite the paucity of government aid. Furley (1988), in his review of education change occurring amidst strife in postindependence Uganda, confirms school survival, too. However,

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6 | Introduction

neither of these key commentators offers evidence to explain how such a feat might have been accomplished, nor answers the question as to why this situation might have developed. In fact, little has been written about the phenomenon of school survival. This may not be surprising since, according to Samoff, “education policy discussions often reflect and revolve around a pervasive sense of failure. What has education failed to accomplish, and what to do about it? That sense of failure and frustration is particularly intense in discussions of African education” (1993: 188). The survival of a country’s education sector under such adverse social conditions, however, invites policy makers to consider systematic research into possible causes for that survival. “Indeed, contemporary conditions in Africa suggest the importance of flexibility, responsiveness to changing circumstances, and an ability to reorder priorities and to modify implementation at short notice.… An institutional apparatus sufficiently resilient to respond effectively as events require, to seize opportunities as they occur, to build on successful strategies, and to discard those that do not work will contribute more to education and development than a clearly articulated plan” (ibid.: 219). Policy makers and educational planners can be helped, then, by research that uncovers basic factors of school survival. This study contributes to that quest by exploring the phenomenon of secondary school survival in Uganda through the eyes of educational actors who experienced this period themselves.

Research Questions and Field Sites Heyneman (1983) and Kasozi (1994) observe that despite chronic shortages in school supplies, underpaid teachers, and deteriorating school structures, Ugandans continued to send their children to school on a daily basis under the most difficult of circumstances. So widespread was this legendary desire for education that regardless of the constraints on foreign exchange, no Ugandan government has been able politically to afford the collapse of the school system as they have other public and private enterprises. How were educational programs sustained during this period? What strategies and procedures helped schools persist? Why did the education system not collapse when little else in Uganda functioned? What context factors and ingrained cultural values served to preserve the enterprise? What sort of mental habits were in evidence over this period of time? What can be learned about the evolution of Ugandan education during this period of fundamental social change? By conducting a case study of the four government-aided Kabarole

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Introduction | 7

District senior secondary schools that continued operating during the period from 1971 to 1986, this inquiry begins to answer these questions by describing how these Ugandan schools survived under conditions of ungovernable conflict and by identifying baseline conditions that enabled that survival. The choice to concentrate on the four secondary schools in Kabarole District was motivated primarily by personal observation of these schools in 1985. Continued access to these sites for current research, the convenient location of these schools in or near Fort Portal municipality—the government and administrative center of the district—and the fact that these governmentaided secondary schools survived through the 1971–86 period under study provided further incentive. These schools are representative of typical government-aided secondary-level institutions in Uganda. One is a Catholic-founded boarding school for boys; another, an Anglican-founded boarding school for girls; the third, a Protestant-established, mixed—enrolling boys and girls— boarding school; the fourth, a mixed day school founded by Asians. Moreover, most educational research conducted to date in Uganda has concentrated on primary schools in the urban areas of the Masaka-Kampala-Jinja crescent around Lake Victoria. Investigation of secondary school experience in an up-country location at a distance from the capital has been relatively limited. Kabarole also enjoyed relative peace during the years of guerrilla warfare extant during the Amin/Obote II years. The nature of civil war—characterized by violence perpetrated against targeted groups—allowed the politically low-key Batooro people of the area to be somewhat ignored by the protagonists of civil disruption. Schools there escaped full-scale looting or destruction by bombing, rendering these sites a continually functioning laboratory of institutional survival. The fertile soil and favorable climate of the region ensured that local foodstuffs were sufficiently available to avert starvation. Furthermore, the geographic isolation of the area curtailed the more widespread smuggling and magendo 5 economics prevalent in some other areas of the country. Despite these advantages, the area indeed suffered with all Uganda in the general breakdown of legal authority, security, and the economic infrastructure. While additional research in other geographic areas will be needed to confirm or dispute the particular conditionalities identified here, good conditions provide a distinct survival advantage. Hence, Kabarole may be a particularly good area to discover baseline conditions that allowed schools to survive in circumstances of marked social conflict.

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8 | Introduction

Key Concepts While navigating the details of the narrative, it would be helpful for the reader to keep in mind three key concepts that are illuminated in the story: the internal workings of schools under stress as they are revealed in the experiences of the educational actors; the underlying context factors and cultural themes that may have motivated individual and institutional persistence through the traumas described; and the lessons for organizational survival that might be learned from the experience of Kabarole’s schools.

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Internal Functioning of Schools Anthropologist Christine Obbo (1988: 205) observes that “it is the seemingly mundane daily acts of people that provide the essential material for analyzing the Ugandan situation.” In trying to explain why and how schools in Uganda survived under conditions of severe social conflict, Obbo’s insight is useful: tap the experience of school people who lived through this difficult period and survived! This resource has potential to reveal information about the internal functioning of schools. In the view of a number of educational historians, attention to the internality of school workings, especially in moments of conflict or rupture, is needed (Finkelstein 1983; Depaepe 1995; Novoa 1995). In fact, important gaps still to be bridged in education history include the internal functioning of schools, the organization of everyday school reality, and teachers’ and students’ lives and experiences. Gaps exist in the research with regard to the experiential component of educational actors like parents, administrators, and board members, too. The experience of Kabarole’s schools reveals valuable information about the inner workings of schools and contributes to historians’ understanding of how Ugandans construed events as they were living through them.6

Baseline Conditionalities No situation exists in a vacuum, so background on the historical and social legacy of Uganda prior to and during the period under consideration is essential to understand the context for individuals’ experiences. Background material on the socio-historical context of Ugandan education is contained in chapter 1. The country’s educational tradition is reviewed in chapter 2 to inform the reader of the foundations upon which Ugandans’ legendary desire for education is based. Other contextual factors—government non-interference in schools and the opportunity structures that perdured for

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Introduction | 9

school graduates—are revealed through the testimony of informants. Ingrained cultural values arise from the testimonies, too, and it is helpful for the reader to understand how that concept is used in this study. Different definitions of culture have evolved over time, but by culture I am referring to “historically-constructed patterns of association and meaning, or templates of experience, to use Clifford Geertz’s (1973) concept, that are generated from one generation to the next through an array of symbolic forms, social habits, material constructions, and educational efforts” (Finkelstein et al. 1998). Such forms are embedded in habits that are typically taken for granted, but they also can be conveyed through stories told, proverbs quoted, daily habits of association or rituals observed, and even through architectural forms. Dei (1994), a sociologist writing for an audience of anthropologists and educators, examines ways that Afrocentric knowledge can be constructed and legitimized within various epistemological constructs. Afrocentricity, in his view, is about the investigation and understanding of phenomena from a perspective grounded in African-centered values, revealing “other” voices and ways of knowing that validate African experiences. It is worthwhile here to delineate these Afrocentric themes in order to identify cultural values and traditional connections that supported school survival in Uganda. Dei (1994) considers the traditional African values of humanness and harmony with nature as the core of Afrocentricity. Being human speaks about wholeness of relationships, compassion, hospitality, and generosity; being in harmony with nature speaks to the importance of relating to, rather than asserting mastery over, nature and the environment. These themes can be articulated as follows. Traditional African solidarity includes kin-based groups or clans claiming descent from a particular male or female ancestor. This common ancestorship symbolized the social unity and identity of the members, and, among other things, furnished a work force for tasks requiring a larger labor pool than could be met by an individual family. The clan provided social comfort, identity, and a sense of belonging to a community, particularly in times of stress and hardship. Non-kin social groupings, like age sets—ritually defined hierarchical associations based on age—had an educational function that included periodic separation from parents; the community as a whole assumed responsibility for the socialization of the young into adulthood. Within African communities there are traditions of mutuality in the form of mutual self-help groups including self-loaning bodies—

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credit associations—and labor partnerships. The concept of collective responsibility—rights of citizenship have matching obligations and responsibilities to the community in which one resides —sets obligations such as providing communal forms of labor for community projects and requiring financial/in-kind contributions to assist families in burying the dead. At times of communal celebration, it is the responsibility of the whole community that every adult contribute to paying the community bill/levy. Furthermore, the mere accumulation of individual wealth does not accord communal status or prestige; wealthy individuals must demonstrate their social consciousness by sharing such wealth with the community and assisting financially toward the realization of community projects (Dei 1994). Another African value is that the individual is supported by the family, and the family by the community; the family is all of the kinsfolk while the community is identification with both kin and non-kin. Economic and social exchanges like gift-giving, then, are still moral obligations and symbolize the communal values of mutual responsibility and reciprocity. Furthermore, it is a duty of the elderly in this context to instruct the youth, especially through storytelling and proverbs; the youths’ duty is to respect the knowledge of the elders. Religion and spirituality have always been a major part of the daily lives of African people; among other things, religion serves as a potent force in the social conduct of Africans as they struggle with the fundamental problems of everyday living. Finally, despite the fact that female-based indigenous institutions were co-opted and redefined by colonialists, women’s traditional role in the domestic economy, the high degree of autonomy they enjoyed in their economic functions, and the encouragement and development of self-reliance among women are indigenous African values (Dei 1994). The reader will want to be attentive to how these general Afrocentric values are manifested in the testimonies of the study informants. Ultimately, then, it is a combination of contextual factors, i.e., beliefs and cultural values, that appears to account for school survival. These baseline conditionalities, identified as crucial to school survival in Kabarole, may also serve as key foundation blocks upon which future educational planning or policy might be fashioned in Uganda or elsewhere.

Organizational Survival A third issue illuminated by Kabarole’s experience is organizational survival under stress. The concept of institution connotes Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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stability and persistence; however, under similar circumstances, schools systems in other countries collapsed. The ways in which the schools in the study reordered priorities or modified implementation of policies on short notice, and how they seized opportunities, responded as events required, built on successful strategies, etc. (Samoff 1993), will be of interest because they may not only provide insight into internal school management, but also provide examples of effective school organization. The reader may also want to be attentive to the notion of “loosely coupled systems” articulated for educational organizations by Weick (1976). Samoff (1993) and Errante (1995) note that African schools frequently operate in an administrative apparatus that is not tightly compartmentalized, making Weick’s organizational analysis helpful in understanding the persistence of African education in times of chaos. The fact that most of Uganda’s secondary schools are founded by religious bodies—including three of the four site schools—adds an interesting twist to the school survival phenomenon. James (1994) maintains that such schools are still “private” for purposes of analysis, since a system that is largely private may provide differing educational service from one largely public. Others (Bray 1994; Cummings and Riddell 1994a) contend that there are further dimensions requiring explanation. Such organizational theory concepts are described more fully in an appendix.

Organization This study is reported in narrative form consistent with the practice of educational historians. The introduction provides an overview of the study, with attention to three key concepts: internal workings of schools, underlying context and cultural themes, and lessons for organizational survival. Chapter 1 presents the “big picture,” documenting the socio-historical context of Uganda and Ugandan education prior to and during the period of interest, 1971 to 1986, and chapter 2 presents the traditions upon which Ugandan education was built. These first chapters form the context within which the remaining part of the study is nested. Chapter 3 considers difficult national and external circumstances during the Amin/Obote II regimes that affected schools in Uganda, while chapters 4 and 5 document how these difficulties were experienced in the Kabarole schools. Chapter 4 focuses first on Kabarole District in western Uganda, introducing the reader to the history of Christianity and colonialism in this area of

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the country traditionally known as Tooro kingdom. The establishment of each of the four site schools is described, and their operation is outlined up to the present. How these schools survived the widespread difficulties of the times is documented here, particularly illustrating the systemic support available to these institutions. Chapter 5 considers local initiatives taken and strategies and procedures implemented in the Kabarole schools that further supported this school survival. The internalities of school workings—everyday activities, procedures, and practices —as well as the effects of war, violence, and fear on children are revealed in stories from the field. These middle chapters present the difficulties imposed on education by the national scene in Uganda, and proceed to describe the particular effects on schools in Kabarole District. The remaining chapters return to general categories—an “outside view,” so to speak—by organizing the African voices in categories that make sense to me. Chapter 6 begins an analysis of the Ugandan educational situation by identifying significant conditionalities that may account for school survival during this time of social conflict. The particular stances of the Amin/Obote II governments toward schools, the ingrained cultural values that motivated educational survival, and the perceived opportunities inherent in the acquisition of formal education are discussed in the context of Afrocentric themes and explanations that evolve from the interview testimonies. Chapter 7 continues this generalization by considering the study findings in light of scholarly research on organizational history, institutional persistence, and public-private responsibility for education. How these results may impact future educational planning and/or policymaking is explored in light of the evolution of education in Uganda during this period of fundamental social change. The chapter closes by summarizing implications and recommendations for action. An appendix follows chapter 7, positioned here not because it is of marginal importance, but rather to preclude disrupting the narrative flow of the story. Entitled “A Viewing Lens—the Study Methodology,” this methodological appendix focuses on the use of multiple research perspectives: the why, the how, the purpose, the relative yield of information, and the limitations of such a study. Here, too, theoretical considerations are discussed, as well as the general demographic characteristics of the researcher and the informants.

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Summary The identification of baseline conditionalities that may explain the survival of Kabarole’s secondary schools, and perhaps other Ugandan schools, is particularly significant because such in-depth systematic research using multiple research perspectives has not been undertaken heretofore in up-country secondary schools. The answers to why these schools worked and how they were sustained are found in the experiences of those who contributed to the survival of these schools: students, parents, teachers, administrators, alumni, local communities, families, clans, churches, missionaries. Illustrations of internal school workings complement other school research that often relies on aggregate, quantitative measures of output but neglects to investigate strategies and procedures actually practiced in schools. The personal testimonies reveal attitudes and practices that confirm ingrained cultural values and/or traditional African values of humanness and harmony with nature (Dei 1994). The testimonies also provide evidence of moral decay and erosion of values, rationalized by the need to survive and/or the general prevalence of magendo and corruption (Kajubi 1987; Kasozi 1994; Southall 1980). This study contributes to closing information gaps about the internalities of school workings and the experience of educational actors in conflicted times, revealing assumptions, behaviors, values, and individual efforts. While these insights are not directly transferable, they may offer insights into internal school management and effective school organization. The findings also shed light on the public-private workings of educational delivery in Uganda, which may prove relevant to an understanding of that phenomena in other developing countries as well. Ultimately, this is a story of Uganda, Pearl of Africa—and Uganda is its people. Makerere was the name going around the world as the greatest university in Africa. To come here and see it brought down to its very knees, where students could hardly get pads to write notes on, where a book was like gold and was passed around, and none of those students showed signs of stress or inferiority complexes, and became extremely excited with “our course,” as we called it, [this is what really impressed me in 1991]. By the time we finished [the course], I felt I, myself, had learnt more in that year than I had [in] all my previous years at Makerere as an undergraduate. Besides just reading my poem and talking about it, they now came with their own poems, and they were great poems,

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because [the students] had passed through a lot of suffering, both physically and emotionally during the Amin years. As a teacher, 1991 was the greatest year of my life and I thank God that I came back to my old university. That class had some students I will never forget. They were the most wonderful assurances of faith in ourselves, faith in a vision, because each generation must be a vision to the next. I was assured that Africa would never die the way people used to say then, that we were rotting fast. Professor David Rubadiri (Muwanga-Bayego and Nannozi 1997)

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Notes 1. Uganda is located in the heart of Africa in the Western Rift Valley, astride the equator. Landlocked, the country is bounded by Tanzania and Rwanda in the south, Congo/former Zaire in the west, Sudan in the north, and Kenya in the east; most import/export traffic is by rail or surface transport through Kenya. Uganda has a total land area of 241,139 square kilometers, of which 17 percent is swamp and water, including much of Lake Victoria, and 12 percent is forest reserve and national park land. In 1991, the population, made up of twenty-eight tribes, was 16.6 million. In 1997, the population was estimated at 20 million (Odaet 1988; 1994). 2. See Republic of Uganda (1994) for an extensive and comprehensive inquiry into violations of human rights during the Amin/Obote II regimes. 3. The structure of the Ugandan education system reflects its British heritage. It consists basically of four levels. Primary education has a seven-year cycle with certification authorized by passing the PLE: Primary Leaving Exam. This is followed by a four-year lower-secondary cycle certified by passing the UCE: Uganda Certificate Exams, or O-level, and a two-year senior-secondary cycle certified by passing the UACE: Uganda Advanced Certificate Exams, or A-level. University education takes three to five years to complete. Education is not compulsory at any level (Odaet 1994). 4. To put such figures in perspective, Heyneman (1983) notes that the number of Grade Seven students in 1969 was 39 percent less than the number of Grade One students the same year; in 1979 this difference had grown to 47 percent. Nevertheless, he indicates that this admittedly low “progression rate” was still higher than for sixteen countries in Central America and the Caribbean, and five countries in South America, all with higher levels of GNP per capita. 5. An alternative or black market economy in Uganda based on smuggling. 6. In analyzing the experiences of informants, it is crucial to recognize the anxieties and stresses that accompany such periods of violence. Research that documents the direct effects of war on children, such as destruction, ravage, violence, and hostility (Apfel and Simon 1996; Dodge and Raundalen 1987; Rosenblatt 1983), and the indirect effects of war, such as disruption of health

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care and education, destroyed facilities, refugees (Cairns 1996; Dodge and Wiebe 1985; Dyregrov and Raundalen 1987; Goldson 1996), often refers to schools. Situations where schools ceased to function, including Cambodia, the West Bank, and South Africa (Awwad 1992; Duggan 1996; Harber 1996), or where schools managed to stay open during conflicted times, as in Northern Ireland and Lebanon (Assal and Farrell 1992; Cairns 1996), offer interesting comparisons to the situation of Ugandan schools.

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– One –

A SOCIO-HISTORICAL VIEW The Context of Ugandan Education

o

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T

he survival of schools that is illustrated in this study of Uganda’s Kabarole District secondary schools did not occur in a vacuum. Scholars note that education systems differ not only in the particular circumstances unique to their context, but also in their historical and social traditions, especially when a legacy of colonialism exists. Education as a cultural system can be obscured by a failure to recognize that education processes are influenced by political and cultural history and a by nation’s location in that history (Kamens et al. 1996; Ramirez and Boli-Bennett 1982).This perspective underscores the recognition that an interrelated set of political, economic, social, cultural, historical, and institutional conditions shape what has been and what can become future education policy and practice. While chapter 2 will present the historical traditions of Ugandan education, including the colonial legacy, this chapter presents the “big picture” by reviewing the socio-historical background for Uganda that is critical to understanding the research findings on Kabarole schools. Familiarity with Uganda’s socio-historical legacy is also a necessary preliminary step in undertaking and/or planning for education in that country.

The Historical Legacy Uganda’s early history included centuries of political change, population migration, and development of cultural diversity. The Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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earliest occupants of the low-lying plateau that stretches north from the shores of Lake Victoria were joined by new migrants from the north and west by about the fourth century A.D. These new arrivals, ancestors of today’s Bantu-speaking societies, came under pressure from the expansion of non-Bantu-speaking warriors and herders from the northeast by about the tenth century A.D. The gradual population movement to the southwest was slowed by the formation of new societies composed of farmers and herders. Several groups evolved into complex centralized societies marked by economic and social stratification (Byrnes 1992). From this process of cultural contact, three different types of states emerged. The Hima—or Tutsi—type, now predominant in Rwanda and Burundi, maintained a caste system whereby the rulers and their pastoral relatives, preserving an ideology of superiority in political and social life, attempted to maintain strict separation from the agricultural subjects, called Hutu. The Bito type, established in Bunyoro, evolved into a form of government by clan without rigid caste lines dividing society. The Bunyoro king (omukama) was frequently in danger of a coup d’état by overambitious relatives, however, and Bunyoro experienced times of civil war and secessions (Byrnes 1992). Buganda developed a centralized kingship whose king (kabaka) was chosen by a kind of state lottery in which all clans participated. Each new ruler was identified with the clan of his mother, and all clans readily provided wives to the ruling kabaka, who had eligible sons by most of them. When the ruler died, his successor was chosen by clan elders from among the eligible princes, preventing any single clan from holding the throne for more than one reign. The inherent stability of this arrangement helped Buganda evolve into a stable, complex, and powerful society (Byrnes 1992). Most communities in Uganda were not organized on such a vast political scale. Nilotic-speaking pastoralists in the north, like the Acholi, were mobile and ready to resort to arms in defense of their own cattle or raids to appropriate the cattle of others. But their political organization was minimal. Chiefs (rwots) acquired royal drums and collected tribute from followers, but chieftaincies remained relatively small in size, and within them the power of clans remained strong enough to challenge that of the rwot (Byrnes 1992). In the view of Kajubi (1987: 18): “The creation of Uganda as a country was a direct product of nineteenth-century British imperialism.” Following the explorations of Speke in 1862, of H. M. Stanley in 1875, and of Captain Lugard in 1890, a protectorate was

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established by Britain over the Kingdom of Buganda in 1894. This was later extended over most of the area surrounding Buganda.1 As has been seen, the traditional political organizations and cultures of the people of the area which Britain colonized and named Uganda varied greatly from one another (Kajubi 1987).This led to ethnic and regional conflict. Conventional wisdom has it that European colonialism ushered into “darkest” Africa an unprecedented era of peace, justice, and stability. While no one of good conscience would have wanted to see the return of intertribal and interclan wars or the separation of the territories that were brought together to form a state, the advent of colonial rule centralized violence for the first time, and colonial administrative methods generated a degree of violence that adversely affected Ugandans (Kasozi 1994). Some commentators are more strident. “The colonization of Uganda followed the classic African pattern—the use of armed force, the use of missionaries as pawns in the imperialist game, the encouragement of commercial enterprise in the form of a chartered company, and the final assumption of full power by the state. Created arbitrarily by the colonial regime to cater to its own interests, the state of Uganda was established with virtually no regard for the national, linguistic, economic or geographic features of the peoples deemed by colonial providence to become nationals of a new country as perceived and created through the lenses of colonial geo-political force” (Okoth 1993: 136).This genesis of modern Uganda—the result of colonial geo-political force—has had a profound effect on the evolution of education in the country.

The Social Legacy Economic/Political/Cultural Issues According to Mulusa: “With a long history of devastating slave trade and slavery, followed by about one hundred years of colonization and political domination by alien minorities, and brutal exploitation of the indigenous people of Africa, sub-Saharan Africa should be at the forefront of the current effort to restore pluralism wherever it has been eroded in the world.… Education was seen as an important force in determining progress from colonial oppression to political and social pluralism” (1992: 159). However, educational pluralism, defined as providing equal access to and benefits from an education system (Mulusa 1992), is complicated

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by a number of difficult social issues derived from its historical and social legacy. The main curse of colonial education in sub-Saharan Africa was classification of schools on racial bases. One of the objectives of segregation in schools was to control educational supply to different racial groups. In 1959 Uganda spent eleven pounds sterling on educating an African child, thirty-eight pounds on an Asian child, and 186 pounds on each European child per year (Mulusa 1992). The “adapted education” policy embraced the concept of black people being intellectually inferior and suited primarily for a practical, skills-oriented education. The development of Western education in Africa was a response to the perceived needs of the colonizers rather than of the colonized; insofar as the reasons had anything to do with the indigenous needs or circumstances of local populations, they were needs perceived by foreigners rather than by local people (Kellaghan 1992). Like racism, tribalism is based on cultural beliefs about the superiority of one’s ethnic group over other groups, and it becomes intensified when members of the same ethnic group live in the same geographic region or belong to the same religious organization, political party, or other social movement (Mulusa 1992). In Uganda, the initial relationship between the missionaries who controlled educational opportunities and the different groups determined the location of schools. The densely populated Kingdom of Buganda, with its stable government and traditional rulers, attracted Christian schools. However, other Ugandan substates—the Kingdoms of Tooro, Ankole, Bunyoro—and other cohesive ethnic groups—Acholi, Karamojong, Lugbara—each with its own language, culture, and history, found themselves without a comparable mission school presence (Kasozi 1994).The educational gap between the groups that thus developed during the colonial period became an economic gap in the post-independence period. The increasing income gap between individuals, families, ethnic groups, regional areas, and countries has been one of the most dramatic developments in sub-Saharan Africa in the last thirty years. In Uganda, an adverse trading relationship resulted in the extraction of surplus resources—exporting primary products, importing manufactured goods—all of which tended toward a general impoverishment of the local population. Uganda suffers a disadvantaged relationship with its neighbors due to its landlocked status, spending resources outside the country that might otherwise be used to improve conditions at home (Kasozi 1994).

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At the local level, disparities between regions, races, ethnic and religious groups, classes, and genders are apparent. There are visible and alarming disparities in income between rural and urban areas, white- and blue-collar workers, white immigrants and black nationals. Alarming inequalities of income between rural and urban dwellers have created discontent in the countryside and led to an influx of people to cities, exacerbating urban problems that lead to violence. These income differentials often coincide with the racial and ethnic divisions of society, as does social stratification based on education, occupation, and location (Kasozi 1994). Income disparity, for example, is exacerbated by a small class of wealthy people who own large tracts of land or have a controlling influence in commerce and industry. Alongside these rich and powerful, there has emerged a weaker but more numerous middle class of salaried public servants, middle-level managers in commerce and industry, small-scale farmers, and tradesmen. This class lives slightly above the poverty line. Nearly 80 percent of the population falls in the poor and powerless class of subsistence farmers, sharecroppers, squatters living at the mercy of their landlords, menial and subordinate workers in wage employment, and unemployed poor urban dwellers who live below the poverty line. The wealthy can afford expensive education. But even when admitted to the same schools, children from different income strata do not enjoy equal learning opportunity. Children from wealthy families have the medical care they need, regular and nutritious meals, suitable learning materials, and time for home study. Children from low-income groups are not even able to afford the basic requirements for low-cost schools—simple clothing, paper and pencils—not to mention a supportive environment of medical services, regular meals, and a decent learning space. Among the poor children who enroll in primary school, a large proportion drop out before completing the primary cycle; at higher levels the poor continue to drop out at a higher rate than children from rich families (Mulusa 1992). Salaried civil servants have had a particularly difficult time. Teachers were being paid salaries worth only one-tenth of their nominal value. In 1980, a professor at Makerere University was being paid an absurd salary worth the equivalent of 1,000 U.S. dollars per year (Southall 1980). Passi (1990), in interactions with Ugandan students of education, found that for most of them it was not really a deliberate choice to be trained as teachers and that thus they had no love for the profession. In the 1990s it was reported that lecturers at Makerere University were running small

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restaurants in Kampala to supplement their income. Colleagues equally hard hit by the falling value of their salaries survive by moonlighting and running businesses such as grocery kiosks (Kigotho 1996). Teacher shortages will not be overcome unless people are attracted to the profession and retained. The inequality between blue-collar and white-collar workers, derived from colonial education, still haunts Ugandan elites. The educated elite, those who “used their heads rather than their hands,” receive disproportionately higher incomes than manual workers. This kind of mentality makes graduates of the Ugandan school system “roam” urban areas looking for “white-collar” jobs —often not available—which can lead to disillusionment, frustration, and bad habits like excessive drinking, drug abuse, stealing, and prostitution (Okoth 1993; Kasozi 1994). Regional disparities account for many issues affecting education and the life of the country. The fertile southern areas of Buganda and Busoga became the economic hub of the country, producing the main exports for the metropolitan market. Northerners and Banyarwanda often came to Buganda to seek work as laborers on the shambas of peasant farmers, a situation which they later resented. Since provision of educational opportunity in semi-arid lands is expensive and difficult to administer, the fertile south first established mission schools, hospitals, and teacher-training colleges, leading to its dominance not only in agriculture, but also in teachers, doctors, nurses, and administrators. The net result of this education policy was to divide further the people into educated southerners and the uneducated, who were mainly from the north and east. The drier north, then, became the recruiting ground for the armed forces, the police, and the prison service. This “northernization” of the security forces and “southernization” of agricultural production and civil service during the colonial period tended to sharpen jealousies between the regions. In practical terms, and to ordinary folk, this inequality, which ran along ethnic or tribal lines, was considered “ethnic favoritism” or “victimization” (Kajubi 1987; Kasozi 1994). In territories like Uganda that had strong traditional rulers, Christian missionaries established schools that allowed the rulers to intensify their control over their communities. In the wake of the religious wars in Buganda from 1888 to 1893, religion became not only a basis for identity but also a tool for political mobilization (Kasozi 1994). In the case of King’s College, Buddo—and subsequently of other secondary schools—an influential Old Buddonian Association was formed that was to become an important

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Protestant body in the politics of Buganda. As the birth of political parties was recorded in the 1950s, the mainly mission-educated politicians drew their support from their fellow religionists. In colonial Buganda, the Protestants were ascendant politically; they discriminated against Catholics and Muslims by denying them public offices or not giving them such number of offices as were commensurate with their numbers.2 At independence, the political situation continued to be complicated by the machinations of the predominately Protestant Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) and the Catholic-led Democratic Party (DP) (Dinwiddy 1981; Kajubi 1987). The absence of a common language has been a major obstacle to national integration in Uganda. There are more than thirty distinct languages and dialects used in Uganda, belonging to four language groups—Bantu, Nilotic, Sudanic, and Nilo-Hamitic. Since independence, English has been used as the official language of administration and instruction. But speakers of English are relatively few, and, since it is clear that the Ugandan peasants cannot be brought to fluency in the foreseeable future, the government disseminates information in many different tongues. Ultimately, the English language separates society into two groups: the privileged who speak it, and the deprived who do not (Kasozi 1994). Sex inequality is an international tradition, justified in some countries on a religious or cultural basis and practiced openly, and in other countries condoned although not practiced openly. Practically all of the religions that invaded Africa—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism—are known to accord inferior status to women. There are also remarkable similarities between the foreign religions and some African traditions. The Baganda, for example, saw a man as head or king of the family. The woman was not a queen in the same family but a mere servant (Mulusa 1992). In all countries of sub-Saharan Africa there are invariably fewer girls enrolled in school than boys. Male students continue to outnumber female students in Uganda. Of children entering Primary One grade (P1), the probability of boys completing Secondary Four grade (S4) was twice that of girls, with the probability of boys continuing to the upper-secondary level being almost three times as high. Dropout rates increase, especially for girls, as the child’s education continues (Husen and Postlethwaite 1994). Girls are disadvantaged largely due to a high economic emphasis being placed on the education of boys. Because of persisting social and cultural attitudes, communities often feel that the place of girls is in the home. Additionally, a high degree of poverty has tended to dictate which sex of child is to continue with education;

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very often boys receive preferential treatment to continue with their education, while girls find themselves marrying early to raise families. There is, however, a deliberate policy, especially at Makerere University, to give weighted points to each female student who qualifies to receive university education with a view of helping her competitiveness to enter. With regard to other disadvantaged groups—migrants and nomadic ethnic groups, refugees, the poor, orphans, and the disabled—educational opportunities are dismal (Husen and Postlethwaite 1994).

Military Issues and Education

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KISANGANI, Zaire, Nov. 13. Throngs of retreating Zairean soldiers … have turned surly and destructive after being routed by rebel forces. The soldiers have pillaged villages and sections of this city of a halfmillion people; they have tried to hijack planes at the airport; and they have continued the kind of soldiering for which Zairean troops have become infamous—terrorizing and robbing anyone in their path. Instead of being a force for order, the army is a force for destabilization and lawlessness.… Zairean troops … [are] an ill-disciplined host. Provisions and pay are irregular in the army … it is not clear who is in control. There is a governor, as well as a military commander, but no one can manage the troops. (L. Duke 1996)

Change the date to the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s, change the name of the country, and the contemporary report cited above would accurately reflect the situation in much of Uganda’s post-independence period. The Ugandan army to 1985 remained largely rooted in the traditions of the colonial army. Colonial policy of drafting troops whose “racial,” geographical, and religious backgrounds were different from those of the people among whom they were to be deployed led to emphasis on ethnicity in the army. After independence that practice had become entrenched (Omara-Otunnu 1987). In the centralized states of southern and southwestern Uganda, a hierarchical tradition of governance prevailed in society with subchiefs, district chiefs, governors, and kings (kabaka; omukama) the recognized authority figures. In the more segmented societies of northern and eastern Uganda, where governance was based on a loosely knit clan structure, people were less accustomed to the hierarchical political/military structures of colonial and post-colonial regimes. Recruitment for the army, however, was predominately from these latter areas, and this cultural factor had profound implications for troop training and discipline (Omara-Otunnu 1987). Another significant change that took place after independence was the way in which Africans perceived and responded to those

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in authority. The respect, mystery, and aura associated with British authorities was replaced by what Omara-Otunnu (1987: 10–11) calls the “familiarity syndrome,” which was applied to fellow Africans whose seniority, experience, and educational qualifications, in comparison to the British officers, was minimal. While this effect applies to civic administrators as well, the lack of respect for army officers was exacerbated by troops from non-hierarchical cultures who were poorly trained and lacked schooling. In the Ugandan army, formal education was not considered a criterion for enlistment. The first attempt to improve the standard of education of men in the army was in 1959. While a high level of education was one of the factors that might have militated against the “familiarity syndrome,” in fact, the absence of anything resembling an educated class meant that the negative effects of familiarity on the maintenance of authority in the army were stronger. Furthermore, the history of civil-military relations in Uganda has shown the army gaining ever-growing prominence in the political processes of the country. From being subordinate to civilian authority, and from being the instrument to uphold the colonial political establishment, the army emerged after independence as a political force itself. African military officers, first appointed in 1961, did not hold the African political leaders in awe because they knew them and their background firsthand, an example, again, of the “familiarity syndrome” coming into play (Omara-Otunnu 1987). Within the military of post-independence Uganda to 1985, professionalism had been almost non-existent. “Soldiers continually held the community at ransom, demanding service without payment, in shops, in bars, in hotels, in brothels, and in larger deals.… Army commanders in the major regions became local warlords, combining military, political, administrative, commercial, and agricultural operations into composite fiefs” (Southall 1980: 642). During the military regime of Amin,3 intellectual suffocation was one of the most devastating effects. “Books, professional journals, transport, paper, chemicals, drugs, office and laboratory equipment began to be … sadly inadequate, and in some cases completely lacking. Most parts of the country were also closed to researchers for security reasons.…Top civil servants, corporation managers, cabinet ministers … were sometimes dismissed by radio and often replaced by much less able people. The result of all this was a general devaluation of education and the frustration of the intelligentsia” (Kajubi 1987: 38). After the fall of Amin, the army was gone, the police paralyzed, and the country left with no security forces. The civil service, the

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university, and secondary schools were also badly affected. “In the university, only eighty-six of 175 academic top positions at the level of Professor/Associate Professor were occupied at the end of the liberation war. Of 172 staff positions in the Faculty of Medicine, only 26 percent were filled in 1979. In some departments there was only one person. Others were left empty” (Kajubi 1987: 36).4 To describe the legacy of past military regimes on Ugandan education as harsh is an understatement.

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War and Violence Issues Affecting Education A. B. K. Kasozi (1994), in his definitive work on the social origins of violence in Uganda, categorizes the conditions that gave rise to the Ugandan holocaust as follows: social inequality; substates and ethnic groups; flimsy mechanisms for conflict resolution; ethnic and religious factionalism; absence of an indigenous propertyowning middle class; decrease in national production; parochial, weak, and poorly educated leaders; and the language problem. The “liberation war” following the fall of Amin in 1979 is one of the most vivid examples of violence. The war affected all major population centers from Mbarara in the southwest to Arua in the north; the effects of shelling and constant migration were traumatic to civilians, particularly women and children. The conclusion of the war did not secure peace. With no security forces, “submachine guns could be traded for a carton of cigarettes, and a few packs of cigarettes could buy a hand gun. Ammunition was a more common commodity than many consumer goods. These guns were used to loot, steal and kill. Many thousands of individuals were subjected to random violence. While the price of everything else went up, life itself became almost valueless. A person could be killed aimlessly” (Kajubi 1987: 39). Just as Europeans or Americans talk about the weather, many adult conversations in Uganda were concerned with talk of robberies, descriptions of funerals of relatives and friends, and names of people gunned down. “Children follow this kind of talk in their homes, and copy it. Instead of discussing homework or other juvenile subjects urban children are now playing ‘roadblock,’5 and talking about dead bodies they have seen on their way to school. They also discuss the ‘popcorns’—a euphemism for gunshots— heard the previous night” (Kajubi 1987: 42). In addition to damage to health, handicapping, or even loss of life, less visible but important psychological and social harm is inflicted upon children by armed conflict and violence, not the least of which is loss of childhood. Probably the commonest form of damage results from Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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separation from one or both parents because of their death, disappearance or displacement. Less frequently, children may be witnesses or victims of direct hostilities and gruesome atrocities. Sometimes they watch family members being killed while they themselves remain silent in hiding—and are ravaged with feelings of guilt for long after. They may see the harassment or torture of parents, the bombing of populated areas, the destruction of their home. Older children may themselves be deliberately killed to prevent their subsequent use by opposing forces, tortured or taken away for sexual or other forms of exploitation, or enrolled to bear arms and take part in combat under circumstances where chances of survival are very low. Within family groups, or separated from their parents, they are victims of mass evictions or other forms of displacement. (Dodge and Raundalen 1987: x–xi)6

The disruptions of these conflicts have also had a disastrous impact on the traditional village and on family self-help and mutual support systems, which have been developed through the centuries. Preoccupied in their struggle to control the state, Ugandan regimes failed to pass laws that would have built stable families based on the mutual status of both partners, thus indirectly increasing the level of family violence and undermining the structure of the family as envisaged by Christian and Muslim leaders. This failure led to wife battering, loose family structures, a lowering status of women, and a reduction in moral standards (Kasozi 1994). In the pre-colonial period, most ethnic groups practiced polygamy but maintained respect for women. During the colonial period, ordinances based on the religious beliefs of Uganda’s various communities regulated marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The 1973 Customary Marriage Decree, however, “allowed official registration of African customary marriages and thus undermined all Christian efforts to stabilize the institution of marriage in Uganda. Amin’s decree has devastated the structure of the family.… As a result, the family unit as preindependence Ugandans had known it has drastically changed” (Kasozi 1994: 199). The transformation of the family weakened traditions that formerly applied to this important social unit, including control of sexual relations. Before and during the earlier days of colonialism, people did not engage in sexual intercourse prior to marriage. Girls were expected to be virgins or face rejection. A change in attitudes toward sex began in the colonial period. “By the beginning of the 1960s, female virginity was no longer prized as a symbol of virtue. The eruption of violence in Ugandan society further undermined the only institution that kept a lid on sexual laxity, and many children were born out of wedlock” (Kasozi 1994: 200).

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“Social discipline deteriorated in the face of such difficult living situations. To survive, people disregarded rules, procedures, and morals. Civil servants took advantage of their positions to rob the state. People in powerful positions broke laws they were supposed to keep. Tax evasion, smuggling, misappropriation of funds, misuse of foreign exchange, and general dishonesty were practiced by the very people who were supposed to enforce the law. Ordinary people were also affected by this moral degeneration. Lying, cheating, forging, looting, and stealing soon became increasingly normal and acceptable social relations. Children would not consider it immoral to lie to their parents for material benefit” (Kasozi 1994: 200). “Many young men of good middle-class background now behave like congenital thieves even to their own families” (Southall 1980: 648). Dodge and Raundalen have found that “[c]hildren born [since] 1970 in Uganda accounted for nearly half the country’s population in 1985. All of them have grown up in a country that has known one misfortune after another, and many of them have experienced violence directly” (1987: 3). How do these children see the future? What pictures of themselves, of adults, and of authority do they carry? “We anticipated more motivation for revenge among the children studied—following the findings of similar studies in other places where children had experienced prolonged exposure to war—but found very little of this in Uganda. Anxiety [and] depression, however, were detected. In general, the children in our study were more the victims of war than the students of war” (Dodge and Raundalen 1987: 6).

Conclusion This review of the socio-historical legacy of Uganda presents macro-level factors that affect the investigation of educational survival in Uganda. Reviewing these contextual variables will not only assist the reader by providing a broader knowledge of the implementing context, but will also help frame the conditions that impact the micro-level research of this study, which investigates the educational survival of particular institutions in Uganda. It is critical that the reader understand this contextual background in order to appreciate fully the survival of Uganda’s secondary schools under intractable social conditions.

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Notes

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1. For more on the colonial history, see Thomas and Scott (1935), Kiwanuka (1971), Karugire (1980). 2. See Kassimir (1995: 123) for a more nuanced view of this alleged discrimination among the Batooro. 3. For an extensive reference, see Jamison (1992). 4. For more details on the effect of military regimes on Makerere, see Langlands (1977), Dinwiddy (1983), Eisemon (1994). 5. Army roadblocks, which proliferated during Obote’s return to power from 1980 to 1985, functioned not only to check the identity of people but also to intimidate and to extract money from each person who passed, including school children (Kajubi 1987). 6. For a review of the literature on children and the stresses of war, see Dyregrov and Raundalen (1987).

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– Two –

A VIEW FROM THE PAST Traditions of Ugandan Education

o

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early everywhere in Africa, including Uganda, schooling expanded rapidly after the end of European rule. Samoff (1993) identifies three general reasons: expanded education was both a premise and promise of the nationalist movement; popular demand understood schooling as the single most important route to individual and social benefits; schools were needed to develop the pool of educated and skilled personnel that progress required. The task was enormous, the resources extremely limited, and the legacy inherited from the colonial period flawed. In Uganda in particular the heady optimism of independence succumbed to the reality of rapid decline into political, economic, and social chaos. For example, consider the background as portrayed by Heyneman (1983) in describing the effects of a general breakdown of legal authority in Uganda: goods once manufactured locally had to be imported; products once exported became uncompetitive due to an absence of spare parts and transport; no new roads were constructed and existing roads fell into disrepair; the number of operating hospitals, health services, and veterinary services shrank for lack of medicine and supplies; urban services were erratic; the water supply, which once functioned dependably in a number of areas, became problematic; normal business functions were conducted with difficulty; courts functioned irregularly; commercial insurance was usually unobtainable; ambiguity in the administration of authority created uncertainty throughout the economy. While such conditions had a disastrous

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effect on the whole economic infrastructure, for schools it meant that books, paper, supplies, building materials, and repair work— in some cases even food and water—gradually became impossible to obtain. However, the education process continued during this period; the collapse characteristic of the Ugandan economy and many government functions did not happen in education. In fact, no Ugandan government has been able politically to afford the collapse of the school system, whereas in other countries under similar conditions, education ceased to function. What traditions might undergird this deeply felt desire for education in Uganda?

The Historical Legacy The essential role of tradition … is to define the present. Men do not think or act outside the broad confines of a particular heritage; they face their problems with a knowledge and wisdom transmitted to them by their predecessors. Hence, tradition is inescapable, whether one reaffirms it or repudiates it. Indeed, even those disposed to reject tradition entirely do well to bear it in mind, since it is at the very least their point of departure.1

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Pre-colonial Education Traditional, Muslim, and European education systems have existed in Uganda for centuries.2 Each possesses unique characteristics that have contributed to the intellectual enrichment of Uganda. Traditional education concentrated on teaching oral traditions and survival skills. However, traditional education failed to take cognizance of the world beyond East Africa. Muslim education, even though focused on religion, represented a link to that greater society. European educators also stressed the importance of subjects such as science and issues such as the immortality of the human soul. European education also offered an unprecedented degree of social mobility. As a result, an increasing number of Ugandans sought to attend European schools, which proliferated throughout the country (Ofkansky 1996). Long before the coming of the Europeans, however, Ugandans had developed their own education systems appropriate for their traditional societies. Teaching emphasized learning-bydoing and the creation of a sense of community and fellowship among students. Teachers also passed on oral traditions that provided students with an understanding of the trials, tribulations, and achievements of their ancestors. Children were taught how to

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adapt to their physical surroundings and how to survive in the face of adversity (Ofkansky 1996). Arab traders from the East African coast first brought literacy to Uganda through their teaching of the Koran. Since 1844, Arab caravans had visited the court of the kabaka, and, besides trading, sought to convert him and his followers. Although Arab conversion efforts were not very successful, Buganda adopted the Islamic calendar and many Baganda3 spoke Arabic (Ofkansky 1996). Initially, European explorers competed with the Arabs for the religious loyalties of Ugandans. In 1862, John Hanning Speke presented a Bible to the omukama of Bunyoro-Kitara. After his arrival in Buganda in 1875, Henry Morton Stanley gave Bible lessons to the kabaka. Two years later eight Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionaries arrived in Buganda and established the foundation of a Western education system that would eventually facilitate significant changes in Ugandan society and would enable successful students to enjoy a degree of social mobility unknown to their parents. Apart from elementary reading and writing, the missionaries taught basic arithmetic, history, and geography, and offered instruction in manual or agricultural skills (Ofkansky 1996).

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Missionary Education “It is impossible to present correctly the development of the educational system in Africa without acknowledging the pioneering achievements of the mission schools which introduced and developed African schools and other forms of instruction.”4 The period from 1880 to 1920 has been characterized by Scanlon (1966) as the golden period of missionary effort in Africa. Religious revival in the United States, electrified by the preaching of individuals like Dwight L. Moody and Ira Sankey, gave listeners the simple choice of salvation or damnation. The success of such preaching resulted in a more vigorous, active church that strengthened its many component parts—and one important part was the foreign missions (Scanlon 1966). A second dimension added to this blossoming missionary movement was the rise of progressivism with its concern for social reform and human welfare. The work of Jacob Riis and of Jane Addams popularized a sentiment of humanitarianism that gained national and international acceptance. In religious groups, the movement was represented by an emphasis on the “social gospel.” “While the missionary would always, of course, be concerned with personal conversion, he was now told in explicit

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terms to seek the social regeneration of society. Social reform became the hallmark of the overseas effort” (Scanlon 1966: 5). In the work of the missions in Africa, therefore, school and church went hand in hand. The missionaries almost everywhere began to instruct the young without lengthy reflection as to how or even whether they ought to do so. In the vast majority of cases the first school sprang up soon after the arrival of the missionaries. It often happened that the number of schools increased much more quickly than did the number of parishes, and the number of pupils was much greater than that of the baptized church members (Buhlmann 1979). “Missionaries established schools because education was deemed indispensable to the main purpose of the Christian denominations —spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Berman 1975: xi). The proclamation of the gospel had to be accompanied by down-toearth witness, such as medical help, and training in agriculture and crafts. It was taken for granted that Christians should have direct access to the Bible, and that natives should be trained as preachers. The basis for all this was the school. The missions were interested in young people, too, and the school was the prime vehicle of influence. The local context, however, played an important part in school establishment. Favorable conditions needed to exist for a mission station to be established, and local communities had to express some desire for their children to be schooled. “Good education, it was believed, would enable young African men to earn a good living as well as exert their own influence and that of their adopted religious denomination upon society at large” (Bassey 1991: 38). This latter influence stemmed from the belief in nineteenth-century Europe that Christian culture had a universal validity and that it should be handed on to the peoples of Africa through schools: Christianity was equated with European civilization (Berman 1975). At first, the European colonial authorities showed little concern about the education of youth or about what the missions were doing for them (Buhlmann 1979). In fact, Altbach (1982: 473) contends that “colonial administrators were not very committed to education since the reason for colonialism was exploitation and not the uplift of indigenous populations. Educational planning evolved as the needs of the colonizers for lower-level bureaucrats grew and as missionary work turned to education.” By the end of the nineteenth century, colonial administrators in British East Africa, and particularly in Uganda, begin actively encouraging missionary education for pragmatic reasons. “At the time mission

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stations were the only source … for minor clerks, policemen, interpreters, and semi-skilled laborers” (Berman 1975: 16). The missions had a veritable monopoly on the schools in British East Africa, so there is little doubt that the colonial government viewed the missionaries as collaborators in building a viable protectorate. Not everything was smooth, however. Personality and policy clashes between the colonial administrator and the missionary were not unusual,5 but despite the disputes, the missionary work, particularly in education, proceeded (Scanlon 1966). Until 1925, virtually all school education in Uganda was controlled by the missionaries, with the exception of Makerere.6 Namilyango, the first missionary school, was established in 1902 by the Mill Hill Fathers; the students of this school were sons of Catholic chiefs. The Church Missionary Society (CMS) founded Mengo High School in 1903 for Anglicans; King’s College, Buddo, was founded in 1905 for sons of Protestant chiefs and the Buganda royal family, while Gayaza High School, also founded in 1905, was for daughters of leading Protestants. Sons of devoted Baganda Catholics and Goans—a group of Catholic Asians residing in Uganda—were served by St. Mary’s College, Kisubi, founded in 1906.7 Clearly, this school pattern reveals that education was denominational (Okoth 1993). Some African writers, in contrast to the views noted above, contend that missionary education was not only Western, and simultaneously colonial, in character, but was the foundation of an imposed form of cultural and ideological domination.8 “Missionaries insulated their students against Ugandan traditional education. They seem to have operated under the false assumption that they brought education to absolutely ‘uneducated’ Africans, a typically racist view” (Okoth 1993: 138). “In the missionary schools, inevitably Ugandans were lectured on the ‘benevolence’ of the only ‘true’ God and the ‘wickedness’ of African gods.9 Christianization gained unprecedented impetus because of the dominant role schools played; they were agents of imperialism and colonialism. On the establishment of the first missionary schools, baptism became the sine qua non for admission to these schools. Thus, to many Ugandans, whether schooled or not, the possession of Christian names was itself a sign of ‘modernization’ or ‘civilization’” (Okoth 1993: 144–145). The CMS mission, together with the Catholic missions, did indeed have a monopoly on education and as such acted as educational agencies of the state. This educational engagement served church purposes, certainly, but was also of great importance for

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the colonial state, as it provided trained manpower. The government therefore looked with great sympathy upon the CMS mission’s educational enterprise. Government was relieved of considerable expenses, too, as there was no immediate need for it to start schools of its own (Hansen 1986). From the CMS standpoint, Bishop Tucker10 and the mission attached great importance to the maintenance of its educational monopoly and the prevention of the establishment of a rival system of government secular schools. While the government felt an obligation to provide for the Muslim population and the vast number of people ‘”without any religion”—the term employed for those who belonged to the traditional African religions—pragmatic considerations and economic imperatives counted for more than these concerns. Thus, apart from limited government grantsin-aid, the educational work was left entirely in the hands of missionary agencies (Hansen 1986). An additional factor that complicated Uganda’s mission education legacy was the uneasy relationship between Catholic and Protestant schools throughout the country. A pattern of growth emerged that seemed to portray an underlying dogma: wheresoever a Catholic school arises, there shall a Protestant school be placed beside it and vice versa. In far too many instances, potentially creative rivalries have been not merely sterile but antagonistic (Dinwiddy 1981). Kajubi (1987: 24) notes that “strong religious animosities stemming from the historical past11 have tended to hinder the development of a national ideology of collective survival. Religion, on the other hand, properly conceived, can play an integrative role by expanding the natural boundaries of community beyond those of the family, clan and ethnic group.”

Colonial Educational Development: Interbellum Years 1919–39 “The Phelps-Stokes Commissions of 1922 and 1925 were the culmination of two decades of attempts to introduce education ‘suited to the needs, mentalities, aptitudes and occupations of the natives.’ It is upon these reports that government policy for the next two decades was to be based” (Ruddell 1982: 300). “As the result of a proposal of the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, the Phelps-Stokes Fund had resolved in 1919 ‘that a survey of educational conditions and opportunities among Negroes of Africa, with a special view of finding the type or types of education best adapted to meet the needs of the Natives, be undertaken by the Phelps-Stokes Fund’” (Foster 1965: 156). The British Colonial Office, encouraged by the purposes expressed in

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the American proposal, established commissions of its own to investigate educational conditions in West, South, and Equatorial Africa, and later in East Africa. The Phelps-Stokes recommendations, although based on the wholesale transfer of concepts and practices developed with respect to Negro education in the southern United States, assumed that Western education institutions could be transferred without reflection from the metropole to the African scene. This created dysfunctions in African education. If a careful “sociological” investigation of African conditions could be had to determine the “needs of the people,” recommendations could be made to shape the future of African education (Foster 1965). Although the sociological investigations “were perfunctory in the extreme and largely consisted of a series of elementary facts concerning the environmental and economic settings of African life” (Foster 1965: 158), very specific recommendations were made: (1) that the education system be substantially based on agricultural curriculum; (2) that such a curriculum be supplemented by a system of elementary trade schools; (3) that tribal languages be used in lower elementary stages, with metropolitan language restricted to the upper standards only; and (4) that other subjects—history, geography, etc.—be more closely related to local environments (Foster 1965). The Advisory Committees adopted similar measures, although amplified for precise application within British colonial areas: (1) the structure of education was to be based on the activities of voluntary agencies, though the general direction of policy was to be monitored by the respective colonial governments; (2) schools were to be adapted to native life; (3) grants-in-aid were to be made based on efficiency; (4) local vernacular language was to be used in education, particularly in the lower forms; (5) schools were to be more actively supervised by colonial governments; (6) technical, vocational, and agricultural training should take precedence over more “traditional” subjects; and (7) educational facilities for girls and women should be expanded (Foster 1965). Udo Bude (1983: 349) articulates detailed reasons for the failure of these policies, which have come to be called “adapted education,” but his summary remarks are most pertinent to current policy makers. “All well-intentioned attempts made by non-Africans to replace the individual promotion of Black Africans, which was possible in a Western-oriented education system, by a gradual improvement of the living conditions of the broad population in rural areas by means of an adapted education concept ignored the real needs of Africans after their political emancipation. By failing

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to take into account these African needs structures and to integrate Africans into the discussion on and realization of educational reforms, European-American paternalism, which ultimately regarded Africans as immature people having no understanding of the well-meant plans of their ‘protectors,’ was doomed to failure.” Unfortunately, similar attitudes can be observed among some foreign experts working to establish new education systems in Africa today. Current conventional wisdom is, of course, highly critical of an adapted education policy. Ruddell (1982: 300) accuses such policy proponents of “high racism”: “The main basis for the PhelpsStokes outlook was an entirely racial one, that black American and black African educational problems were the same. There were many similarities, but these were a function of their similar condition of dependency and colonization, not of genetic similarities, as was Phelps-Stokes’ belief.” Scholars (see Carnoy 1974; Mangan 1993) who argue that colonial education imparted a subservient mentality to its recipients adopt an ideological standpoint that largely inhibits debate, says Whitehead (1981: 74): “Nowadays such ‘racist’ attitudes are roundly condemned but at the time they were sincerely held, and it is necessary to appreciate this fact in order to understand both the conceptual and practical difficulties associated with colonial development.” Motives were more complex.

Pre-independence through Independence As independence approached, the colonial legacy in education was very firmly entrenched in Uganda. Government ministers, politicians, administrators, and teachers were all themselves products of it. Mission education had provided a broad general education with a strong religious element, culminating in an elite system of boarding schools. Government subvention of this system with grants-inaid to mission schools and the establishment of government schools along the same lines severely limited provision for technical, vocational, or agricultural training. No great efforts were made to equalize educational opportunities for those regions not served by the uneven spread of missionary schools. In short, at independence the type of education provided was specifically Western and firmly British (Furley 1988). Uganda’s educational infrastructure gradually expanded prior to independence. By 1951 the number of African students enrolled in primary schools numbered about 180,000, and those in secondary schools totaled approximately 5,500. There were also a

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number of schools for Asian and European children. In higher education, Makerere University attracted students from all over Africa (Ofkansky 1996). Despite these achievements there were numerous problems. African primary education suffered from a lack of teachers. Rival mission schools often duplicated services, leaving unoccupied places in some schools. Most Ugandans, believing that a Western education would enable them to escape from an agricultural existence into white-collar positions, were biased against technical education, especially in the area of agriculture, which employed nearly 90 percent of the population. Nevertheless, by independence, Uganda possessed the most advanced education system in East Africa (Ofkansky 1996). With independence on 9 October 1962, the government attached a great deal of importance to education policy. The main plank consisted of nation-building according to the requirements of a wellarticulated socio-economic and political program. The Ugandan government also promised to provide every child with the opportunity to get an education. Authorities wanted to increase the number of technical schools to provide education more relevant to the country’s needs, which alarmed many Ugandans who believed that such a policy would hamper social mobility. In the end, the initiative was more quantitative than qualitative; education continued to be elitist, metropolitan centered, and marked by religious and regional rivalries (Ofkansky 1996; Sathyamurthy 1986). The political instability of the 1970s—the Amin years and then the Liberation War—prevented a planned expansion of the education sector. However, despite the absence of universal education opportunities, the number of students in primary and secondary schools and in the universities and colleges more than doubled. Continued economic problems reduced the quality of education at all levels, however, as is reflected in high dropout rates, an outdated curriculum, weak examination and assessment results, inadequate teacher training and poor terms and conditions of service, weak planning and management capacity, insufficient financing, and a lack of sustainability of educational investments (Odaet 1994; Ofkansky 1996). But in the 1980s the number of primary schools doubled, as did the number of primary school students, rising to over 2.5 million pupils by 1989. However, while the number of teachers also more than doubled during this period, the percentage of untrained teachers in the teaching force rose from 35 percent in 1980 to 48 percent in 1989. Uganda’s economic crisis created hyperinflation, which

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directly affected educational financing, too. In real terms, the 1988/ 89 education budget was 21.1 percent of the 1970/71 budget. The lasting effects of war and declining real budgets coupled with quantitative expansion of enrollment left resources spread thinly across both institutions and pupils. Structures were badly depleted at all levels, and, since teachers’ salaries became extremely low in real terms, many teachers were forced to seek additional employment to supplement their incomes; this adversely affected the quality of instruction in the schools (Odaet 1994).12 Since independence, education policy in Uganda has taken some wide swings: rapid expansion in secondary education at the expense of primary education, then a swing to primary education, and later a huge swing back to secondary expansion with technical and agricultural education left behind. Amin’s military regime imposed colossal strains on the education system including the sudden departure of expatriates,13 the hostility and violence shown by the military toward the intelligentsia, and the terrible shortages of equipment, materials, and even food and water for some schools. Buildings and plant deteriorated drastically, and this was made worse by the destruction and looting in the Liberation War. The education system and structure survived, but almost as a skeleton (Furley 1988). However, throughout the period, and despite the difficulties, there have been many efforts to transform the colonial legacy and Africanize the type of education provided. Staffing has been Africanized, syllabuses have been progressively and extensively revised, parental support and enthusiasm have been harnessed, and the predominance of the expensive secondary boarding schools has given way to an emphasis on a day school system (Furley 1988). Such movement gives reason for hope.

The Current Educational Scene With the advent of his regime in 1986, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni promised to improve and expand the country’s educational infrastructure, eliminate illiteracy, reduce the teacher shortage and the high dropout rate, and narrow the gap between the high number of graduates and the low number of employment opportunities. An Education Policy Review Commission (EPRC) was formed and released a report in 1989 accepting the premise that education would play a vital role in establishing national integration. A government White Paper (Government of Uganda 1992) subsequently

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outlined strategy to implement the EPRC findings. The government accepted these recommendations and quickly acted on many of them (Ofkansky 1996). According to some analysts, the success of Uganda’s education policy will depend on (1) securing adequate foreign assistance to finance the reforms, (2) achieving significant improvement in the economy for the dream of social mobility via education to become a reality, and (3) establishing political stability in its border regions so that all the country’s schools can operate on a regular basis (Ofkansky 1996). However, hopes and recommendations that might advance policy in the current educational scene may be premature—even irrelevant—unless they are grounded in an understanding of the educational legacy of the past. Furthermore, bereft of insights gleaned from the actual experience of Ugandan schools, policy-making could degenerate into the implementation of practices uncritically “borrowed” from reform efforts in other countries, engendering unintended consequences in the process.14

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Notes 1. Lawrence E. Cremin in the preface to Traditions of African Education (Scanlon 1964). 2. See Sskekamwa (1997) for a comprehensive study of the history and development of education in Uganda. 3. In the Bantu languages of the Lake Victoria region, nouns are inflected mainly by changing prefixes, a person being indicated by prefixes Mu (singular) and Ba (plural). Thus the name of the area is known as Buganda; a person of Buganda is Muganda; persons of Buganda are Baganda, the language of Buganda is Luganda, and “of Buganda” is rendered Kiganda, e.g., Kiganda customs; see Kajubi (1987). 4. Lord Hailey in An African Survey (1938); quoted by Buhlmann (1979: 79). 5. See, for example, Sir Harry Johnson (1906), British Central Africa (London: Methuen), 77, 107–108; cited by Scanlon (1966). 6. At Makerere, the colonial regime established a technical school in 1922 for carpenters, mechanics, and junior medical personnel. 7. See also Gale (1959) for the development of early mission schools from catechism classes to secondary schools; Scanlon (1966) for the home policy of European powers that led to the financial support of mission secondary schools; Holmes (1967) for an overview of British Imperial policy and mission schools; Hansen (1986) for a review of church/state relations and mission education; and Mudoola (1978) for the role of religion in chief-making. 8. See also Tiberondwa (1998). 9. A. B. K Kasozi (1979), The Crisis of Secondary School Education in Uganda (Kampala: Longman), 62; cited by Okoth (1993).

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10. Anglican Bishop A. R. Tucker, Bishop of East Africa 1890–97; of Uganda 1897–1911. 11. For example, see Byrnes (1992) and Kasozi (1994). Kassimir (1995) offers a more nuanced view on alleged Catholic-Protestant antagonism. 12. See also Bray and Zimmer (1988), Heyneman (1983), and Odaet (1988) for extensive educational statistics on Uganda. Educational statistics for subSaharan Africa are detailed in Habte (1992). 13. See Evans (1971) for a demographic profile of teachers serving in the Ugandan schools prior to the expulsions of the Amin years. 14. For education policy borrowing, see Finegold et al. (1993).

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– Three –

THE STORY A National View

o

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F

rom the macroscopic perspective, the difficulties enumerated in a review of Uganda’s historical and social legacy certainly would be enough to convince most observers that education could not possibly have survived such trauma for so long a period. In fact, some observers might legitimately question whether education actually did survive, given the declining quality of educational practice and the cumulative effects of devastating social conflict on the enterprise. What this study considers, however, is not the philosophical question of what constitutes educational survival, or what judgment regarding survival can be made based on such criteria. Rather, the empirical questions of how and why secondary schools survived is the topic under investigation. During the fifteen years from 1971 to 1986, Uganda experienced dictatorship, systemic institutional corruption, multiple changes of government, and constant guerrilla warfare. Any one of these major difficulties could have been sufficient to overwhelm an education system. This chapter focuses on national situations that particularly affected schools.

The Amin/Obote II Years and Ugandan Schooling Amin’s Economic War On 4 August 1972, President Amin ordered the expulsion from Uganda of all Asians holding British passports; that targeted group

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was given three months to leave the country. While Asians who were not Ugandan citizens waited to see whether he would really carry out this decree, many Africans supported Amin’s contention that these Asians were “the masters of the economy, milking the country without feeding it.” Most businesses in Uganda were owned and staffed by Asians—Indians, Pakistani, Goans—who had first immigrated during colonial times and had remained in the country legally as British Commonwealth citizens. In Amin’s view, they were making significant money in the country, but without making a comparable local investment that would help Uganda’s economy. The popularity of the decree among Africans helped Amin hold the line against international outcry, especially from Britain, and the Asians left en masse by the end of 1972. The effect on schools was felt immediately. Amin doled out “abandoned” Asian property to Africans who applied, especially to Africans who shared his Muslim religion and/or ethnic background. With the ascendancy of the Muslims in business and government, a new class of populace arose, the mafutamingi—people who became instantly rich having been given businesses, homes, and property belonging to the expelled Asians. “So you would find somebody [who] maybe has two shops. And if he has only one kid, and he has seen his father become rich overnight … [he] felt that schooling was useless.… So the majority of Muslims left schooling immediately after P7 because they had their brothers and sisters and cousins who were rich … and they felt that leaving the school would leave them free to go out and trade.”1 The lure of trade, then, became quite an attractive alternative to school attendance. The previously predominant Christians felt a loss of status in this mafutamingi culture, too. “Amin was encouraging Muslims— he was almost turning the country to be a Muslim country.… And so he used to fund that [Muslim-founded] school [which I attended].… Most of them had an upper hand in terms of either access to scholarships, access to some other facilities in the school … So we—the Christians—even we used to fear … because Muslims, you would find, they would beat up some students; they would misbehave. And though they would be punished—the Headmaster who was there was also a Muslim—he would also leave them like that.”2 “Easy come, easy go” was the overwhelming result of Amin’s economic war, however. Most Africans who acquired a free business had no experience in running such an enterprise. There was no provision made for restocking, and so businesses failed when

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supplies were depleted. When machinery malfunctioned, there were no spare parts available. Factories ceased to operate for lack of skilled labor or competent direction from management; tea and coffee estates became overgrown without systematic tending. With time, a lack of supplies and essential commodities sparked hyperinflation; as the economy nose-dived, schools experienced a significant deterioration in their standard of living. “If something got lost, there would be no replacement; if something got stolen, there would be no replacement. As inflation came in, books became too expensive for secondary schools to afford and the government’s contribution to secondary school remained constant— they were not increasing and inflation was biting.”3 Lack of supplies and hyperinflation also generated magendo, an alternative or black market economy based on smuggling. “Amin believed: ‘Smuggle in; don’t smuggle out!’ So if you went to smuggle things from Kenya—household commodities [like] soap, this and that—you could not resist Kenya taking some of your food by way of exchange.”4 “In order to make smuggling prosper, people tried all sorts of tricks. They would trade in coffee to Zaire.… If one had a lorry of coffee, then on top he would put there a coffin; or rather, he would remove the husks of the coffee, fill the coffin with coffee beans, and on top put there the head of a dead person! He’d say ‘I’m transporting the dead across the border’ when he was just going to sell coffee!”5 Such under-the-table trading influenced teachers and students to neglect and/or abandon the classroom for more lucrative entrepreneurial possibilities in the marketplace.6 As one headmaster described: “… some of our students they didn’t have to be advised because they thought that maybe the most important thing was not to get an education, but maybe [to] get involved in some kind of trading. So a number of our students left school … these were not mainly the children of parents who lived in rural areas, but these were children who were connected with some people in town.”7

Departure of Expatriate Teachers The vast majority of teachers serving in Uganda’s governmentaided boarding secondary schools were British citizens. The British government, as part of their foreign aid to Uganda, paid the British a supplementary salary. The Uganda government also paid the British people a salary, which was higher than the “local terms” salary Ugandan teachers received. Moreover, the salary benefit from the British government was deposited at home, in a tax-free account for the teacher. This vestige of colonialism allowed these

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expatriate teachers to live much better than Ugandans. In 1973 Amin announced that any British people remaining in the country had to work on “local terms.” Furthermore, Britain had cut foreign aid to Uganda to protest the expulsion of the Asians, so the tax-free supplementary salary that British teachers had received was also canceled. Most of the British felt they could not live on “local terms,” especially without the supplementary payment benefit, and within the year most had departed, leaving the secondary schools critically understaffed. In October 1973 Amin fomented a crisis for Americans in Uganda by ordering the six Marine guards of the American embassy to leave the country within forty-eight hours; by November the embassy had closed. The U.S. State Department advised all Americans to leave the country, but a number of American missionary teachers chose to remain. The year 1977 was another one of tension for the Americans in Uganda. Amin, goaded by President Jimmy Carter’s remark that the whole world was disgusted with “events in Uganda,” ordered all Americans in the country to meet with him on 14 February 1977, but he canceled the meeting at the last minute. In November, Amin made a surprise visit and “gave a speech about the Americans here in Fort Portal—they are all spies and work for five different spy agencies, the CIA and FBI among them!… His helicopter was parked on the football pitch here at St. Leo’s.”8 The West German embassy, which had looked out for American interests in Uganda since the 1973 closing of the U.S. embassy, “suggested that all Americans in the country get out as soon as possible in light of recent speeches and also the proposed boycott of Ugandan products that is being debated in the [U.S.] Congress.”9

Departure of Ugandan Professionals The economic and political chaos in Uganda and the harassment of the educated and professional class contributed to the departure of Ugandan professionals for “greener pastures” in southern Africa, Europe, and North America. This “brain drain” occurred for security, economic, and political reasons. While the entire country suffered the effects caused by lack of medical and veterinary personnel, business managers and planners, engineers, lawyers, and judges, the shortage of trained teachers further exacerbated school woes. Amin did not show any particular negative interest in teachers or head teachers, per se. One informant, who has been the headmaster of several Ugandan secondary schools in various parts of

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the country, described the situation as follows: “Amin was an enemy to a person who attacked him. He really had a good network of espionage, and he would know who were his enemies. Those who were not, who would keep quiet and do their job, there was no problem. He left you alone … this is my observation.”10 Southall (1980: 644) confirms this situation for other civil servants, too: “For the masses of the ordinary people the major choice was either to join the system or to withdraw as far as possible from notice and keep a low profile.” However, Amin did purge those he suspected of being his enemies, and this purging was implemented in broad strokes. For example, people of the Acholi and the Langi tribes were particularly targeted by Amin, who accused all of them of sedition since Milton Obote, overthrown by Amin in the 1971 coup, came from that area. Hence, Langi and Acholi teachers were harassed. One African teacher relates a harrowing tale: We had a teacher here, [and] that teacher was about to be killed.… He had a wife who was Langi … and he came to learn that they [Amin’s security detail] were looking for him, to trap him; so we hid him.… But we had to keep him away from all the children; it was easier to keep a woman than keeping a man.… We had a white lady [teacher] and another lady missionary living here with us.… These two whites organized to drive him out of this Kabarole and to try to leave him somewhere, and then he’d flee. The first try failed.… Then the second night … they drove him in the boot [of their car] and they passed by the roadblock; the soldiers did not check their boot and they reached Kyakatara … and dropped him in the tea plantation. They said, “now you go away; you can go around slowly.” So he managed to go slowly through that plantation and [met] people [who helped] him, giving him food until he boarded a vehicle and reached home.… So he survived death in that one.11

Other teachers were lured to countries like Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa for “greener pastures”—the better pay and conditions of service offered there. Kenya especially benefited from these Ugandan professionals. A student of the time recalls the situation and the effects: “There is a time this school lost about five teachers in the same week! They all were going to Kenya. I remember biology, woodwork, commerce, chemistry, and one of history left.… [It seems] they easily found jobs in Kenya for teaching. The payment here—salaries, wages—was very low, and Kenya was much better … so, they had to run away to find better pay.… So they went at once and replacement was not very easy. Some

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classes would go without teachers for a whole term in particular subjects. I remember in chemistry that happened; and later in mathematics. We had at one stage to find money as students and request the Headmaster to allow one of us to go and bring a teacher that we knew. He was not qualified … [but] he could teach mathematics very well.… And that one was found by the students themselves!”12 Still others became political exiles because they were perceived as being “not-pro-UPC enough” or because they were associated with another political party. The net effect was to deprive the schools of competent African staff, having already lost most expatriate teachers.

Rapid Africanization of the Schools

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Africanization of school administrations and teaching staffs occurred in a manner that paralleled the handover from colonial to indigenous rule a decade earlier: it happened rapidly, without sufficient planning and/or logistical support for new administrators, and without the availability of sufficiently trained replacement staff. The concept was sound, but the implementation poor. From the perspective of a current teacher—a student at the time—insight may be gained on the transition. Now all of a sudden, with the economy collapsing, an African Headmaster with limited experience in school administration comes in to take over from a white Headmaster.… There are many aspects to consider. Simply because … of how the colonial administration was carried out, automatically the African had a lot of respect for the white man. Now think: a black man coming and sitting in the chair of a white man; the students themselves [didn’t have the same respect].… So this was a problem, changing from a white administrator to a black administrator. Now the same thing happened with tutors; they didn’t have the necessary experience. They were learning on the job, and they were not given [sufficient] time to be trained. So the black administration certainly deteriorated from this ordered administration of the whites … [the blacks] inherited a transitional state, which is always difficult. A student … used to get bread and butter to eat, and meat … you can imagine the good food! Now here the economy was collapsing. An African Headmaster comes in who couldn’t afford to provide these things because of what was happening at the national level. Now the students would say “you see; all of a sudden this man has taken away all our things!” So there was a number of student uprisings.… So on the part [of the administrators], I believe their times were very difficult.13

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An informant who became one of the first African headmasters of the time noted that “the expatriate [heads] seemed to have had money—outside resources—for the school, so they were able to do a lot. But for us [Africans] we were limited only to [government] grants. And of course the students and staff could not easily see this. [So] we were blamed, but we managed.”14 These same heads were saddled with severe teacher shortages, addressed by placing extraordinary teaching loads on the few qualified African teachers remaining,15 the “bonding” of often reluctant graduates into the teaching profession, and “crash course” preparation of inexperienced African teachers-in-training to fill the vacated teaching slots. From the newly arrived “bonded” African teacher’s perspective, the situation was hardly better. “When I arrived I was given Senior Three, Four, Five, and Six to teach geography.… By that time I was not a trained teacher … so I just trained [on the job]. So you can imagine: [we were] untrained teachers, and not dedicated at that time because some of us wanted to do other jobs. Many people don’t like teaching in this country, because of too much work and little pay … so few people would go in for teaching.… So the school was being managed by people who were otherwise not interested.… Imagine the university students—young people—coming in, finding that the serious people are not there. You can imagine their starting [experience].”16 In a word, the schools suffered from the reality/necessity to “make do” with what little resources they had. The schools certainly suffered in the shortterm, and the cumulative effects remain to this day.

Transportation Roadblocks became the norm in Uganda after the 1972 abortive Tanzanian invasion. This disruption of travel was particularly difficult for boarding school students because of the robbery, intimidation, violence, and uncertainty they encountered in attempting to get from their home areas to school at the beginning and end of term. “Continuous roadblocks were everywhere, so it made travel really difficult.… Whether you were a student or not, you had to give tea, a kind of bribe.… Some roadblocks they would dictate how much you were to give; others you would just give what you had. But the condition was you must give them something. So it became really rough for us who were working and teaching, and for those who were studying at the time.”17 Steeling oneself to endure the scrutiny of unruly soldiers at roadblocks assumes that one had some means of transport to begin with. This assumption

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was often false. Petrol shortages became commonplace, especially with the disappearance of “essential commodities” during the Amin regime. Spare parts for vehicle repair were not available, or were so exorbitantly priced in the magendo economy that both public and private transport was erratic or non-existent. If by some miracle the school truck did function, the vehicle was often appropriated by the army for their own purposes, and was unavailable to transport students, food, or supplies. Even the most practical Third World vehicle, the bicycle, ceased to be available in Uganda by the end of Amin’s time.

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Food, Firewood, Furnishings, and Facilities As a former teacher recounted: “When I was teaching …, things like sugar, salt, cooking oil, soap, paraffin—those obtained a new name: essential commodities. That means you would not get access to these, even if you had money in your pocket. You actually would go in line; or you could have a committee in the village to supply these things.”18 Scarce fuel supplies also curtailed the ability of the boarding schools to transport food in bulk, a normal procedure when feeding five to six hundred students per day. Inflated prices compounded that problem, forcing dietary restrictions such as “tea without sugar” and serving posho, a porridge made from ground corn meal, three times a day. Firewood collection became a daily student chore for lack of propane or paraffin. “[When] our truck was down … we would carry firewood. The church also had a tractor which the schools would use.… If the tractor broke down, the whole school would go and collect firewood from the place where the tractor stopped.… We were not having water [either], so we would go down to the river between 4:00 P.M. and 5:00 P.M. to fetch water for the kitchen and for personal use.… If it was your class fetching water for the kitchen, you would produce two jerry cans … so that part can be for breakfast and part for lunch.”19 Furnishings and supplies disappeared because of stealing, looting, and deterioration. For example, as textbooks deteriorated or disappeared they were not replaced so library resources were stolen by students justifying such behavior on the premise that “I need it! There’s not enough for everybody, so I have to have mine.”20 Incidents of looting—by locals who sought shelter during times of insecurity and walked off with classroom and workshop materials, or by encamped army troops who used desks and chairs for fuel— stripped schools of furnishings, electrical and mechanical equipment, wiring, and piping. Lack of basic instructional resources like

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chalk, paper, pencils, chemicals, and cloth—unavailable because of cash and/or supply shortages—contributed to cancellation of lab and/or technical classes, inhibiting any practical application of topics presented only theoretically in the curriculum. “Air writing” replaced paper/pencil exercises in primary schools, resulting in a general deterioration in penmanship. And without paint, glass, or money for maintenance or repairs, previously pristine school compounds became increasingly dingy, dilapidated, and overgrown.

Morale in the Schools

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Life was hard for most everyone, and it began to show. A studentauthored article in a school publication paints the picture well: Dear students, how many times have you come from your holidays saying that you managed to grab some 100 bottles of [medicine] from your brother who is a doctor in a government hospital and you sold these at a very high rate? How many times have you said that you bribed a cashier in the relief shop so that he can sell you more soap than he had sold to others so that you can in turn sell at a double profit scale? How many times have you come to [a] football match at the town stadium and on reaching the neighborhood school, you throw stones at the school buildings only to break the louvers of their classrooms? Many people admit that they’ve done such but that it was to earn a living and to keep pace with prevailing situations. (C. Tumusiime 1981)

The magendo economy justified smuggling; corruption and bribery were the order of the day; cheating and stealing were justified by an “IGM” (“I got mine”) philosophy. One faculty member informant declares “the idea of the African tradition to share and everything, that went out because there [was] not enough to share!”21 Clearly the prevailing political, economic, and social circumstances of the country affected school life. School heads and teachers were caught up in this maelstrom, too. Cases of embezzlement of school funds by heads, failure to fulfill teaching responsibilities by teachers, and general loss of respect for the teaching profession itself affected morale. For example, a student reports “the Head of school himself … was rarely in his office. He would only come in the morning, address the assembly, and then as soon as we begin to go into our classes, we’d see him taking off and going into town.… He used to do that almost every day. The Headmaster had a lorry/school truck. And he could use that for his own personal gain, as we eventually discovered. That’s the reason he would go into town every day. [So]

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you’d go to the office, and he’s not in. You’d need help; nobody would attend to you.”22 In the 1980s, informants reported that people were teaching in as many as five schools simultaneously— they called it “part-timing”—just to survive. “Teachers had become so poor that many, especially [those teaching] in primary schools, could not afford a pair of shoes. So we became a laughingstock after that. Or we would be approached by one who would say: ‘Do you want to become poor? You become my teacher.’”23 So teaching as a profession was neglected, and few people opted for it. Because of hyperinflation, teachers’ salaries became almost worthless, and thus conditions of employment grew untenable. Furthermore, what little salary was paid inevitably was paid in arrears. “We went without salary for nine months, I remember, without any pay” reports a teacher of the 1978/79 year.24 Such systematic injustice on the part of the government in regard to teachers seemed reason enough to motivate and/or exonerate parallel injustices by teachers with respect to fulfillment of their duties to school and students. A student reports “‘coaching’ was done in addition to school class time. But it went so bad that at one stage the real teacher that was meant to teach us this particular subject is the one we had to pay to give what we called ‘extra lessons’—which in reality were not really extra lessons, but the real genuine lessons that we were meant to get [during class].”25 Such widespread behavior spawned negative attitudes from which the country still suffers.

Obote II Politics and the Schools Following the 1979 Liberation War, the slogan on everyone’s tongue was “reconstruction/rehabilitation.” When the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) gained control of the government in December 1980 in the contested election that returned Milton Obote to power, schools in Uganda hoped to gain from the move. After all, had not Obote expanded schooling opportunities by opening new primary schools and constructing additional facilities at the existing secondary schools during his first term? In fact, the UPC’s motives for educational involvement were more political than educational. A district education official described the genesis of what became “political” or “mushrooming” secondary schools as follows: Let’s look at the way they began. These schools began, in fact opened, in 1982, for purely political reasons. There were no serious educational

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reasons at the time. I mean why do you organize a secondary school? There must be a good reason for doing so! There are arguments now which are apparent, but which perhaps people didn’t look at at the time. Decisions to open secondary schools were not seriously taken by the Ministry of Education. A local, should we say, strong politician would wake up one day and say: “I think we need a secondary school here,” without stopping to think whether there are appropriate means to start that secondary school. Then he would walk to the Ministry in order to talk to the Minister and say: “We want a secondary school in our area; after all, we voted you into power.” And they say: “Yes, oh, you are giving …” without the Ministry ever trying to come and inspect even when the school is going to begin. And then the MP would come down and say: “Yes, you know I’ve got a secondary school tomorrow coming.”26

One effect of this rapid and unplanned expansion of schools was to increase the number of government-aided secondary schools, ostensibly providing the needed space for qualified primary school leavers to continue their education.27 That scenario neglects to note, however, that most of these new “mushrooming” schools merely displaced P6 and P7 students from their classrooms, the net effect often forcing the P1 and P2 children out under the trees for instruction. To find head teachers for these schools, the Ministry of Education (MOE) robbed qualified teachers from the secondary schools, exacerbating the already critical shortage of trained personnel. “They had to look for teachers to fill these [”mushrooming”] schools, and of course they would look [for them] from [successful] schools; so good schools lost their good teachers.”28 But perhaps Obote II incursions into school affairs are more clearly portrayed by recounting Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) youth wing and National Union of Students of Uganda (NUSU) activities. The situations differed from school to school. A student of the time at a boys’ school reports: There arose a conflict between the student leaders and the administration because in the student leaders we had two bodies: the Prefects Council, which used to be elected by the whole student body; and then we had the NUSU, which was sort of a branch of UPC. So the person we had here—the one who was chairman of NUSU— it seems he felt that he had a lot of power over the administration of the school. So whatever used to happen here, it would [be] directly taken to the [UPC] authorities compound. So on several occasions we would receive people coming; and the Headmaster would tell us that “I am always being warned that if I don’t do this, if I don’t do that, I’ll be dismissed from the school.”

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[For example] … when we have Senior Ones, they are teased [i.e., new students are hazed]. So when they were teased, I think that year, that Chairman of NUSU went and informed the DC [District Commissioner] that there was a problem in the school. So he came here and confronted the Headmaster in front of us. And he said: “We are going to throw you out of this school; we know you are not a UPC.”… They were claiming that he was a DP [Democratic Party] supporter. So it was not easy on the Headmaster’s part; he tried to use—he was a very cool man—he tried to convince them. And he had to accept, he had to punish the students responsible—those who raided the other students; they were thrown out of school. But it was out of pressure.… So that was one of the problems we were having, conflict between the UPC student leaders and the administrators.29

However, at a school for girls, the student who was head prefect at the time notes: “NUSU policies were anti-school … they thought they were given power to defy even school regulations.… In my time I didn’t have such a message; the girls who were here, they respected me. And they had chosen me; I didn’t have those troubles.”30 “The government wanted NUSU [to be] a way of reaching students by the political system very easily, to influence elections, etc. But then, it instead fell on the side of the students—a watchdog for students’ rights—more than the political system did, from what I saw here” reports a student at a third school.31 In light of these experiences, it seems that the UPC viewed schools as direct avenues for party influence and recruitment. While Amin’s purges of the Langi and Acholi were quite public, Obote’s purge of those schools not considered enthusiastic enough about the UPC was more subtle. A headmistress who was sacked at the time relates this episode: What happened in our place, what caused me to leave, was that in the office I didn’t have the president’s picture, photograph.… So someone came in and said: “You know, you have been reported that you don’t have the president’s picture in your office.” So I said: “Oh? Who is supposed to provide that photograph?” So he said: “You have to start by getting it; you can maybe get it in Kampala.” I didn’t take it seriously. But then they started picking on things here and there. And one day a group of people from the Ministry of Education came … and said: “And now we have to inform you that so-and-so is going to take over. We thank you for the work you have done.” I said: “But I don’t have anything in writing.” And even up to now I don’t have anything to say that I was discontinued and the reasons given I don’t know.… I was told to leave the place and maybe stop all work in December; but they didn’t bring the person to replace me until April, so I continued until then.

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So, I left the office [in April 1982]. As soon as I left that day, the people who had come with the photograph, they had a procession [to] take the photo of Obote into the office. It was disgraceful.32

The political climate of the Obote II years rekindled suspicions based on tribe and religion, too. One transferred headmaster related how Obote’s government replaced Bantu secondary school officials, who had been serving in the Nilotic areas of the north, with returning Acholi and Langi exiles.33 A government official recalls that in the 1980s schools would be branded according to their founding members: “‘Are they Catholics? Then they must be DP’s. Are they Protestants? Those are UPC’s.’ This caused problems … such that even if one was a good administrator, but of a different faith or of a different political party, he [sic] would not come to receive consideration in case a school needed a new Head or a new teacher.… You would find schools with lots of people, where others were empty, because of religion.”34

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War, Insecurity, and Violence A continuing atmosphere of insecurity and violence took its toll on the quality of school life in Uganda during the Amin/Obote II years. Armed conflict and shootings occurred frequently, at times leaving a trail of roadside corpses for students to witness, at other times keeping students restricted to campus. The abduction and disappearance of relatives and/or neighbors, the indiscriminate looting and destruction of property, the indiscipline of soldiers, and the plethora of weapons everywhere evoked feelings of terror, fear, suspicion, grief, and bereavement in students and staff alike. Students were regularly harassed at roadblocks by illiterate military men; since Obote did not pay his soldiers—“you have a gun; why do you need to be paid?”—students were frequently robbed of their school fees. The educated class—teachers, students, school heads, librarians—were intimidated by the military, and also by politicians who expected nothing short of enthusiastic toeing of the UPC party line. Under Obote II, informants described situations in which a secondary school headmaster and a teacher training college principal were deposed for reasons of politics, not merit.35 Soldiers made incursions onto school compounds to abduct school girls, and soldiers raped secondary school girls in their campus dormitories.36 Times of direct armed conflict, however, did cause some school interruptions in Uganda. For example, schools in the western region were interrupted during the first term of 1979 (March/April)

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by the Liberation War, and some schools were occupied by Tanzanian troops at that time. Schools were closed again early in the 1985 second term (July) when the National Resistance Army (NRA) of Museveni initially occupied the western region, and were suspended again in third term 1985 from late October through February 1986 during the NRA offensive on Kampala launched from the west. This latter school suspension, and the virtual isolation of the western region from other areas of Uganda, caused the indefinite postponement of Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) and O-level exams. Western region students were allowed to sit for alternative national exams in April 1986, having missed the regular testing administered to students in the rest of the country in November 1985.

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Quality of School Life Faced with such stresses and difficulties, the quality of school life inevitably suffered. That academic standards declined should not be surprising, given the realities of the critical teacher shortage, “part-timing,” financial and material shortfalls, and school interruptions. By some estimates, only one-third of scheduled classes were taught.37 A good number of the teachers in the schools were less than qualified: some were graduates in other fields who had been bonded to teach in repayment of their government-sponsored university studies; others were graduates of “crash teacher prep courses” offered by the MOE; others were forced to be a “jack-of-all-trades,” teaching courses outside their academic areas. External exam results declined precipitously after 1978 in the secondary schools. For the “political schools,” founded only after 1980, external exam results were a moot question; such schools lacked qualified teachers and permanent classrooms, and few students were able to pass the national exams during this period. A civil society suffering the breakdown of legal authority can lend little support to a school’s demand for order among its students. Hence, discipline in the schools deteriorated. Students came to school armed, intimidating fellow students and teachers, and contravening rules without penalty. Not only would students refuse to wear uniforms—an almost “sacred” tradition in Ugandan schools—but lack of cloth and materials eventually precluded any student from obtaining the proper garb. Insecurity and difficulty in transport altered the traditional “national” character of many of the secondary schools, which at one time included students and teachers from all regions of Uganda. Furthermore, student and teacher diversity in up-country schools declined because

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of insecurity, and finance and transport difficulties; ethnic/tribal tensions motivated families to keep their children closer to their home area for secondary schooling. This caused de facto regionalization of the schools. The people in schools experienced stresses and anxieties, too. “School girls used to be taken by army men. What could you do? You find the daughter of so-and-so has now married this army sergeant or captain; she has left [school] now.”38 “We had a prominent soldier, a commander … whom we women especially feared.… He would drive and whenever he meets a woman, a woman in whom he has been interested … he would just take [her].”39 “We had insecurity; thieves would come and raid the staff members at night. And you’d hear even bullets around, especially at the gate down there.”40 “I remember one incident involving a boy who caused a teacher to be killed. This boy had been caught cheating … [and] a teacher caught him and tore the paper. The boy had a brother who was an army man … and the boy organized the teacher’s death—he was shot dead, the only son of his parents!”41 “We were taught the skills of lying on the ground so that stray bullets don’t get us. So we were sleeping on the floor of the dorms. The teachers were equally scared; they left their houses and joined us [in the dorms].”42 “We had a student who was the son of the commanding officer here. And when he was here, he had also a pistol.… He would not wear his uniform, he had his own desk, he had his own chair.… The students staying with him in the chamber [in the dorm] decided to vacate the chamber.… Nobody would tamper around with that one. Students were not freely interacting with some of these people … they feared!”43 Given such overwhelming difficulties and the widespread breakdown of institutional infrastructure in Uganda, it is clearly a wonder that schools survived at all. Why did the education system not collapse when little else in Uganda functioned? How were education programs sustained during this period? What strategies and procedures helped schools persist? The next chapters compile evidence gathered from the secondary schools in Kabarole District for insights and answers to these questions.

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Notes 1. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997. Note: Pseudonyms are used for all informants who provided personal interviews or personal correspondence; these pseudonyms are indicated by an asterisk (*) in reference citations in this and the following chapters. All interviews were conducted in English and tape recorded, and verbatim transcriptions were made from the audio tapes. 2. Ibid. 3. *C. Kaijuka, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 4. *A. Kagenda, personal interview, 11 September 1997. 5. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 6. See also O’Connor (1988: 90–91) for further discussion and references to academic studies on Uganda’s magendo economy. 7. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 8. St. Leo’s College House Chronicles, 19 November 1977. 9. St. Leo’s College House Chronicles, 3 December 1977. 10. *A. Ngonzi, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 11. *S. Bazoora, personal interview, 3 October 1997. 12. *D. Rutabisa, personal interview, 29 August 1997. 13. *C. Kaijuka, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 14. *A. Ngonzi, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 15. “At that time we embarked on a policy ‘jack of all trades, master of none!’ That is, we were supposed to teach all fields we could manage. That is, you simply read and prepare yourself. For example, we arts teachers: you would say ‘I’m not qualified in geography, therefore I cannot teach the subject.’ But provided you had geography at Ordinary or Advanced levels before you went to the university, you would now resort to teaching it, because we didn’t have enough teachers. A science teacher, maybe, who qualifies or specializes in chemistry, would still be requested to help a bit in physics or mathematics, like that.” (*A. Ngonzi, personal interview, 5 September 1997). 16. *D. Byamukama, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 17. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 18. *S. Tiwangye, personal interview, 21 August 1997. 19. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 20. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. 21. Ibid. 22. *J. Kagoya, personal interview, 8 August 1997. 23. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 24. *D. Byamukama, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 25. *D. Rutabisa, personal interview, 29 August 1997. 26. *C. Mbanga, personal interview, 18 September 1997. 27. See Furley (1988: 189–192). 28. *D. Byamukama, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 29. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997. 30. *M. Nyarwa, personal interview, 26 September 1997. 31. *D. Rutabisa, personal interview, 29 August 1997. 32. *Sr. Marie Agnella, personal interview, 27 October 1997. 33. *A. Ngonzi, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 34. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997.

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35. *Sr. Marie Agnella, personal interview, 27 October 1997; *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 36. *A. Ngonzi, personal interview, 5 September 1997; *S. Bazoora, personal interview, 3 October 1997. 37. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. 38. *A. Kabenge, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 39. *S. Bazoora, personal interview, 3 October 1997. 40. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997. 41. *S. Tiwangye, personal interview, 21 August 1997. 42. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 43. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997.

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– Four –

THE STORY A View from the Ground in Kabarole

o

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T

his study reveals the history and experience of four Ugandan secondary schools that survived through the difficult period of social conflict during the Amin/Obote II years and continue in operation today. In order to ground the experience of these schools in time, place, and tradition, brief histories of these particular schools need to be presented.

School Sites in Kabarole District The vast majority of recent writings on Uganda have related to the country as a whole, with little attention being given to variations from place to place within the country, except for discussions focused on ethnicity and political relationships among people of different ethnic groups. An inevitable result of this overgeneralization is that critically important regional variations have been overlooked. Emphasis on the aggregate national scene was perhaps very understandable when the process of national integration was being pursued immediately after independence. This policy was implemented gradually through agencies such as the education system, which was nationalized in 1964, or more abruptly by the 1976 imposition of centralized authority on the former kingdoms. But the Amin/Obote II years witnessed a reversal of this process. A substantial degree of national disintegration occurred during this period, so that for many people “Uganda”

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became a less and less meaningful entity. Under such circumstances there is more need than ever to give explicit attention to residents of particular areas and to their distinctive problems. A proper understanding of most aspects of Uganda, then, requires not merely differentiation between geographic areas like north and south or core and peripheral economic structures, but disaggregation at least to the district level (O’Connor 1988). This chapter, then, begins an in-depth look at schools in Kabarole District. The colonial administrative division known as Tooro District—which comprised the traditional geographic area of the Kingdom of Tooro in Uganda’s western region—was replaced by three smaller administrative units in 1976 when the districts of Kabarole, Kasese, and Bundibugyo were constituted. O’Connor (1988), noting that almost all discussion of contemporary Uganda still refers to traditional designations like Ankole, Tooro, Acholi, West Nile, and so on, muses that the ignoring of such state-initiated administrative changes may indicate the irrelevance of the state for most aspects of life in a country besieged by the gravity of other political issues. Nevertheless, this study most frequently refers to Kabarole, since the site schools are physically located in Kabarole District of the former Tooro kingdom. However, for the greater part of the historical period under consideration, these schools were also the only government-aided secondary institutions in the pre-1976 administrative unit known as Tooro District. A brief historical sketch of the area and the site schools helps position the narrative account.

Christianity and Colonialism in Tooro Unlike in Buganda where missionaries preceded the arrival of colonial agents, Christianity and colonialism arrived simultaneously in Tooro in the person of one man—Kasagama, a crown prince of the Tooro kingdom. Kasagama had fled his homeland in the 1870s when the omukama (king) of Bunyoro reconquered Tooro, which had seceded from Bunyoro four decades earlier. Kasagama had been living in exile in Buganda, where he met Frederick Lugard, chief agent of the Imperial British East African Company. Under Lugard’s protection, Kasagama was reinstalled as omukama of Tooro in 1891. Having become exposed to the Anglican faith in Buganda, Kasagama soon sent for Ganda catechists to begin preaching the gospel in Tooro (Kassimir 1995). The relationship between Tooro and the British was formalized through a series of agreements that specified the limitations of Kasagama’s powers while establishing the classic indirect rule

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pattern characteristic of British colonialism. Hence, Christianity initially spread from the top down, beginning with members of the royal clan and strongly encouraged by the king himself. While both Catholic and Anglican missionaries appeared in Tooro to open mission stations and win converts, chiefships in Tooro were distributed on a basis that greatly favored Anglican converts. As most appointments historically had gone to those who had established ties with the king through kinship or patronage, most chiefs adopted the king’s Anglican faith as a sign of loyalty (Kassimir 1995).

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Kyebambe Girls Secondary School In addition to the catechists who were invited to Tooro shortly after Kasagama was installed as king, the year 1900 saw the arrival of two missionary teachers, Miss Pike and Miss Hurditch. The omukama had extended an invitation to the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) to staff a primary school in the area, and Miss Pike’s mixed school opened in 1901. As Christianity took root in the kingdom, formal education became part and parcel of the overall project of Christianizing Africans. Consequently, an Anglican girls’ boarding school, meant to educate chiefs’ daughters and those pupils who could pay, was opened on 10 April 1912 with forty-nine girls. Support for this new Tooro Girls School was enhanced by the efforts of a few key donors: Lady Kennedy built a brick dormitory for twelve students, Mr. and Mrs. Maddox had a mud-and-wattle dorm constructed to house sixteen more students, and the omukama enclosed the compound with a strong reed fence. While the archives note that Princess Ruth and other princesses and the katikiro’s (prime minister) daughter joined the school, “every girl, whether princess or what, took her turn at cleaning, cooking, and at least one hour digging a day” (Growth of Kyebambe Girls Secondary School, n.d.). After a three-year course, girls went to training as teachers and nurses. Miss Bolton’s arrival as headmistress in 1940 initiated a period of significant change. In 1941 Tooro Girls School became Kyebambe Girls School, named after the aforementioned first Christian omukama of Tooro, King David Kasagama Ikingura Kyebambe IV (1891 –1928). In 1944 a Junior Secondary course was initiated; by that time the school was serving the western Uganda areas of Kigezi, Ankole, Tooro, and Bunyoro, with a few students coming from Buganda, Rwanda, and Congo. New permanent buildings—Saaka and Chapel—were begun in 1947, and further building construction was completed in the 1953–56 period, enlarging the school compound, which shares, with St. John’s Anglican Cathedral, a hilltop

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site across from the omukama’s palace. In 1955, the opening of new Junior Secondary schools in Bweranyangi and Kigezi areas skewed enrollment at Kyebambe in favor of Batooro students. On 23 July 1960 the Golden Jubilee of the school was celebrated. The 1960s saw further development. With independence in October 1962, the first non-colonial government came to power. In 1964, an act of Parliament effectively nationalized Uganda’s mission schools, transferring juridical control of the school to the Ministry of Education. In 1965, following a national school reorganization plan, Kyebambe became a secondary school (S1–S4). New buildings funded by the 1st IDA (International Development Agency) project (1965–70) were constructed to accommodate school expansion, including a dining hall; library; sickbay; specialized laboratories for home economics, physics, and chemistry; and new dormitories and staff houses. The first two African teachers joined the secondary school faculty in 1970; the higher school program (S5–S6) was introduced in 1975. In 1976 a school farm was started, and the 2nd IDA building project commenced. The published mission of Kyebambe Girls Secondary School, which pioneered girls’ education in Tooro, is to provide a holistic education and inculcate the values of academic excellence, honesty, purity, and love. The school motto: Mukwekamba Tutaba Bagara, “Do not grow slack but be fervent in spirit” (Romans 12:11)—is captured in the school’s aims and objectives: to provide an education that will fit girls for their life, service, and place in modern Uganda. Located about one kilometer from Fort Portal town center, Kyebambe currently enrolls 650 girls in a six-year secondary boarding school program.

St. Leo’s College, Kyegobe Catholic missionaries came to Tooro at the same time as the Anglicans, but finding themselves relatively closed out from access to the mainly Anglican Tooro political class, they concentrated on converting the rural masses. As Kassimir notes: “Beginning with the first Catholic missionary in Tooro, the White Father Augustine Achte, and continuing throughout the colonial period, Catholic missionaries regularly complained to the king and colonial officers about discrimination in the appointment of chiefs. This was because the missionary enterprise seemed so contingent upon the presence of sympathetic chiefs. Indeed, this was also an important motivation for the establishment of mission stations as self-contained, relatively autonomous social spaces, with the parish priest possessing chief-like powers, both within and beyond its territorial

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bounds” (1995: 123). This observation is borne out somewhat in the establishment of St. Leo’s College. On 1 September 1921 St. Leo’s College was founded on the Catholic mission compound at Virika near Fort Portal by Rev. Father Eugene Derby, a member of the White Fathers. Despite strong opposition from the laity,1 Fr. Derby established St. Leo’s for those boys who had successfully completed four years of schooling at Virika Boys’ Day School and those from St. Joseph’s Elementary School at the Butiiti Catholic mission, about thirty kilometers’ distance away. St. Leo’s, with four forms and an average of twenty students per form, was intended to be one of several feeder schools for St. Mary’s College at Kisubi—founded in 1906—the premier Catholic school for sons of devoted Baganda Catholics and Goans. However, under the direction of the White Fathers, St. Leo’s very quickly established a solid reputation as a strong academic institution in its own right. Catholic missionaries have influenced the growth and development of the college up to the present. The Brothers of Christian Instruction—known in Uganda as the “Kisubi Brothers”—took over the staffing of the school in 1937, replacing the White Fathers who wished to concentrate more on parish ministry. All through 1937, Brother Adrian Deneau was the only brother on staff, helped by some Ugandan lay teachers; at the beginning of 1938, Brother Alphonsus Zayera, one of the first African brothers, came to help Brother Adrian. It is interesting to note that both the White Fathers and the Kisubi Brothers engaged the services of Ugandan teachers: six African lay teachers, graduates of Makerere College School, assisted the founding faculty of White Fathers, and of the fortyone Brothers of Christian Instruction who served at St. Leo’s, twelve were Africans. Under the leadership of the Brothers of Christian Instruction, the school made steady progress. Of the eighty-four students who sat for junior leaving certificates between 1939 and 1945, only four failed to pass. Headmaster Brother George Lord (1950–55) was an outstanding builder. He brought enrollment to over two hundred students, added a number of new buildings, and laid the groundwork for the move from the Virika mission compound to establish a much larger school. Brother Louis took over the school in 1956 and made all of the arrangements for St. Leo’s to become solely a secondary school. In January 1960, the school was moved to the new site at Kyegobe, a hilltop location about two kilometers from the Virika compound and three kilometers from Fort Portal town. New and larger dormitories, laboratories and several classroom

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blocks, a large dining hall/kitchen complex, and an administration building were arranged around a grassy commons area. The new students planted a variety of shade trees on the compound that contribute to the beauty and park-like atmosphere of the campus to this day. Life at St. Leo’s at Virika had reflected the values of the Catholic founders and teachers, who tried to develop men with “a deep sense of Christian justice, initiative, independence of character, gentility, and ability to cooperate with others toward achieving a common good.… Once a week, or at least every fortnight, each form master [gave] a set lesson on social life and good manners which [made] the machine run smoothly. Every Saturday/Sunday the Headmaster was required to assemble the whole group (or a section) and give an encouraging talk to stress some aspects of life, e.g., sociability, punctuality, etc. Daily, students were given the opportunity of attending Holy Mass and other spiritual exercises to strengthen them in the combat of life” (Kabagambe 1997: 9). However, life at St. Leo’s new Kyegobe campus soon encountered changes broader than those entailed by the mere geographic move. In 1961, American Brothers of Holy Cross took over the running of the college under the direction of Rev. Brother Lewis James. Ugandan independence in 1962, the effective nationalization of mission schools after 1964, the rising tide of black rule in subSaharan Africa, and a revised vision of Catholic mission work promulgated by Vatican Council II presented unique challenges for the new American missionaries. “By 1970 Headmaster Brother John Houlihan began planning for a new future for St. Leo’s. Up to that time the staff was basically made up of Holy Cross religious and British expatriates. He began building additional staff houses for that time when the seven brothers living in the large Brothers’ House would be replaced by young Ugandan teachers. At the same time funds were received from the World Bank and the number of buildings on the compound nearly doubled. Active recruitment was done to bring in Ugandan teachers; at that time Ugandans were mainly involved in primary level teaching. Moses Nyakazingo, Austin Mulengwa, and Henry Basaliza were some of the young men to begin teaching at Kyegobe” (Nichols 1997: 14). In January 1973, Holy Cross handed over the administration of St. Leo’s to the government. Moses Nyakazingo was appointed as first Ugandan headmaster of the college. Two Holy Cross brothers remained on the staff and moved to a staff house—in fact, the same staff house that the first two brothers had occupied in 1961. The large brothers’ house became a residence for unmarried teachers

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(Nichols 1997). In 1975 Nyakazingo was succeeded by his deputy, Austin Mulengwa, whose service as headmaster to 1987 spans the major portion of our study period. In 1980 St. Leo’s was raised to an A-level school (S5–S6), even though there was no expansion of facilities to accommodate the over seven hundred boys enrolled in this now six-year secondary boarding institution.

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Nyakasura School Nyakasura School was founded by a retired British naval officer, Lieutenant-Commander Ernest William Eborhard Calwell, affectionately known as “the Commander.” He had retired prematurely from the navy due to ill health, and had come to the Kenya highlands to convalesce. The East African climate had a salutary effect on his health, and he resolved to demonstrate his gratitude to God by doing something concrete. He met friends from Uganda who suggested that he could satisfy his ambition by coming to teach in Ugandan schools, and, after negotiating with Church Missionary Society (CMS) authorities for a teaching post, came to King’s College, Buddo, in April 1922. He taught mathematics and, being an engineering specialist, was responsible for overseeing various construction works (Baguma 1976). As Baguma relates: “In 1925 the Commander made up his mind to resign from Buddo and start a school of his own, on the model and status of Buddo. He took such a step because he could not bear the budding political encroachment on the day-to-day running of the school, coupled with the complete lack of support for the schemes that he highly valued. At that time Buddo had a sizeable number of Batooro students who took the opportunity of the Commander’s frustration to persuade him to found the school of his dreams in their home district” (1976: 5). When the Commander arrived in Tooro in December 1925, he was formally introduced to the reigning omukama Kasagama Kyebambe and his chiefs. In his introductory speech to the group “he made a prophetic statement, namely: ‘Give me your children and I will give you the chiefs’” (Baguma 1976: 13). The prophesy was well fulfilled as a large number of Nyakasura graduates did became chiefs. The Commander’s timing was also propitious since the CMS missionary-founded Tooro Boarding High School had been demoted to a central school for lack of a new qualified headmaster after the former missionary head departed the country. Central schools were a lower grade than high schools, which meant that Batooro students wishing to sit the Makerere Entrance Examination had to travel more than two hundred kilometers on

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foot from Fort Portal to Buddo or Kisubi to take the qualifying courses. Moreover, other districts had started building high schools, which greatly enhanced their prestige, and so the embarrassed Batooro regarded the Commander’s arrival as an opportunity to restore their own prestige (Baguma 1976). The Commander’s school opened on 15 March 1926 using buildings of the former Tooro High School in Kabarole. Selection of the initial forty students was based on the examination results of central school pupils who sat for entrance testing. The Commander as headmaster was assisted by three Ugandan teachers. Considering the Kabarole site as merely a “resting place” on the road to the school of his dreams, the Commander petitioned the omukama and his chiefs to provide a permanent site. The omukama initiated a special fund for the project, the Tooro District levied a special Education Tax, and a hilltop site along the Nyakasura River about ten kilometers from Fort Portal town was secured. “On Saturdays the Commander’s boys used to leave Kabarole for the new site for joining the porters in clearing the bush and building their new dormitories, classrooms and other essential buildings” (Baguma, 1976: 17). On 14 July 1926 the school moved from Kabarole and started operating at Nyakasura. The original buildings consisted of two dormitories with rooms for unmarried teachers attached, the Commander’s house, two staff houses, a chapel, a kitchen, a store, and two classroom blocks. The school’s leading patron, Omukama Kyebambe, died in December 1929, but his successor followed in the footsteps of his father by not only sending his brothers and children to Nyakasura, but also by serving on its Board of Governors and liaising with various authorities on behalf of the school (Baguma 1976). The Commander also initiated and fostered the growth of other education institutions. For example, Izahura Primary School was a Nyakasura school project. The Commander sent two Nyakasura “old boys” (school alumni) to establish the school, and vacancies for Izahura students at Nyakasura were assured and automatic. One of the first teacher training institutions in Tooro was also started at Nyakasura. When it became apparent that primary education was going to expand considerably and that more room was needed to cater to anticipated expansion, the institution was moved to a separate hill where the present Canon Apolo Teacher Training College now stands (Baguma 1976). In 1941 the Commander left Nyakasura to return to the navy for active service. During his absence the school witnessed many changes, such as the inauguration of the Nyakasura Board of

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Governors in September 1942. Some of these changes were necessitated by attempts to control costs, since the Commander’s method of economic problem solving had been to put huge sums of his private money on the school account. Shortages of staff aggravated by the Second World War had serious repercussions on the progress of the school. In 1944 the school could not staff its senior secondary sixth form, and King’s College, Buddo, accepted qualified Nyakasura Secondary Five (S5) boys to complete their course. Staffing concerns still plagued other CMS-sponsored institutions, and in January 1946 the Board of Governors was informed that Nyakasura was to be demoted to junior secondary status. The CMS had obligations to staff King’s College, Buddo, and Busoga College, Mwiri—both self-governing institutions—and needed to withdraw staff from Nyakasura with no hope of early replacement. A compromise was reached, however, and in January 1947 the Nyakasura School Board of Governors voted to transfer the administration of the school from CMS authorities to the government, effective in 1948, noting that the Christian character of the school would be assured (Baguma 1976). Although the Commander returned to Nyakasura from active military service in September 1945 and helped prepare for the pending government take-over of the school, his tenure was short-lived. Calwell died at Kampala European Hospital on 24 September 1947 after a long illness. While no headmaster in the post-Commander era could ever replicate the Commander’s style, in January 1948 the Ministry of Education posted Dr. George Tomblings, retired principal of Makerere College, to guide the school through the critical stage of transition. Baguma (1976) notes his acceptance was voluntary as well as humanitarian, for he saved the school from closing down. Head E. C. Cooper (1948–53), a protégé of the famous educationist Carey Francis, under whom he mentored at Alliance High School in Kenya, set Nyakasura on sound educational footing. In 1950 the school presented the first group of students for the Cambridge School Certificate. F. H. Stevens, the third headmaster (1954–59) is remembered as a tireless advocate for the welfare of the staff and school. He seemed to have great influence in the Ministry of Education because his requests were rarely refused. Rev. E. G. Perrens (1959–65) introduced the Higher School Certificate Course (S5–S6) and, in 1962, coeducation. The newly independent government’s Ministry of Education financed many new buildings during his time, including the biology lab, physics lab, Commander house, Assembly hall, Dining hall, and Damali house. Perrens also made extensions

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and modifications to many buildings and staff houses, and constructed the chapel with private donations. E. U. Batchelor (1965– 73), the fifth headmaster and last expatriate to serve in that capacity, came into the office at a time of social transition. He endured a student strike in November 1969 that resulted in the closure of the school until the first term of 1970, and left office in July 1973 in the exodus of expatriate teachers following Amin’s expulsion of the Asians. Francis Kasiragi became the first African headmaster of Nyakasura School in 1973, but, according to his deputy D. K. Baguma (1976), there came a time when he strongly believed that he had been undermined, which affected his ability to lead the school effectively. He was succeeded in January 1975 by Moses Nyakazingo, an “old boy” of the school, who was transferred from his post as headmaster at St. Leo’s College to lead Nyakasura. Nyakasura School celebrated its Golden Jubilee in July 1976. Its current secondary school boarding enrollment (S1–S6) is seven hundred boys and girls.

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Mpanga Senior Secondary School While the previous schools shared a common origin as mission foundations, Mpanga Secondary School began as a private venture. Since colonial times, the Aga Khan education network of schools—which included nursery, primary, and secondary schools, and youth hostels to accommodate boarding students—was an educational entity in Uganda primarily supported by members of the Asian community. The Indian Primary School in Fort Portal, established in the late 1930s as the preferred local venue for educating Asian children, was affiliated with this network. In 1956, Indian Primary School became the present Buhinga Primary School, built as a joint venture of the colonial government and local donors. Fifty percent of the construction cost was contributed by the government, with the remaining costs contributed by the local Asian communities; two-thirds of the teachers’ salary cost was paid by government, the balance being met by school fees and donations by the parents and the members of the local Asian communities. Upon completing the primary school program, most of the pupils had to join secondary schools and institutions in Kampala, Mbale, Masaka, and other towns because the facilities for secondary education in Fort Portal were severely limited. For students completing Primary Six, St. Leo’s, Nyakasura, and Kyebambe would offer only two or three places for the pupils of Buhinga Primary. Furthermore, until independence in 1962, a very limited number of African pupils could join Buhinga School because

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the school fees were much higher than those of the mission schools. Even after 1962 when more and more African pupils— children of civil servants—joined Buhinga, they continued to have difficulty obtaining places in secondary schools. Since so many of the Buhinga primary students were left out, the Asian community decided to pursue private education as a way to place their children at the secondary level.2 In 1965 the Board of the Asian Education Society, a committee of businessmen under the chairmanship of Gulamali Bhimji, decided to build a secondary school in Fort Portal. Since no government grant was available for the construction of the building, necessary funds were collected from the local business community, most of whom were of Asian origin. All those who could afford to pay the higher school fees required in a non-aided school, and whose children were not admitted into the government-aided schools, were invited to join in this venture. Although a few African children with financial means enrolled, the school continued to be populated predominately by Asians. With financial assistance from donors like the Aga Khan and the Lions Club of Fort Portal, which donated the cost of a laboratory building, Mpanga Secondary School was built in 1966 in Fort Portal, close to the town business center. As in the Buhinga Primary School case, twothirds of the teachers’ salaries were paid by the Ministry of Education, and the rest of the expenses were met by school fees and donations. By 1969, the school enrolled about one hundred twenty boys and girls as day students in grades S1 to S4, with Badrudin Merchant, formerly a graduate teacher at Buhinga Primary, as the first headmaster.3 In 1972, with Amin’s declaration of an “economic war,” the Asians were expelled from the country on three months’ notice. The departing Asian families took their children with them, the Asians who administered and staffed the school left, too, and Mpanga school was all but abandoned. However, the few well-todo African parents who had enrolled their children in that school organized themselves, and their spokesman Nyakayo Yosea applied to the Ministry of Education to claim the school as abandoned Asian property. His application was successful, and he secured permission to take over the school. So Mpanga had a new owner and permanent buildings, but no teachers and very few students! Meanwhile, another African-founded private school in Fort Portal—Kabarole High School—had some students and a few teachers, but very inadequate facilities. The African parents who had secured title to the Mpanga school property, together with the

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parents of the Kabarole High School students, resolved that the two schools be combined to form one school to be administered at Mpanga. A new Board of Governors was constituted with Nyakayo as chairperson, and the former head of Kabarole High School as vice-chairman. Thirty-seven students and two teachers from Kabarole High School moved to the Mpanga site in 1973. Aston Kadoma, named Secretary of the Board and Executive Headmaster of the school, was asked by the Board to take a leave of absence from his teaching assignment at the government-sponsored Buloba Teachers College near Kampala to come to Mpanga and help restore order and confidence in the establishment. By the end of second term 1973, the school again had a full complement of students combined from both Kabarole High School and Mpanga Secondary School. However, running a private school was tedious. Enrollment was always a struggle because people lacked confidence in the educational quality of private schools and balked at paying high school fees. A former headmaster reports that “properly qualified teachers were not available and those I used to employ were the retired ones, some because of inefficiency and some for old age; therefore the work they used to offer was of a low grade. Properly qualified teachers could not come because of fear of losing their pension benefits. Other teachers had also left government to come and own businesses left over by the Asians.… Since teachers were not available I approached those teaching in the nearby government schools like Kyebambe and St. Leo’s to offer some lessons in their free time. [Some] accepted and arranged with their Head Teachers to teach part-time at Mpanga, and so I was able to contain the situation and offer proper education.” When the school produced O-level exam passes in 1973, 1974, and 1975, more children enrolled, but school fee payment was still difficult for many, and others could not pay. “I used to pay teachers from my own resources and the money from my own business I had been given from the departed Asians.”4 In the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) of 1975, an unprecedented number of students in Uganda achieved passing grades, the result of primary school expansion efforts begun in the first Obote regime. However, with insufficient parallel efforts to increase secondary school capacity, many otherwise qualified students were denied placement in government-aided secondary schools for lack of space. The Amin government solved this immediate problem by nationalizing private secondary schools. In February 1976, Mpanga was nationalized. E. Nkojo-Murro, Deputy

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Headmaster at Nyakasura School, was appointed as head of Mpanga, the government capitation grant was introduced, full teacher salary payment was assumed by the government, and enrollment was expanded to accommodate the excess students. Kadoma, who had resisted this take-over because the private school account was not to be remunerated, had not been offered the headship, although he was a government teacher himself on leave. He was transferred to another school in Hoima and later forced to sign over the school officially to the government on 20 August 1976. Although the new headmaster had a rough start due to the antagonism between the former head and the government over who owned the school, in the eyes of the public the school was stabilized. The intake of two streams of students per grade level raised enrollment to 460 without any increase in facilities. Absalom Ndyanabo, appointed head in 1979 after the Liberation War, launched a building program that included additional latrines, staff housing, expanded laboratory facilities, and a classroom block to accommodate the A-level program introduced in 1980. The school expanded its enrollment to over one thousand students in grades S1 to S6, the level it maintains today.

The Survival of Kabarole Schools Recall that what this study considers is not the philosophical question of educational survival, or what judgment regarding educational survival can be made. Rather, the empirical questions of how and why secondary schools survived is the topic under investigation. Such an investigation of corporate or institutional survival seeks to identify particular internalities of institutional conduct—structures, strategies, policies, practices, actors’ experiences—that might lead to the discovery of baseline conditions accounting for observed corporate or institutional persistence. While necessarily limited by circumstances particular to a geographical area and to particular school sites, this “view from the ground” in Kabarole—further documented in the remainder of this chapter—reveals an institutional apparatus that continued to operate through situations that collapsed the education systems of most other countries. Despite the advantages of good climate, geographical and political isolation, and the fortunate lack of major wartime destruction in the area, Kabarole still suffered from the collapse of the

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economic system, the general breakdown of legal authority, and the consequent disruption and uncertainty felt throughout the country. Why did Kabarole schools survive? Investigating the internality of school workings and the experience of educational actors reveals a complex network of factors contributing to institutional persistence. Rather than simply through successful practices in particular schools, although these are important internalities, it became evident that schools survived tremendous difficulties through a combination of systemic influences and local initiatives. These influences and initiatives gave rise to successful strategies, procedures, and opportunities that schools seized upon to reorder priorities, modify implementation of policies on short notice, and develop an effective school organization. Turning our attention to these influences, the remainder of this chapter documents such situations for the Kabarole District schools just described.

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Systemic Support for Schools No institution operates in a vacuum, least of all schools. For better or worse, schools are seen as both the custodians of cultural transmission and the purveyors of the skills and training needed for social, political, and economic development. Uganda is no exception to this universal premise. “In order to have modern industries and modern agriculture, and manpower for the service sectors such as tourism, banking and insurance, we need educated manpower” writes current president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni (1997). This declaration of purpose illustrates why no government could afford to let education fail. But there were practical political considerations, too. “The Ministry of Education is a most sensitive ministry in this country … because it affects human beings; it affects the children of military men, of politicians, of everybody. If you allow it to collapse completely, you go! There is no way [a government could survive here] without the education system; you’ve got to keep it limping somehow, you’ve got to!”5 Whether that political interpretation, articulated by an informant in the Ministry of Education, or officially stated purposes were the primary motivating force, it is clear that there was systemic support for schools in Uganda.

Amin’s Regime and Education Perhaps Amin’s greatest legacy in the realm of education was to leave it alone. Head teachers and lower-level teachers who went Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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about their business with diligence and hard work, and who stayed clear of politics or association with any suspect group, were quite free to ply their trade without interference. Schools were safe places and teaching was among the safest of professions.6 In contrast to other government ministries and positions of authority, to which illiterate military men were appointed, Amin posted Brigadier Barnabas Kili—a former teacher—to head the Ministry of Education. Kili retained the professional educators whom he found on staff. Kili was a primary school teacher from West Nile, who qualified in the particularly strong teacher training programs of colonial days and was engaged as a successful classroom teacher for several years. When Kili joined the army, he became involved in army education and, with Amin, was recruited into the King’s African Rifles. Here he stood out, not only for the physical prowess characteristic of this elite soldier corps, but because he was also literate, an Anglophone, and of the same Kakwa tribe as Amin. When Amin took over the government in 1971, Kili’s qualifications met Amin’s interest. If Kili and the professional educators in the Ministry of Education (MOE) were committed to education, what motivated them? A professor at Makerere University’s Faculty of Education offers an explanation: “Amin loved education; he respected education. He respected those who had knowledge, and he respected schools as places where knowledge was received.… Amin wanted his own children to be educated beyond his own experience.… He sent his own children abroad to be educated.” Amin himself went to Makerere to study English. “He asked for a tutor to learn English, and drove here himself to study the language; he humbled himself.”7 While this informant contends that Amin never entered Makerere to kill, the same may not be said of his soldiers. Longstanding and mutual antagonism between Makerere students and soldiers8 boiled over into violent confrontations in 1976, leading to the imprisonment and death of some students, and exile for many more. That these confrontations were a response to Makerere students trying to organize against the regime in 1975–76 confirms the premise that those who mixed political action and/or debate into their work got into trouble. Kili and his professionals remained aloof from political action; hence, the Ministry of Education enjoyed relative autonomy. They wanted education to be as it was originally intended to be—a prestigious profession. In the British colonial system, academics had to be done by the best people, the most qualified students; the

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missionaries also pushed their best students into education. Kili supported curricular reform, establishing the National Curriculum Development Center (1973); a new secondary school curriculum was introduced in 1975.9 The Inspectorate was given the logistical assistance to function, and its Exams Section—responsible for the setting, administration, grading, and result promulgation of the annual leaving exams—performed its duties on time and without scandal. In the 1972/73 academic year, Kili negotiated with Makerere for a crash program to “fast prep” teachers for service to replace the departed British expatriates. “Crash courses”—truncated versions of the normal teacher preparation curriculum—were offered to speed deployment of teachers into the schools, Pakistani teachers and African teachers from Ghana were recruited for service, recent university graduates were bonded into the teaching profession, and in-service teacher preparation programs over school holidays were introduced. Such support was a key to educational survival and persistence in the country.10 It is interesting to note that student strikes in schools were less frequent during Amin’s military dictatorship, perhaps because school heads could, and sometimes did, appeal to local army authorities to avert impending uprisings. A student recalls: “I remember one time there was a problem in the kitchen … and students were planning to have a strike because of the late meals we were having. The Headmaster rang up the Governor, who was an army man; he sent soldiers to the school. And they came … They would tell us: ‘It’s not very hard for us to shoot.… All you need to see is blood, and then you would leave.’ And your blood would be by bullets, of course! So there were no strikes.… So whether we used to have soldiers threatening us, or what, we took it as a little bit normal because that’s how we had been brought up.”11 The possibility of such threats, passed along the boarding school grapevine, may have helped keep student demonstrations in check in the Kabarole schools. St. Leo’s had only one strike (July 1972) during Amin’s eight-year regime, compared to four strikes in the preceding eight years. Nyakasura had major disturbances in 1975, which were investigated by a Board of Inquiry; the subsequent recommendations were backed by “the arrival of the Deputy Chief Educational Officer, Mr. Nelson Mugerwa, on 19th March 1976, to announce tough measures imposed by his Ministry, purporting to put an end to the evil practices and all forms of irresponsible behaviour that had become rife in the school” (Baguma 1976: 53). Kyebambe and Mpanga recorded no student strikes during Amin’s rule.

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The visibility of the educational enterprise also motivated Amin’s attitude toward schools. No Ugandan government can afford to let the education system collapse, given the reverence education enjoys in the minds and hearts of the people. Education is the most widespread and visible of traditional government services, touching the lives of the majority of citizens. Ugandans’ renowned desire for schooling is certainly motivated by the fact that an educated person can always get his or her bread, even as exiles. Amin was fortunate to inherit from the first Obote regime a stable economy and an education system and school facilities that, though limited in number, were adequately funded and growing. Amin’s first years saw little change in the schools from previous practice; he even maintained stable school fees, and he did not discourage parental supplements when inflation began to erode services. The beginnings of active Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) can be traced here. Despite the growing need, however, secondary schooling increased quite slowly during Amin’s regime. Between 1970 and 1980, the government-aided secondary schools had increased from 73 to 120,12 a rise that can be attributed primarily to the decreed nationalization of private schools, as has been seen in the Mpanga case. By the end of Amin’s era, while schools had not actually collapsed, they had suffered severely from shortages of every kind. While the departure of the Asians caused chaos at Mpanga Secondary School, yet another Amin decree perpetrated staffing crises at the other Kabarole secondary schools. For example, when David Byamukama was posted to the six hundred-student Nyakasura School in April 1973, he found only twelve teachers there, including Headmaster U. E. Batchelor, Deputy G. Mead, and some few other Europeans who had not yet gone; Batchelor left on 31 July that year, to be replaced by Francis Kasiragi, the first Ugandan headmaster.13 St. Leo’s had started to Africanize its faculty in the early 1970s, so the presence of a number of African teachers on staff helped ease the transition when the British expatriates left so suddenly.14 In January 1973 “school opened with complete Africanization of the administration as had been planned a number of years ago by the [American] Eastern Province of the [Holy Cross] Brothers. Mr. Moses Nyakazingo succeeded Brother John Houlihan as Headmaster and Mr. Stephen Ndabakirire succeeded Brother Frederick Cosgrove as the Bursar. Four hundred eighty students are enrolled with a staff of twenty teachers: two [American] Brothers, one [American] Holy Cross priest, three British teachers, and fourteen Ugandan teachers. The plans of the Brothers

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for Africanization have worked out according to schedule” (St. Leo’s College House Chronicles, 17 January 1973). Even so, the African teachers tended to be fresh out of Kyambogo Teacher Training College or Makerere University with little or no experience. A veteran teacher recalled, “… one time I remember a guy from the Ministry [of Education] came to the staff room. Afterwards he told us he thought he was in the Senior Four lounge; the teachers were only twenty-two or twenty-three [years old] … they were all kids!”15 The Brothers’ plans for the Africanization of St. Leo’s may have been motivated as much by reality as by foresight. When the American missionaries came to Uganda in 1961 at the dawn of independence, the previously stable colonial society was immersed in change. By 1972 there had been four student strikes, five headmasters, and a high turnover of staff at St. Leo’s. There was a feeling among some that the students’ attitude toward the Brothers had changed from general friendliness to one of indifference and mild antagonism. Some of these expatriates left voluntarily; others chose to stay. As has been seen, the uneasiness of these early years was further exacerbated by Amin’s harassment of Americans and the domestic political tensions of the Obote II years. The headmaster of St. Leo’s confirmed the unease such tensions generated for the American expatriate missionaries on staff, and the consequent difficulties he had in recruiting expatriate teachers. The number of missionary teachers continued to decline, and on 31 January 1984 the Holy Cross Brothers closed their house at St. Leo’s College.16

Obote II and Education Oliver Furley (1988: 189) notes that with the return of Obote to power, some significant changes began to happen in education. The Ministry of Education (MOE) was considered to be one of the best and most efficient ministries in this period, and Dr. Philemon Mateke, Minister of State for Education, outlined the task of education as reconstruction and rehabilitation: “The need was to expand the educational provision, improve its quality and costeffectiveness, and revise the curriculum.” To this end, partnerships with external donors—The International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (3rd IDA loan), World Food Program, Canadian Agency for International Development—were developed and external funding obtained. Besides this NGO assistance, church sources external to the country and donations from “old boys” and “old girls” helped rehabilitation.

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Due to the slow recovery of the economy, however, education was not allocated much direct government funding. This was because the government continued to rely heavily on parents and local communities for the building and equipping of schools, a practice begun of necessity in the Amin years. The government did pay teacher salaries and a per-pupil capitation grant, but both these amounts remained stable and were eroded in worth annually due to hyperinflation. Proportionately, however, tertiary and secondary education received more government budgetary funding than did primary schools (Furley 1988). Under Obote II there was a phenomenal quantitative expansion of secondary schools that Furley (1988), relying on a UNESCO (1983) report, describes in sanguine terms. He notes the attempt to build up a less-expensive day secondary school system that would rectify regional imbalances, encourage voluntary efforts by parents and the community to finance these schools, and upgrade good primary schools into secondary schools. However, the “view from the ground” in Kabarole is that these “mushrooming” schools, or “political” schools, were referred to as “Third World” schools because they had little or nothing to offer. A secondary school could be established if the MOE appointed a headmaster and provided a school truck; the motivation was normally political rather than educational. Such schools had few students and no qualified teachers besides the head; they would invade a primary school and commandeer classrooms, forcing the displaced younger children to study “under the tree.” While it was realized in the short run that these day secondary schools were unlikely to offer the same quality of education as the established boarding schools, in fact they have not been able to do so to this day. It is interesting to observe that both Mpanga and St. Leo’s finally gained permission to inaugurate the Higher School Certificate (HSC) program at this time, but without any immediate expansion of facilities to accommodate the addition of students in grades S5 and S6. Such action lends credence to the feeling that MOE approval for schools was at best perfunctory, and more probably purely political in motivation.17 Moreover, the laudable secondary school curriculum changes launched in 1982—further Africanization and an attempt to place practical subjects on the same footing as theoretical subjects—could be implemented only in the established schools like those in and around Kampala; shortages of tools, machinery, and materials made introduction of new practical courses impossible elsewhere in the country. While expanded educational provision, the cost-savings of day schools,

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and the revised curriculum goals of the MOE seemed promising in quantitative terms, the qualitative “view from the ground” describes a much different scenario. The stratification in educational provision that began in Amin’s time, was further solidified by Obote II education policies, and continues to this day. Secondary schools in and around the Masaka-Kampala-Jinja urban crescent have better access to resources and trained teachers, and are able to charge higher school fees. Established up-country boarding schools have facilities, but their isolation restricts their access to resources. Many day schools have inadequate facilities and uncertified teachers; some schools are still housed in primary school facilities. In Kabarole this school stratification described above is labeled, respectively, “First World,” Second World,” and “Third World” secondary schooling. Perhaps the most insidious legacy of Obote II was the type of political interference injected into schools. If Amin’s regime paid little direct attention to schools, and personal safety was maintained by eschewing politics, the Obote government was directly involved in political action in schools; one was denounced if one did not appear to support the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC)—Obote’s party—with vigor. “When the UPC came to power, then we found that they were very interested in having people who could closely identify with UPC; people who were loyal to the party. And I think other people who were not very close to UPC, I think they had a hard time. In some cases, in fact, there were attempts to replace them—have them replaced in schools with people who were close to the party, who were loyal to UPC.… So for instance, I remember the Headmaster of Nyakasura was replaced … but he was a very capable man … We believe it was because people in UPC thought he was very close to UNLF and the regime which was overthrown.… For instance in my case, I was not known to be close to UPC, and many thought—maybe with good reason—that I was a supporter of the Democratic Party.… So quite a number of us also had problems.”18

Western Region Education and the Interim NRM Government In July 1985, Obote’s Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) forces at Kabarole’s Muhote barracks surrendered to the National Resistance Army (NRA) of Yoweri Museveni, sparing Fort Portal the anticipated devastation that would have accompanied an allout battle for the town. The establishment of an NRA front in the west, however, cut off the western region of the country from the

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rest of Uganda. The National Resistance Movement (NRM), as the government established by the NRA was called after the war, set up an interim administration based in Fort Portal with several commissioners acting as “shadow” ministers, including one for education. An informant who served in that interim administration describes what the NRM did. The parliament which we put in place here—and the cabinet—we worked very hard. I was in education. My work was to find, first of all, a good number of educationists—mainly the teachers—who would help in reviving the education system, or sustaining what was there; then look into materials which we would use. I went as far also as organizing for the examinations, because we couldn’t get anywhere near Kampala at that time. So we had to set our own examinations, which I did with the help of these educationists. And to show that Uganda really was very much interested in education, these educationists— they did not ask for money; they were ready to [work] for free.… And so people came. We sat together and we worked very hard. We set our own examinations for Primary Seven; we set our own examinations for Senior Four—that is “O” level; we were busy setting examinations for Advanced Level—that’s “A” level they call it here; and we had started logistics to establish a branch of the university here so that our children do not miss simply because this part [of the country] was cut off from Kampala at the time. Now that was very interesting, in a way, that people were ready to work without pay, but living in hope that they wanted to change the situation for the better, and they didn’t want their children to lose. So I was very much impressed; I worked very well with these men and women. And when Kampala fell—that was January 1986—I went along with some of these men and women … to the Examinations Board and told them our children have been prepared; we have the exams here. We did not rush to say “now you who have been here, get out!” Because these people were caught up in a situation which was not of their own making, these civil servants. So why would we have reason to chase them out of their offices unless we proved that there were so many malpractices by these particular officers there? [If so] we would get rid of them; but this was not the case for some of them. So we took our exams [and] they were incorporated in the national exams [administered in April 1986].19

The NRM’s attention to the needs of education and the generous response of the educators in Kabarole to continue their school programs illustrate once again the legendary desire of Ugandans for education, as well as the premise that no Ugandan government can afford to let education collapse.

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The Influence of the Church on Schools and Society

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In a society in chaos and a government in virtual collapse, the quest for justice, peace, and stability is often taken up by other institutions. The Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Uganda (COU) played a major role in Uganda’s societal and institutional survival. Kassimir (1995: 133) confirms that Tooro Catholics “who could not receive justice from corrupt officials often turned to their priests for spiritual consolation, financial support, and mediation with state authorities.” Cardinal Nsubuga and COU Archbishop Luwum were outspoken critics of government oppression; in 1977 Luwum was killed under mysterious circumstances said to have been ordered by Amin. One student explains that the spiritual comfort derived from religion and prayer was important to survival, too. During that period many students tended to be more religious; they turned to God. [For] many of them it seems that it was a belief that they should turn to God [since] any time you can die, or something like that. So many of the students turned to God; many of them applied to become seminarians just to serve God because it seems they saw life as useless at that period. Even the parents used to come here [and] they would preach the word of God, and tell us please always thank God every morning; you should go someplace for yourself and pray for yourselves, pray for your country. So that spirit maybe also grew up during that period … and assisted us.20

But church activity, as Kassimir notes, extended beyond the areas of traditional moral influence and spiritual comfort. The church offered material help and mediated conflicts. The three boarding secondary schools in Kabarole—St. Leo’s, Nyakasura, and Kyebambe—were mission-founded establishments; therefore, even as government-aided schools, each retained four foundation-body representatives on their Governing Boards, with the Board chairmanship held by the presiding bishop.21 Hence, the churches could exercise legal as well as moral influence on the schools. But there was also a pastoral dimension to this influence, illustrated by this student’s fond recollection of one of the local bishops: We were [also] greatly assisted by the late Bishop Magambo of the Fort Portal [Catholic] Diocese. He was a farmer himself, and he never sold his food. He would go with a lorry—because the diocese had lorries—fill it with matooke and bring it to schools; and we would eat and say “this is the bishop’s donation.” So in those hard times he saw the … conditions under which we were suffering … and said “well, I’m a

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spiritual leader, but I’m supposed to be a parent also; I can’t allow you to starve!” Each time we saw his car we knew relief was coming; we’d say “Aha, our bishop has come!” He did this for all schools around, not necessarily those that were Catholic-founded, but [to] all boarding schools, he would offer free food. He’d say: “you see, I have nowhere to send my matooke; it’s rotting in the garden; you’d rather eat it up.” At least we would be assured in a term that we got something from him. And usually on the days when girls would be confirmed—it was an annual event—we would be assured of a bull from his farm!22

Church influence was also extended by the clerics who helped broker the Fort Portal surrender of UNLA troops to the NRA and who were rewarded for their successful mediation efforts with positions in the interim NRM administration, including education commissioner.

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Natural Resources Cultural and environmental resources contributed to the survival of Kabarole schools, too. The Batooro are regarded as a quiet people, cool and level-headed—some might even say passive—and not so politically involved. This was a definite advantage in Amin’s times. Kabarole is geographically isolated and has a climate that many Ugandans find quite cool; hence, for the predominately northern officials of Amin’s and Obote’s governments, Kabarole was unattractive. Schools fees charged in Kabarole were less than in other areas of the country because locally produced foodstuffs were available; the fertility of the soil and plentiful rainfall allowed a family to plant extra crops to generate school fees. Even with the “mushrooming” of day secondary schools, there was always great support and demand for education in Tooro, and never enough supply, so enrollment remained at capacity. Fortunate happenstance—no opportunity for full-scale looting by Amin’s hastily departing troops in 1979, and the negotiated surrender of Obote’s troops in 1985—saved schools from the massive looting and destruction suffered elsewhere. And finally, a relatively low level of magendo, by virtue of the district being off the beaten path, helped keep kids in school, since get-rich-quick opportunities were less available than in urban areas. These cultural and environmental factors became advantages for school persistence in Kabarole.

Tribal/Ethnic Tensions In the Kabarole secondary schools studied, students, staff, and administrators have identified external social and political situations Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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spilling over into the schools as the source of ethnic/tribal tensions experienced on their campuses. “These conflicts did not enter full scale in schools.… Boys are boys; they like each other.”23 While schools provided protection and tolerance during ethnic troubles—the careful handling of such tensions contributing to the perception of schools as safe havens even from underlying ethnic strains—schools are not immune to the historical and social contexts in which they operate and there were incidents that caused difficulty.

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There was a roadblock mounted near school … and that roadblock specifically did not check people’s identifications but they asked people’s ethnicity: “What tribe are you?” Now here in the school we had many of those boys, those from Acholiland and those from Lango. And they were actually hidden.… It was a period of tense time and it lasted for, I would say, weeks. The people in the intelligence kept coming to school to find out “Do you have any Acholi people here? Do you have any Langi?” They didn’t ask, of course, officially, but everyone knew what they were about. And fortunately the boys were very cooperative; they wouldn’t, of course, say where their colleagues were. And the teachers kept some of those boys. Others were staying in the bush; they would come at late hours for meals and they’d go back to hide. So that was when we were directly involved.24

There were other ethnic situations in which the school was forced to step in to ensure the safety of students who felt threatened. For example, there were some problems between the Batooro and the Bakonjo. In 1981, some Batooro who were in the Kasese area were forced to leave; some were attacked, some lost property. When that happened, there was reaction among the students in Kabarole, a predominately Batooro area. The headmaster of one school tried to reason with the students in assembly, saying that such a situation cannot be allowed to affect the school; but there were a number of students—especially those whose relatives were affected in Kasese—who were not so reasonable. A number of Bakonjo students left because they felt threatened. However, some students were due to take an exam. The head recalled: “I took some Bakonjo boys … and I kept them at my house just to help them sit the exam; they did not feel secure enough to sleep in the dormitory. I kept them at my house through the exam period until they could go home.”25 Several heads and teachers indicated that they tried to protect students at school as much as possible in such situations, and noted that at least students were not attacked

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in school. “I think as a school we created a situation where all the students from whichever part of the country [they came from], felt that they were protected here.”26 But that was not always the feeling of those who were members of the oppressed minority. The Banyarwanda were targeted in 1982 by the Obote II regime and forced into refugee camps;27 a number of these camps were located in Kabarole. One Kyebambe student, a Mutooro, recalls that her teacher talked about refugee camps in her geography lesson.

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We were asking ourselves, “camps, camps?” He told us, “Yes, people are in camps.” He was also a Munyarwanda. So he told us that there are camps, and that his people are there. He didn’t give us the details; I think he was also security conscious at that time. [But] there were Banyarwanda girls—three—here who used to keep close to him. When it was holiday time they would stay at his place … because they were afraid. I think they were also affected by the war at home. When he left those girls also left; they went back to Rwanda.… They would not tell us, they would not disclose … but you could see, you’d sense there was a problem.28

A St. Leo’s teacher, a Munyarwanda, stated: “My home was directly affected [and] my parents were directly affected; they were pushed to a refugee camp. It had an effect on my work, [but] I didn’t stop the work.… We had many Banyarwanda boys here, too; when their homes were taken, their parents thrown out … they lived under heavy tension. They were protected quite well here— nobody harassed them—but there’s psychological [stress]; you don’t know where your families are.”29 So while in the external forum, it may be said that schools provided protection and tolerance during ethnic troubles, internally it would appear that the persecuted—teachers and students alike—still suffered greatly.

The Role of Parents and Boards of Governors When the government failed to adjust civil service salaries—including teachers’ salaries—or the per pupil capitation grants to compensate for their devaluation due to inflation, schools began to feel the pinch quickly. “Meat … eggs … bananas disappeared [from the school menu] because the local food became too expensive; posho—the corn meal eaten today—came in. Up until 1974 or so, most people [had] never heard of posho.”30 Government funding for building construction dried up, and teachers took to “parttiming” in order to make ends meet. As parents heard complaints from their children and realized the inability of the financially strapped school administrators to solve such problems alone, they

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began to take action. In Amin’s time, parents started paying extra fees to supplement feeding; then parent assessments were levied in some government-aided schools for necessary capital improvements, a practice that was common in private schools. When teachers could no longer afford the basic necessities of life and took to teaching in several schools or running side businesses to sustain their families, then, in the words of one PTA officer, “the parents came in. They were interested in the welfare of their children. So they said ‘why don’t we contribute?’ because the success of our children depends on the teachers. So parents started participating.”31 They agreed to pay extra fees to supplement the teachers’ salaries so that teachers did not have to “part-time”; hence, teachers could give their full attention to the students in schools that paid a “top up” on their salary. These informal arrangements of the 1970s became common practice in the 1980s with Obote’s policy to rely heavily on parents and local communities for the building and equipping of schools. Common practice tends to bring about structures; and fundamental to funding structures is the premise expressed in the adage “the one who pays the piper, selects the tune.” So the scene was ripe for the entrance of the PTA. Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) are an extra-legal entity in Uganda’s schools. They typically function through an executive committee, elected for a particular term of office at an annual meeting of the parents. For example, at St. Leo’s College the Executive Committee “meets any time there is a need. The Headmaster invites us and we sit together and we discuss the pressing issues … The budget is normally given to the Executive Committee of the PTA. In practice we have been meeting jointly with the finance committee of the Board [of Governors]; then we pass that budget of the school together. Then once we have agreed on the budget, we pass it on to the parents as their fee for next term.… The parents have the obligation to educate their children, so once we put a levy on every student, it is the duty of the parents to raise that money.”32 The legal secondary school governing body is the Board of Governors.33 Normally, this Board sits thirteen members who have final say over school policies and practices in accordance with the school by-laws. Board make-up includes four members representing the foundation body—i.e., the entity that founded the school, often a religious group—four members representing the local civic community, and four members representing the Ministry of Education; the chairperson is an additional representative of the foundation body. The Board of Governors meets

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annually, and more often as occasion may require. Certain decisions, like the levy of school fees, are subject to review and approval by the District Education Officer (DEO). Legally, the Board of Governors retains control of the schools, and the official government presence is exercised through the DEO and the Ministry of Education representatives; government policy maintains that PTAs are extra-legal. The conundrum is that the parents, in practice, set and pay the PTA fees—which can constitute from 80 to 90 percent of the total student fees—and so they demand a say in governance issues. The reality of this situation is expressed quite clearly by an informant who served as vice-chairman of three governing boards. What do Boards do anyway?… What the government has given Boards, of course, is autonomy. [But] they say “whatever the PTA is recommending, give it consideration first before it becomes [a problem].” So the Board of Governors will approve what the PTA has recommended; this makes it legitimate. But in no case has the Board of Governors failed to approve! [Laughter]. Because if you disapprove what they are doing [as parents, then the parents can retort] “You do it!” The Board used to be strong when the money was coming from out there—the capitation grant, for example. And now there is no capitation grant, there is no development grant—or if it is there, it is minimal. So the parent is stronger! And his word is almost final.… The Ministry has its own representatives on the Board, who are local. But if you say [to the parents] “no, don’t raise that money,” [the response would be] “OK, sir; give it to us.” But you can’t give it!34

This current reality has implications for future education policy in the country. Moreover, that parents, through the PTA assessment and active involvement in maintaining the schools, have contributed to the survival of the schools is an understatement at best. Parents have been the primary factor in school survival. A fuller elaboration of these topics will be presented in the discussion later in this volume of strategies and procedures that helped Kabarole’s secondary schools survive.

The Social Fabric Traditions associated with schooling and schools helped these institutions persist, too. Children, families, and schools were relatively untouched, per se, by the political machinations of the Amin and Obote governments. That is to say, there was a minority element that supported both of these strongmen in their grab for power. To hold on to power, Amin and Obote targeted specific

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enemies, and both of them maintained a strict accounting of who was a rival, who was an enemy—and they were not generally students and teachers. Furthermore, boarding schools traditionally had a “fortress mentality”; that is, they maintained a self-contained and self-sufficient community of students and staff on a well-defined, often isolated, and usually fenced and gated school compound. This traditional stance was used as a protection against the outside chaos.35 According to student informants, the girls’ school was particularly restrictive.

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What helped us at Kyebambe was our strong gate.… There were only two entrances—the main gate and the lower gate. Students would use only the lower gate when they [were] fetching water, and at other specific times; beyond that, only staff members were free to use the lower gate. For the upper gate, you would enter the school when you [were] reporting at the beginning of term for Senior One to Four. And you would leave at the end of the term. So there was no outing! You would come and that would be the end of it up to when we would leave.36

“War happened all around except in school.… You would hear guns shoot, but you’d never see anything at school, on the school campus.”37 The boys’ school restrictions were described as fearful necessity by an informant at St. Leo’s: “Before we had this place captured by the rebels [i.e., NRA], those were very bad days.… We used to fear to go to town because they would do roundups of people, and go and screen them to look for rebels. So even students used to fear to go to town, so we would stay at school.… Those days, the gate used to be locked early enough, even at six o’clock in the evening, to make sure nobody [would come] in.”38 On the other hand, a day school did not enjoy the same means of protection. The perspective of a teacher paints that scene well. Mpanga Senior Secondary School, as a day school in the middle of town, would attract very many people; and some of those people would also acquire identity cards, and uniforms that appeared like students’.… That caused chaos [for us].… There was a rumor that guerrillas, most of the enemies of government, were putting on Mpanga uniforms, disguising themselves as students. So Mpanga students, whenever they walked here or there, they were always looked upon with suspicion. In April 1985 the school closed entirely.… The students were not willing to come because of the insecurity prevailing in the area; soldiers were harassing people at the roadblocks, and so on; vehicles

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were not there. And definitely in such a situation you couldn’t expect students to learn, amicably to learn and listen to what one was saying in class. So the school closed for about two months.39

Conversely, there were networks of survival external to the schools that supported school persistence, especially church and “old boy/old girl” connections. Shared kinship, clanship, friendship, ethnic and co-religionist ties all contributed to survival. A school like Nyakasura had administrative and foundation-board links to other schools like King’s College, Buddo, and Ntare School. They facilitated each other in keeping the system going by sharing equipment, academic information, books, etc.40 NRA soldiers often had relatives in the Kabarole boarding schools, and they sent advance warnings of trouble: “They would tell you ahead of time ‘I think it’s better to leave this place, because it may not be safe.’ And we would go away.”41 “People have contacts; and through their contacts they could manage to get some books, for example … exercise books for the children.… And also there were some children and some parents who were quite knowledgeable in education although they were not teachers.… They shared with their labor and also volunteered to teach when they were called upon.… I think this was very helpful on the parents’ side to sustain the system to go on.”42 Army connections could be profitable, too. Children of army men and government officials were in these schools, so there was a vested interest in the powers-that-be for non-interference in such places.43 “There was that fear,” reports one informant, “that perhaps these children … might take information about certain things in the school to the army; maybe these children from certain tribes that the government had targeted [would be reported]. But it turned out that many of these children—children of the soldiers— turned out to be reasonably good students.”44 One long-term headmaster definitely tried to be cooperative in dealing with the army with regard to facilities use and sporting events. Amin’s officers used to come to [the school] to play basketball; the facilities at the barracks were not so developed, so they would inform us and then they would come and play at our court. They also used to come for athletics [i.e., track and field] and use our grounds to play. [One time] we hosted the National Interbattalion Athletics Championship.… It was a very big occasion. The representatives came from every battalion, and the whole place was crowded. Actually, Amin was supposed to come that day, so they interfered with the movements of people on the road [near the playing pitch].

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And so the big day came and we had them all here; the Headmaster had to be there. Some of our teachers were asked to assist the games-master, and so on. Amin’s chief-of-staff, Major General Isaac Lumago, was guest of honor. I would say these occasions helped us get to know the army officials. Actually it was good to know them. Because you see some people used to get into trouble. Not very many people here were arrested, but occasionally somebody would be arrested for one reason or another. So maybe you could talk to an army officer because you met him … here at the school.45

In fact, such diplomacy may be among the reasons why this head persevered for the long-term, given the truncated tenure of some of his peer school heads. Schools were also supported by the subsistence infrastructure, that is, a barter economy. A teacher informant provides examples of how this worked. “A cow was worth $100 (U.S.); and a goat could pay for, maybe, a term … goods had value. If you worked and grew food, or brewed beer, you could sell it and make money … One story I always remember: this kid went home during the long holiday and he went deep into the village—like twenty miles in—and bought tobacco from the farmers. Then he brought it out to the roadside and sold it to people along the road; you know, to people who would crush it up and make tobacco. In a week or two he made his school fees for almost the whole year! So there were ways to do things.”46 These factors, and other supportive vehicles of the social fabric, contributed significantly to the persistence of the secondary schools in Kabarole.

Regionalization In the first decade after independence, the concept of “nationbuilding” and forging national integration in Uganda influenced policy in agencies such as the education system. Schools could contribute to this nation-building as they formed communities of Ugandans from all regions of the country who hopefully would learn to study, live, work, and play together. Students and staff were posted on a national basis. During the 1960s, the boarding schools in Kabarole enrolled students from all over the country; admission was open to all contingent on PLE examination results and available places. Teachers and administrators were posted to schools on the basis of need and available positions. Teachers’ salaries were adequate and capitation grants were sufficient to properly support the schools. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed a reversal of this process.

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Teachers requested postings to their home areas because salary levels were so eroded by inflation that they needed to live at home in order to support themselves economically with assistance from their relatives, and to avoid the dangers and expense of travel. Similarly, parents were reluctant to undertake the expense and potential danger involved in sending their children far from home for secondary schooling; they tended to choose facilities in their geographic region, among their own ethnic, racial, and language groups. Others chose Kampala-area schools where the mix of students and faculty was more cosmopolitan. In such conflicted times it was perceived that ethnic animosity was less likely among one’s tribal cohort, and safety—in numbers, in appearance, in language, and in potential hiding places—was more probable in one’s home area. While de facto regionalization affected the flexibility and quality of students and staffing and contributed to school stratification, it enabled teachers to survive, students to attend, and hence schools to persist.

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Notes 1. The exact nature of this opposition could not be determined from the archival records in Uganda. 2. *P. Jivens, personal correspondence, 19 January 1998. 3. Ibid. 4. *A. Kabenge, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 5. * C. Mbanga, personal interview, 18 September 1997. 6. See Furley (1988: 188) where deposed government officials “returned to the safer obscurity of a secondary school teaching post.” 7. *C. Odong, personal interview, 12 November 1997. 8. See Langlands (1977), Dinwiddy and Twaddle (1988). 9. See Furley (1988). 10. *C. Odong, personal interview, 12 November 1997. 11. *F. Waibi, personal interview, 25 August 1997. 12. Source: UNESCO (1975; 1983) as cited by Furley (1988) and J. Tumusiime (1993). 13. *D. Byamukama, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 14. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 15. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. 16. However, some Holy Cross Brothers continued teaching on the St. Leo’s staff. In 1992, the Brothers teaching at St. Leo’s re-established a residence on the school compound. 17. *C. Mbanga, personal interview, 18 September 1997. 18. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 19. *A. Byakuyamba, personal interview, 28 August 1997. 20. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997.

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21. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Fort Portal Diocese chaired St. Leo’s Board; the Church of Uganda Bishop of the Ruwenzori Diocese chaired the Nyakasura and Kyebambe Boards. 22. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 23. *A. Rumayisire, personal interview, 30 August 1997. 24. Ibid. 25. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 26. Ibid. 27. See also Kajubi (1987), Kanyeihamba (1988), Kasfir (1988), and Pirouet (1988). 28. *M. Nyarwa, personal interview, 26 September 1997. 29. *A. Rumayisire, personal interview, 30 August 1997. 30. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. 31. *B. Jasani, personal interview, 27 August 1997. 32. Ibid. 33. Primary schools are governed by a parallel entity called the Management Committee. 34. *A. Kagenda, personal interview, 11 September 1997. 35. See also Raundalen et al. (1987: 88-90) on schools as safe places. 36. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 37. *M. Nyarwa, personal interview, 26 September 1997. 38. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997. 39. *S. Tiwangye, personal interview, 21 August 1997. 40. *D. Rutabisa, personal interview, 29 August 1997. 41. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 42. *A. Byakuyamba, personal interview, 28 August 1997. 43. Not so the case in the 1990s with insurgency groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which target schools and children. 44. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 45. Ibid. 46. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997.

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– Five –

THE STORY Viewing Initiatives and Internalities in Kabarole

o Local Initiatives in Schools

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T

he macroscopic factors that have been discussed so far—systemic influences that affected an entire country or region— certainly contributed to the persistence of the secondary schools in Kabarole District. But the impact of such influences on a particular school are seen more clearly by examining how individual educational actors coped with or took advantage of such influences. To further investigate “the story,” experiences and activities of people who lived and worked in the Kabarole secondary schools through these times of conflict must be considered. This chapter documents these local initiatives and internalities.

Individual Leadership The literature on effective schools in developing countries clearly places leadership as a top priority among factors that contribute to effective schooling.1 Leadership was exercised by many people in many ways, exemplified by the following accounts of personal risk, sacrifice, and generosity, and by a willingness and ability to do the right thing with sometimes scant support. Such leadership helped the schools survive. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OFFICIALS. The Ministry of Education (MOE) offices were located in Kampala, more than two hundred kilometers’ distance from Fort Portal. However, while the MOE presence in Kabarole was normally exercised through the District

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Education Office, Kampala-based personnel controlled two important areas: staff appointments and external examinations. These leaders were often sympathetic to the struggles of the schools. “To a great extent, professionals ran the Ministry of Education.… When Amin came in—other than the political leaders and Permanent Secretaries who were political appointments—people like the Chief Education Officer, Chief Inspector of Schools and those below were unaffected; up to 95 percent of the professionals did stay on.”2 This facilitated the survival of this sector as noted by Heyneman (1983). An informant who served in the Examinations Section of the MOE at this time reflected that he and his colleagues believed that the system must continue. There was always hope that tomorrow things might be better, but in the meantime their contribution was to keep the educational standard up to par no matter what the difficulties experienced in the country and the schools. These educators at MOE spearheaded the innovations needed for procurement of supplies, arranged for the security of exams, and devised the system for distribution, supervision, collection, and marking of exams as the economic and political situations changed; at the same time they pushed for continuity and standards and “tried not to step on toes!”3 That they were successful, and yet sympathetic to the needs of those in the field, is attested to by a teacher informant from Kabarole who traveled annually to Kampala to collect supplies for the “practical” science examinations: “[S]ome of these people impressed me by their dedication to doing seemingly impossible jobs … yet they would maintain their … civility and their sense of humor in the midst of everything.”4 HEAD TEACHERS AND DEPUTY ADMINISTRATORS. As the communications infrastructures broke down, school administrators could no longer rely on advice or directives from MOE to confirm decisions; they often needed to take action, make decisions, or implement policy on their own initiative. The following student’s testimony is illustrative. Twelve of us who came from [that same] primary school started [secondary school] together, and all of us completed the “O” level from this school. But three of those had problems … paying school fees. Because I remember, they used to work here during the holidays so that they [could] earn money from the school [to pay their fees]. Another one—a fourth one—lost both his parents during that period; they were killed, and two of his brothers were also killed in the same scuffle. So he was at that time in Senior Four [and] the school just assisted him to go through [without paying].

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See, that was one of the advantages which I noted with the schools during that period—they were willing to solve [problems]. For example, I would say the third term of 1985 most of the students did not pay school fees. But the administration accommodated them. [Students] said: “There is nothing we can do [to solve our problem]; let’s leave.” [But] instead of closing the school and sending everybody away, [the administrators] said: “You stay here”; they carried them.5

Heads were also pressured to enroll children for places that did not exist. According to one headmaster, this was particularly challenging for the day school: “I was all the time faced with parents who wanted a place for their children. I had already done the [student] selection in Kampala, taken the number given.6 But then again here are people whom you can’t brush aside: people from the Kabarole administration, from the Catholic Diocese at Virika, from the District Police Commander’s office, from Muhote army barracks. These are people upon whom you are depending, so it was a real challenge.… I did my best where I could. Where I could not, I failed; and I offended people.”7 Implementation of policy, then, had its necessary risks and aberrations but administrators took action with or without approval. FACULTY AND STUDENTS. Faculty members and students also exercised leadership that strengthened the bonds of community in a society under great stress. One student recalls a particular incident that illustrates the point well. The rebels overran an army camp once, and all the [government] soldiers decided to retreat … they came this side. So that morning as we were at the classrooms, we saw soldiers coming, and they started firing as they were passing through this road going to other places. So there was a lot of fear in the school itself. But the Headmaster called the whole school [together], and he told us what had happened. He said “you be calm.” And in the evening he showed us a video. And most of the teachers used to come to be with the students, to be closer to the students. They would find out what was happening in the dormitory. If you had some problem, they would solve them, especially financial problems. Many students had financial problems because they were not in direct contact with their parents. So they would be friendly and that was helpful … The relationship of the students and staff, it was so nice.8

Perhaps the testimony of a teacher sheds light on the reasons for such solidarity. “What keeps things together in difficulties, where there are too much problems? It is love. People in this school community … all the years they have lived here have so much love. Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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We help each other in one way or another, and we work together. So there is no jealousy as one would say now, the other has done this and they say how and why.… There is no jealousy like that. But we have so much love which keeps us together.… That is why we did not feel so many things during those hard times, just because of that love.”9 RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND MEMBERS OF THE GOVERNING BOARD. While removed from the day-to-day operations of the schools, religious leaders and members of the governing bodies often exercised individual actions that were quite beneficial to the schools. The pastoral presence and material support of Bishop Magambo have been recounted previously. The following comment of a former student, now a teacher, reveals the impact of an involved governor: “We still have a gentleman on our Board of Governors that was throughout interested in what was going on in the school. He could come in when there was a strike; he could advise when he thought there was a problem coming; he could advise when and how to get a teacher, and so on. And various schools have had that kind of a thing—a member of the Board, or an old student of the school, or two or three at a time—that would keep watching the school with interest, and assisting it; they have been influential. I don’t see how the situation could have survived [without that support].”10 OTHER INDIVIDUALS. Other key players in school survival scenarios were often found contributing quietly but effectively behind the scenes. For example, the caterers from the Kabarole schools used to go shopping together, looking for certain foodstuffs. “We would send a lorry with representatives of Kyebambe, Kinyamasika, St. Leo’s … sometimes Nyakasura. And then on that same lorry we would go to market and buy supplies in bulk and put them on the same lorry, distributing them to the different schools as we returned.”11 The bursars devised a banking arrangement that allowed students to pay school fees in their home areas rather than carry cash, since students returning to school were often robbed at roadblocks. Caterers, bursars, and local businesses entered into credit arrangements when schools were cash-short; and since in-kind payments were accepted for school fees, a plethora of potatoes at one school, for example, could be exchanged for maize with another school that happened to be well stocked in that commodity. Often overlooked in the nexus of people that keep a school functioning are the lower ranks of support staff: office messengers, night watchmen, post runners, sweepers. In a country in chaos with no working telephones, rampant insecurity, no mail delivery, and so forth, such staff become essential to an organization’s survival.

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The Experience of Educational Actors

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Educational historians note the need to explore processes that reveal the internal functioning of schools (Novoa 1995). Attention to the organization of everyday school reality, teachers’ and students’ lives and experiences, family experiences, and so forth, illuminates gaps that exist in the research with regard to the experiential component of educational actors (Finkelstein 1983). Actors’ experiences provide valuable insight into the question of why secondary schools in Kabarole survived. “I think a time of insecurity is a time when you find people get closer. So I think I can say that our relation [as school heads] was close. We had our organization of school Heads which started in those days … and we met regularly; it was a good support.”12 An administrator reports that “during the 1984–85 period—[with] the NRA and the [interim] government we had here—we spent thirteen months without salary, literally without money. Kampala printed checks but because these roads were cut off, and so on, we never got the money. Somehow, we survived; you can live without money. We grew some food ourselves, collected from the gardens vegetables, greens, etc. But if this country was like some parts of Kenya which are very, very dry, the picture would have been different.”13 One student informant who attended a day school too far from his home to commute, describes how he lived. I got a room in a nearby trading center, and that’s where I lived, basically, for much of my time at [school]. My mother was paying the rent per month for me; I had to prepare my own meals. I used not to buy much food; a lot of it used to be sent to me from home, direct. And it was mainly cassava flour and millet; you make a kind of bread. And then beans, ground nuts—all of these came from home; we produced them locally. So several relatives used to send me gifts, or a relative going to town … would stop there and leave me some ground nuts, or some little money to buy [food] if he had not brought in food. Although it was demanding on my side, life became enjoyable; I attribute that to the presence of my friends, my classmates, from Primary Seven who were also in school with me.14

One nagging question to me was why teachers remained in a field that was considered, even by themselves, to be a “poor man’s” profession? Responses from teachers run the gamut. “There was nothing else you could run to if you were a trained teacher. It was teaching you were trained in; your profession was teaching. You would say: ‘If I jump out of teaching, what else do I do?’ Other

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outlets were limited at the time.”15 On the other hand, some definitely chose the profession.

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I took a job in marketing as soon as I finished Makerere, and I served for five years as a regional marketing officer … But most of the time I felt bored, because all the knowledge I had acquired from the university was not being applied anywhere; I was doing clerical work instead of doing the work of a graduate.… So then, you know, in these government positions, there are constant transfers. When my time came [for transfer], I decided to relinquish my job and come back to class [as a teacher]. That’s when I found now I was exercising my knowledge, giving knowledge to people and keeping alert. So I have that personal love for teaching my pupils [and] I feel I have been successful in the time I’ve spent in teaching.16

Others, forcibly bonded into teaching at graduation, grew in enthusiasm for the profession, and some followed the example of their parents and continued the family tradition as educators. Others related that teaching had prestige—“I’m a teacher; I’m respected in society”—but most recalled the personal satisfaction it gives them to help young people: “When they pass, they are happy because they have been instructed well.” An expatriate teacher, marveling at the stress teachers endured in holding several jobs, noted: “There must be some kind of dedication, because you had to go home and dig to grow your own food; you bicycled for miles to teach in several schools … and if you taught all your classes you were physically exhausted; most had a wife and kids to support.… Even when they were doing all this stuff, basically most of them couldn’t get enough money to eat. So there was some dedication by most of them, and I think that is to be commended.”17 Families often depended on others to help them educate the children. Most people really struggled to pay the fees. My best friend had her sister, the older sister, to pay her school fees during that time when her parents could not do anything because of the war. They were farmers, and they failed to raise the money, so her only option was to drop out. But lucky enough, she had a sister in Kampala who had just completed her studies and offered to pay school fees for her. But it was quite difficult. [For me], it’s not all that good as it may seem. I’m the highest in education level in the family; all others stopped at “O” level because of family problems, although [my parents] would have wished for every brother and sister of mine to go on to university. My mother, who worked for Kilembe Mines, had to look after all [ten] of us; but

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whenever we would reach secondary school she would fail to get more money to push us ahead. That’s why Kilembe Mines came in [with a bursary] to push me ahead and have me pass secondary school.18

Other help came from beyond the extended family. “When I returned for “A” level in 1985, that’s when I experienced real war … The roads were blocked, I remember. Vehicles were not moving, but there was one taxi of some civilian called Jack who would ferry us through the war zone to school.… So my parents brought me to Kasese and put me on Jack’s vehicle. We traveled and the bombs, the bullets … they didn’t affect us. We passed through, came to this school and settled. War happened all around except in school.”19

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Kabarole Public Library It has been noted that boarding schools traditionally maintained a self-sufficiency, even aloofness, from the local communities on their peripheries. Although gated, the Mpanga Secondary School compound was less isolated than its peer secondary schools since students there did not board on campus, and the facility was close to Fort Portal town. What did students do after classes were completed for the day? One option was to hang out at the public library. Kabarole Public Library was the first library in Uganda which was jointly run by the British Council, local authority, and the local communities. The original British Council Library was on the hill in the then European Quarter of Fort Portal, and was poorly used. The Asian Education Society managed to persuade the British to move the library to the town center, increasing the usage dramatically. The British Council provided most of the books, management, and staff; the local authority provided a grant toward the operating costs; and the Asian Education Society provided the premises.20 The library made the transition from colonial rule to independence and weathered the expulsion of the Asian community, continuing to serve the needs of the area. The Fort Portal librarians21 note that 95 percent of the users were students. The library, with the schools, was one of the few governmentaided institutions that survived these times of conflict. Students could do individual work in the inner reading room of the facility, or work in study groups in the outer room. During Amin’s time, the library did not have textbooks available for reference, but in the 1980s external donors, especially the British Council, supplied such materials. Books could be borrowed by individual donors or

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loaned in bulk to an institution like a school through the “book box service.” Libraries, like schools, were respected and hence protected from the chaos that enveloped so much of society. “Local communities were very vigilant; they kept looters from breaking in; the library was the only place in town for people to relax, gather,” note the librarians. But this protection did not come without individual sacrifice. In the Amin years, these civil servants did not take advantage of their positions, for example, to loot the library and sell off the machines, as was the practice of many civil servants in the magendo economy. The facility was neither bombed nor looted during the period prior to or during the 1979 Liberation War because, according to the librarians, the watchman took a personal interest in guarding the facility and kept vigil day and night. In Obote II, it was difficult for the librarians to help the students. According to one senior staffer, “You had to be very careful; you could easily get in trouble by disciplining students; you must discipline students softly.” Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) youth wingers had an intelligence system, “so students were often spies; you had to be very careful in all circumstances about what you said, and, of course, there was no freedom of press, no freedom of speech.” If someone reported you, you disappeared. When the NRA occupied the region in 1985, the librarian in charge fled for Kampala, but the six staff members who remained behind divided into two groups—morning and afternoon shifts— to keep the library open. They remained at their posts during the isolation of the interim NRM administration, even though the liberators could only pay them in posho and beans for their service. The library was the normal venue for “political education” seminars conducted by the NRM. Major Kakoza, who conducted the classes, slept in the library office, his presence guaranteeing that nobody would tamper with the library. For day school students like those of Mpanga, then, and later for those students of the “mushrooming” secondary day schools, this facility and these dedicated and educated civil servants contributed significantly to school survival.

Entrepreneurial Projects With fixed teacher salary allocations—which were usually paid six months or more in arrears—and with a capitation grant frozen at pre-inflationary levels and, therefore, progressively worth less, the government-aided schools in Kabarole faced a severe financial crisis. How could they pay for food? How could they remunerate

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non-teaching staff whose salaries were not paid by the government? How could they afford petrol or propane to operate vehicles, pumps, generators, stoves? How could they provide basic instructional materials like chalk, paper, books? How could they keep the schools open? This “mission impossible” became the chief task of the administrators in the 1980s and spawned some creative entrepreneurial projects to secure funds for the schools. From an economic viewpoint, schools have hidden resources: land, facilities, vehicles, an untapped labor pool, and the possibility of curricular activities that can double as income-producing schemes. In a subsistence economy and barter system in which goods have value, administrators found ways, literally, to “cash in” on these resources. One student reported that his headmaster suggested: “‘If the lorry is here, why can’t we use it to transport things for people? Then they pay us the money: part of it will go to the school to look into teachers’ welfare and the welfare of the students, and the other half of it is on the account of the lorry for maintenance and fuel needs.’ So this expanded on the funds that students were able to generate.”22 Other projects helped reduce school expenses, according to the same student. “We started a garden … hired a truck … and cultivated about three acres; on that big piece of land we planted beans, potatoes—sweet potatoes—and then cassava. Formerly we were buying food from off-site. But [with this garden] the expenditure was cut down on food because not much money was spent on labor; students—those who were doing agriculture—would go and do it, digging and planting. So cheap labor was available. We were doing our own thing.”23 Income-producing projects generated cash directly. “We were near a forest and wood became cheap so we could make furniture locally, right from the school compound. So we were happy to have new chairs, new desks.… And then teachers, even businessmen around, would order, say, ten chairs or desks. Even other schools would say ‘they have a bigger workshop [than we do]; why don’t we place our furniture orders there and they can make it?’ That was another source of school income.”24 Other projects for profit included brick-making, metal fabrication, silk-screening clothing, and calendar-making. Still other self-help projects took different forms, but not for income. Some projects were only to benefit the school itself. We would sometimes be asked to carry bricks, or bake them. That would be, like, a day would be put off and [teachers would] say: “Senior Four, we are going to make bricks for the school.” There would be boys who would mix

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the mud, and then there would be boys … who would be sticking this mud into some kind of trough to make those blocks; and there would be those who would be carrying them to a shed for drying. It would be a collective effort, and it would be fun!”25

Some projects were the result of conditionalities imposed by donors.

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There is one time when the World Food Program (WFP) had to come in to supply foods to secondary schools—fish, rice, some sugar, and so on.… The purpose of the program was to prepare these boarding secondary schools later on to become self-sustaining, to become viable; to learn and appreciate the efforts of labor and so on [by] beginning their own farms. So that, ultimately, when the WFP phases out, somehow they have learned how to perhaps, you know, grow some of their basic foods, keep some animals, produce their own milk.… Kyebambe has some cows; Nyakasura has [animals, also]; St. Leo’s grows potatoes for themselves [and] they have grown maize. I think all these efforts came in as a result of the WFP. So not only did they provide food, but they also gave them an incentive; they said: “You’ve got to begin to produce your own food.”26

Other practices built favorable public relations, especially with neighbors. A student recalls: “Those people who were staying around the school used to come [on the school compound] for shelter at night. Especially those days when the rebels were coming near and the soldiers were moving around, we used to have people coming just to reside in the classrooms at night, especially in the holidays.… And I remember people were even fearing to go to their plantations and get foodstuffs, so they would come in the school to beg for food. So the school itself assisted also the outsiders during that period; there was good interaction between the school and outsiders.”27 With the exception of the World Food Program,28 these activities were purely local initiatives for survival. The Ministry of Education (MOE) did not initiate or direct them. In fact the MOE was so critically understaffed that it lacked the capacity to carry out regular school inspections in many cases. This left local administrators very much on their own to devise ways to survive. Of course, direct cash generation led to abuses and embezzlement in some cases: “We came to learn that the former Headmaster was building a house; he used the lorry to transport bricks to put up his mansion.”29 Projects also took away from students’ study time, and some also questioned the justice of requiring forced labor when paying high school fees. “The ideal situation would have

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been to get all students involved in the production of the self-help projects. This one has always met some little bit of resistance.… Some [children] come from parents who say: ‘After all, we are paying our money; why should our children do this?”30 Be that as it may, one effect of these many entrepreneurial projects is that de facto decentralization occurred in Ugandan educational provision more by necessity than by plan.

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Strategies and Procedures Implemented in the Schools A review of the systemic and local initiatives that the Kabarole secondary schools employed to survive reveals certain strategies and procedures that are worthy of note. In examining these strategies and procedures, it becomes clearer how the schools reordered priorities or modified implementation of policy on short notice; how they seized opportunities and responded as events required; how they built on successful practices and discarded practices that did not work (Samoff 1993). In fact, in these government-aided and government-controlled schools, the government was providing much less aid in proportion to actual operating costs, and was exercising much less effective control than policy would dictate.

Policy and Practice: Teachers In the government-aided schools of Uganda, it was the policy of the Ministry of Education (MOE) to appoint teachers and administrators directly. The appointments were made by the posting officer who held a major position in the MOE bureaucracy. Prior to and during the early Amin times, assignments were made based on the needs of the particular schools as communicated to the Ministry by the head teachers, and on the academic qualifications of the prospective teacher. Teachers were normally posted to a full-time position at a particular school. Moreover, secondary school teachers—Grade Five—were posted nationally, since the language of instruction in secondary schools was English and, hence, fluency in the local vernacular language was not required. As has been noted, such policies contributed to the goal of nation-building espoused by the post-independence government (O’Connor 1988). With the abrupt expulsion of the Asians in 1972 and the rapid departure of expatriate teachers soon afterward, the normal

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posting procedures became untenable. Severe teacher shortages in all schools forced the government to bond all university graduates to the teaching profession, whether they had qualified as teachers or not.31 The rationale justifying this decree was based on the fact that these graduates had had their tertiary education fully financed by the government, and hence were obliged in this “state of emergency” to be of service where there was critical need— namely, in the government-aided schools. It must be noted that at the time it was expected that the government civil service would employ graduates of the tertiary institutions, and teachers were civil servants. Furthermore, under such crisis conditions many teachers were assigned to teach subjects for which they had little or no professional preparation. Such mitigation of established policy in the face of crisis conditions contributed positively to school survival in that it filled teacher vacancies created by the abrupt expatriate exodus. The teacher shortage was further complicated, however, by Ugandan professionals who left the country for “greener pastures,” namely, to seek positions in neighboring African countries or in Europe where their professional status would be rewarded by employment and remuneration consistent with their professional preparation. Many teachers were among these departing professionals, and they were quickly employed in Kenya and other Anglophone countries of southern Africa, Europe, and North America. In what appears to be a shift in policy, the government began recruiting expatriate Pakistani teachers and African teachers from Ghana to fill the gaps left by departing British expatriates and Ugandan teachers. Some informants took a less-than-sanguine view of this practice—“they brought in these people, some untrained graduates who did not train as teachers, but you could not understand [their English]”32—however, it was a further attempt by government to respond to the teacher shortage. With the financial collapse and consequent hyperinflation that followed Amin’s “economic war,” teachers no longer were able to sustain themselves and their families on a single salary. Teachers who remained in the schools often established side businesses to supplement their income, or they resorted to “part-timing” (parttime teaching in other schools) in addition to their official fulltime position. But how was this possible, since the Ministry of Education supposedly appointed all teachers directly? The answer was improvisation. For example, in the posting of teachers, the experience of one informant is quite revealing.

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Under normal circumstances, in order to be a part-timer, one had to actually apply for part-time teaching through the Ministry of Education. But because at that time things were actually running out of hand, the Headmasters alone could recruit someone who wanted to work on a part-time basis; later on they would inform the Ministry that they have so-and-so. So I was at Kinyamasika TTC as a full-time teacher, and at St. Leo’s I was considered as part-time. The Ministry knew I was posted to Kinyamasika; the part-time arrangement was just between me and the Headmaster at St. Leo’s.… That’s why most schools managed to do their duty, regardless of whether they had so many teachers who were supposed to be posted by the government or not. Because if they didn’t have that flexibility [to hire], many schools would actually not be able to work.33

In Kabarole and in western Uganda, head teachers also expanded the normal pool of applicants by recruiting Rwandese teachers and professionals whose families had fled their country during the 1960s and who lived as refugees in Uganda. Such “local improvisation,” aided by the Ministry of Education’s necessary deferral of teacher appointments until the head teacher’s presentation of particular candidates, permitted a measure of administrative flexibility in filling teaching vacancies that helped schools persist. The necessary acceptance of part-time teaching by schools and the MOE was also essential in keeping teachers in the system. However, in practice, this aberration contributed to school stratification. St. Leo’s and Kyebambe, established boarding schools relatively close to town, were able to keep a good corps of full-time teachers who were provided staff housing—and land for gardens—and who also might do some “part-timing” at other local schools. By contrast, Nyakasura—ten kilometers from town—had a more difficult time in attracting full-time teachers because of the lack of opportunity for them to part-time teach in other schools due to the distance. For the same reason, Nyakasura could attract fewer part-timers. Mpanga, a day school with little or no staff housing, had few full-time teachers and relied principally upon part-time teachers from other schools; the “mushroom schools,” established in the 1980s, hired whoever was left over, qualified or not. While “part-timing” contributed to the persistence of schools and the retention of teachers through this period of social and economic chaos, the negative effects of such a survival strategy are cumulative to this day. The policy of posting teachers to schools throughout the country also succumbed to the deteriorating conditions of the time. First, security concerns made transport and travel difficult or

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nearly impossible over long distances. Teachers who were posted far from their home areas could not get back to their families with any regularity, if at all. The purges in the Amin times of particular tribal/ethnic groups exacerbated tensions already endemic in a country like Uganda, constituted within colonial borders not congruent with pre-existing tribal, ethnic, language, or racial affinities. A significant social network in Africa is embedded in the extended family, clan, and tribe; when in difficulty, the African naturally turns to his or her family, clan, or tribe mates for support. As terror and suspicion increased to chaotic proportions in Uganda, it became increasingly difficult for a teacher to be away from his or her natural support group. Hence, teachers began to request postings to their home areas. An even more compelling reason for posting teachers to their home areas was economically based: most teachers could not survive away from home. The devaluation of salaries meant that teachers had to live on “local food,” needed to utilize family, clan, and tribal networks for housing, transportation, and so forth, and generally depended on supplementary assistance from their family members to continue in the teaching profession. The extended family was willing to assist because, in the long run, they hoped and believed that things would get better and one day an educated son or daughter in the civil service would be able to make a return on this continuing family investment. From the Ministry of Education’s viewpoint, abandoning a national posting policy in favor of home area assignments helped retain teachers in the schools, even though this resulted in the de facto regionalization of secondary school staffing. In fact, the posting of teachers had become more and more a regional exercise anyway since the MOE condoned the practice of school heads recruiting teachers locally. This de facto regionalization occurred in student recruitment, too.

Policy and Practice: Local School Organization One of the functions of the Examinations Section of the MOE Inspectorate was to oversee student placement in secondary schools. Students who sat for the Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) made a priority choice (first, second, or third) of the secondary schools they wished to attend. Secondary school heads met annually in January, and, based on the PLE results, selected students. Obviously, the heads selected students with the best results who also had indicated the head’s particular school as a top choice. The process continued until secondary school places were filled. In the

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decade after independence, government funding of secondary schools was adequate, and school fees were uniform and reasonable; hence, the student population in government-aided secondary schools was truly national in representation. But as hyperinflation in the Amin and Obote II eras eroded the value of the government per-pupil capitation grant, schools began charging higher fees to compensate for the funding shortfall. Schools in urban areas where the magendo economy flourished were able to charge higher fees than up-country schools. As transportation became more expensive and security in the country deteriorated, PLE leavers began to give priority to secondary schools closer to home. As a result, the student populations lost their national character and schools became regional institutions. The greater wealth of the urban areas, the higher concentration of an educated populace there, and the availability of material resources meant that urban schools with the best reputations— what have been called the “First World” schools—attracted the best students. Several Kabarole informants trace the resultant erosion of standards and quality in the up-country schools to the decline in student competition for these now “Second World” schools. While this de facto regionalization contributed to further educational stratification, the schools in Kabarole remained at full enrollment. Banyarwanda students—Uganda-born children of Rwandese refugees—were recruited to fill the places once reserved for students from the north and east of Uganda. Thus the Kabarole schools remained ethnically diverse, if no longer nationally representative; despite the shift in student and staff demography, they adjusted and persisted. Other local strategies were begun during these times of social conflict to preserve some semblance of order in the schools and to adjust to circumstances beyond school control. “Mock exams” were initiated regionally to allow students preparing for O-level and A-level testing to have a trial run on the exercise. Teachers in the district volunteered to prepare “mock exams” in the tested subjects. These sample tests were administered at a particular day and time in the participating schools under circumstances similar to the national testing exercise. These “mock exams” were then marked by a local committee of teachers and the results for the district posted. Students could then see how their results compared with those from students in other district schools. Creative transport arrangements for students—for example, renting a public bus outside of the regular schedule, procuring a tractor, group walks to home areas, etc.—exemplify how previously self-sufficient entities

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like the boarding schools initiated cooperative strategies to cope with particular difficulties they all faced. Some strategies were initiated because of the needs of particular schools. For example, a science teacher recalls: “Apparatus was scarce but at least you would try to demonstrate an experiment.… If it was an experiment where you have to use tins—after all, they were giving us food in tins—you would use those tins to improvise and carry out an experiment.”34 At Mpanga, the surge in enrollment that accompanied the nationalization of the school in 1976 forced the introduction of double-sessions: S3 through S6 students attended in the morning; S1 and S2 students arrived for classes beginning after 1:00 P.M.35 Creative scheduling options were introduced to facilitate part-time teaching, also. For example, instructors’ classes would be scheduled in such a way that they were free from duty in their full-time school for an entire day or part of a particular day; this allowed teachers to contract for parttime work at another school during the unscheduled time. By way of creative scheduling, Kyebambe initiated evening assemblies at the end of term to distribute grade reports, then allowed midnight departures on a specially arranged bus to capitalize on the availability of pre-arranged transport. Frequently, it was unsafe or impossible for some students to return to their homes at the time of term breaks; as has been seen, boarding schools allowed a few students to remain on campus under such circumstances, giving them work to do in exchange for room and board. Other practices that contributed to healthy student and staff morale were in evidence on several campuses. For example, the role of teachers and head teachers in keeping students calm was very important to the students’ psychological well-being. One teacher from Kyebambe explained: “We tried to keep what was happening on the outside a secret.… Because if the girls start knowing what is happening outside it would be difficult for them to learn, to grab anything in their mind. They would start to worry about their families behind; next thing, they start worrying over their sisters and brothers who are working elsewhere. But if they don’t know, that is they don’t have any information on what is going on, they live happily, normally.”36 The tactics seem to have been different at St. Leo’s. “What I note as special with the administration of the school here, was that they were so friendly to us students. They used to call us [to assembly] and inform us of what [was] happening. They would call us [and say:] ‘This is what is happening … don’t do this or that; there is a problem here or there.…’ So every morning, almost, they used to come and inform

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us of what [had] happened the previous night. And almost every night you would hear bullets around; and you’d be told that some people [had] been killed; rebels [were] coming, and so on.… But our administrators were gifted in their administration. Because although there were problems, they would assure us that there was no problem; that the problem was not there [at school].”37 Notwithstanding the different approaches taken toward girls and boys by these administrators, the common student perception remained that “our school was safe.” As has been seen, entrepreneurial projects were another common practice of the times that took unique forms depending on the circumstances of each particular school. Perhaps the most enlightening, even inspiring, activities were those initiated by students. “Well for us [students], we would organize ourselves in a small seminar.… You see, in a class of people, always there’d be someone who would be better, who [was] brighter [than the rest]. So it was a matter of you organizing the students to try to [learn] from such a person. I can remember one such student; he was a very intelligent character. So it was a matter of attaching yourself to him. And then you would not miss anything. Some of the students were actually as good as the teachers. So that’s how we survived.”38 A female student reports: We had [inter-school] seminars; they were very helpful because you [could] gather so many ideas from the different schools. So we would all come from different schools but during the seminars you’d see students by speaking [to them] individually, and giving questions and discussing; and you would identify a brilliant student whom you would contact as your reading mate during the holiday. I recall a great contribution a certain student did on my part especially in the history paper; through the [seminar] discussions I identified him. When I went for holidays I was always at his door. And his parents were good; they would not say no; we would sit and discuss and we passed.39

One headmaster even admitted that student seminars brought pressure on him for improvements: “Students started making demands because now they had an idea of how other students doing HSC were faring [in the other schools]. So they did make a number of demands; sometimes they were also critical of the efforts we were making, and thought perhaps we were not doing enough for them.”40 These examples give evidence of intense motivation and effort on the part of students. What seems common to all these survival strategies and practices in the Kabarole schools is the cooperation and bonding that

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evolved from the shared desire to preserve order amid chaos. There was a great deal of mutual support brought about by common miseries and difficulties, by a shared hope that things must get better eventually, and by few alternatives in such dire circumstances; this made for solidarity in the midst of turmoil. Perhaps such attitudes serve as a counterpoint to the more widely reported mayhem, moral decline, and self-serving “I-got-mine” attitudes and practices that also existed in these conflicted times.

Policy and Practice: Governance

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The Parent Teacher Association (PTA) evolved gradually from this period to the point that currently 80 to 90 percent of the annual school operating budget is met by the PTA assessment.41 It has been seen that the main concern of PTA groups was the “topping up” of teacher salaries, and that remains their major commitment. But the testimony of a St. Leo’s College parent who has served on the Executive Committee of their PTA for six years, and who also has experience as a member of another secondary school Governing Board, sheds further light on how government-aided secondary schools have adopted strategies to survive the demise of adequate government aid. There are other aspects of the budget [that the PTA assessment covers], like people not paid by the Ministry of Education, the group employees: cooks who prepare food for the students; the people who maintain the compound; there are personal secretaries in the offices; other people in the school who are not paid by the Ministry [like teachers not yet formally posted].… There are school farms which are being maintained; they produce food for the students. But when they were beginning they were also initiated by the fund set up by the PTA. And other projects that come up from time to time—like water: we find the [pump] engine has broken down [or] has to be replaced or repaired. The parents have got to step in to assist in such a project. And for the lighting—electricity—the children cannot study without electricity in the place. I find this UEB [Uganda Electricity Board— the power company] … is used most of the time as a standby, so we must have a generator working almost full time!… There are several others: the manning of the school truck, the lorry; the tractor; all these you find are budgeted on the parents.42

Another parent and PTA member expressed the role of parents and the PTA through a traditional Batooro proverb: “An old woman with ripe bananas must have children.” He noted that the children of the village will come because she “has what to give”; so a parent has “what to give” to the schools.43 In light of the above practical

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situations for which the parents assumed responsibility, the Board of Governors had to adapt to realities heretofore unforeseen in the by-laws and constitutions of the schools.

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Policy and Practice: Finance In Amin’s government, certain monetary sanctions were imposed—such as the confiscation of all foreign exchange—that made traditional modes of external support untenable for the schools. In Obote II, soldiers were not paid salaries, so it became common practice for them to rob and loot at the point of a gun. Travelers, including students, were normally fleeced for cash and goods at roadblocks. During the NRM occupation of the western region, Kabarole banks were closed and no cash was available. How did the schools function under these conditions? Try creative financing. The foundation bodies of the Kabarole boarding schools—the Church of Uganda (COU) and the Roman Catholic Church—have international networks of financial support. It was a regular practice for both COU and Catholic bishops to travel abroad for religious fund-raising purposes; schools were recipients of some of that gifting. The American Holy Cross missionaries also solicited abroad for donations to assist their works, including St. Leo’s College. “Old boys” and “old girls” of the boarding schools were contacted by the school alumni associations for financial support. While none of these sources produced large grants or served as a reliable source of funds for the schools, what they did contribute was helpful. To circumvent Amin’s monetary sanctions, these groups established bank accounts outside the country—most frequently in Kenya—which could be drawn upon to purchase needed goods that were then smuggled into the country. To thwart the Obote II soldier-bandits, schools established bank accounts in Ugandan towns where students lived. At the beginning of a school term, rather than carry the required fees in cash in person, students could deposit the money to their school account at a bank in their home region and receive a payment voucher that admitted them to classes. When the Kabarole banks closed, suppliers extended credit to the cash-strapped schools, bills were allowed to accumulate during the crisis, and schools withheld payment of institutional fees to the government.44 Public fund-raising activities were held for schools—in the 1980s Mpanga, Nyakasura, and St. Leo’s conducted major affairs—the PTA assessment continued to rise, and corporate bursaries were established to assist children of employees to attend school. Extended family networks also

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contributed to school fee financing in cash or in kind, such as providing housing possibilities. For the Kabarole schools, it seemed “if there was a will, there was a way.” The will was rarely questioned; the way demanded some creativity.

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Policy and Practice: Interventions Despite widespread social and economic conflict, threats of personal danger, lack of institutional capacity, and general civic uncertainty during much of the Amin/Obote II years, there were some provident interventions and happenstances that helped schools survive. By way of organization, these could be categorized as institutional responses, spontaneous responses, and fate or divine intervention. A student disturbance, i.e., strike, at St. Leo’s College in July 1972 was investigated by a Committee of Inquiry appointed by the Board of Governors. The chairman of the Board and the headmaster presented formal reports to the Ministry of Education, which responded by confirming a number of student expulsions, by recommending readmission for other students only if accompanied by their parents, by promulgating policy restricting National Union of Students of Uganda (NUSU) activities to post-secondary institutions, and by transferring and disciplining a teacher who had sided with the boys in staging the strike. The acting chief education officer regretted that “owing to the present crisis in the country,45 it will not be possible for either [himself or the permanent secretary] to visit your school [at its reopening] on 3rd October 1972” (Lwabi 1972). Here we have an example of the appropriate chain of command operating despite other crises. At Nyakasura, one student who attended in the 1980s reports that teachers who came were not trained. They did not know how to conduct themselves with respect to students, and so the students, likewise, did not learn how to be respectful of teachers who would share a drink with them—forbidden in school—or who would try to take advantage of school girls. “Things like that really caused a total breakdown.” One might expect that in such conflicted times adolescents would have had a hard time dealing with the hopelessness of an uncertain future anyway. But with insufficient staffing to enforce school discipline rules and a lack of selfcontrol among some staff members themselves, the problems were exacerbated. “Because of this lack of control … students would escape from school … and they would stay away for some days. And when they would come back … they would be broke.… So they would either steal some electrical equipment, or they would

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steal fellow students’ property. So all the other things that followed—drinking, use of drugs, rape, escaping from school … fighting, and stealing, and attacking teachers, and attacking neighbors on the way—all those things happened; I saw them myself!”46 In 1985, Nyakasura student leaders, despairing of the administration’s ability to handle the situation, took up the matter themselves. They attested that “we have witnessed this—there have been two cases of rape on the school compound, and there is nothing that has been done about it; and it has been reported clearly, so the office [knows].” So they wrote letters to various people—Board of Governors, police, security organs, etc.—and managed to get a Commission of Inquiry appointed by the Board. “And in fact, that seemed to have [been a factor in] the change of administration immediately. And in the process, the school was preserved.”47 The 1985 surrender of the Fort Portal barracks without a fight to Museveni’s NRA was accomplished through delicate negotiations carried out on Roman Catholic diocesan property by church representatives (Kassimir 1995).48 That the NRA was eventually victorious in gaining control of the entire country in 1986 was seen by many in Kabarole as a direct blessing, since the local people would have taken the brunt of the former government’s wrath had Museveni not been ultimately successful. Moreover, in the earlier Liberation War, the timely fall of Kampala in 1979 precluded what informants report was a planned systematic looting of Fort Portal by Amin’s soldiers. The Tanzanian liberators were able to advance more rapidly on Fort Portal than anticipated, and Amin’s troops were forced to flee before they could carry out their acts of destruction. While the organizational work of Commissions of Inquiry, a spontaneous student initiative to restore discipline, or provident happenstance may not strictly qualify as “strategies,” such interventions helped preserve order in the Kabarole schools.

War,Violence, and the Effect on Children In countries like Northern Ireland and Lebanon, where schools managed to remain open during violent times, the impact on children seems to vary from society to society. On the one hand, conflicted times often evoke student disruption and disrespect, making it traumatic for educators and students alike. Adolescents have a hard time dealing with the hopelessness of an uncertain future, and some use any excuse for skipping school. Instances of such a breakdown in behavior were seen in the troubled Nyakasura School in

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1985. On the other hand, children in war speak favorably about school, give detailed accounts of their daily school lives—demonstrating that school structure helps bring order out of chaos—and speak of the “calming effect” of teachers; schools are seen as an “oasis of peace” in the midst of community and violence (Assal and Farrell 1992; Cairns 1996). Writing on education in post-independence Uganda, Oliver Furley (1988: 183) surmises that “the effect of these calamitous years on the pupils themselves must have been extremely grave. Bereavement among their families, periods of terror, devastation, deprivation and the prevalence everywhere of magendo … must have caused many to wonder whether climbing the educational ladder to collect qualifications was either feasible or worthwhile.” He expresses surprise at the fact that very many pupils did just that. This study has reported stresses and anxieties felt by students in the Kabarole schools during this time. Raundalen et al. (1987) also have evaluated stress levels of adolescents in Kampala schools through structured interviews and elicited essays allowing “the voice of the children” to be heard. Common threads in these testimonies—the struggle to prepare for a future for themselves, their families, for Uganda; their attempts to suppress negative feelings of depression and hate; their weariness with war, violence, coups, army men; their hope that things will be better; and their experience of school as a safe place, an “island/oasis of peace”—lead me to question how schools persisted as safe places in such violent times. What strategies and practices occurred to support such feelings of safety and peace in the midst of community violence?

The Role of Kabarole Schools in Wartime Heads’ regular assemblies with students and staff seem to have played a significant role in maintaining school peacefulness. One teacher remembers, “We used to tell the kids—in fact the Headmaster used to say the same to us—‘just go to your class and teach; even if they [i.e., the students] are not paying attention, that’s all right; you just have to try to distract them.’”49 A teacher recounts an everyday activity at another school that helped keep peace: “Because of the war, we were having general assemblies every morning. And as government policy of the time [stipulated], we would begin with the national anthem and some bit of drill; after that we would be briefed on what was taking place.”50 Information sharing with students and instructions to faculty were important communication practices. There were practical strategies, too. At

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Kyebambe “the Headmistress would come and tell us ‘well, its not safe tonight; you can stay in your dormitories [rather than go to night study hall].’ When we were told that it’s not safe, then lights would be switched off early.… The Headmistress would control the lighting and switch them off. And when she felt it was OK, then we would have power again. You know, I think at times the power was switched off to make us calm down; you would fear darkness and go to bed and sleep!”51 Teachers tried to help keep the calm, too, by reasoning with students. “When kids wanted to go home during troubles, I used to say: ‘If you’re on that side [Mbarara], you don’t know where your family is; they may have run. But they know where you are. If you go down there and they’re lost, you’ll never find each other.’”52 Other teachers, in a desire to spare children stress, “put on a happy face” and maintained the appearances and routines of normality. Sometimes school was the only “normal” activity around. As has been seen, the role of teachers in hiding students and others in purge times, or protecting students of particular ethnic groups in times of social tension, engendered a legitimacy, honor, and solidarity in the school communities that was sealed by personal risk-taking based in love. And students helped each other, too. Through study groups and seminars, prayer groups, and ethnic, village, or friendship affinities, students were not left alone; they bonded together, even for practical alliances. “I remember a [student] group that walked home to Mbarara, 150 miles away from here; they gathered at St. Leo’s and from there walked in a group taking three days to get home.”53 Finally, support was offered even beyond the extended family. “There were five of us [students at school] all coming from the same village. So it seems that the parents—our parents—were coordinating. You would find one parent of student X, when he comes to visit his son, he would also check on the others, cautioning them: ‘Please, if there is a problem, do this, do that.’ So we were almost watched as a team! So that assisted us.”54 These instances of personal action and communal strategy that helped preserve schools as safe places did not spring from a void. While motives for what seem to be heroic deeds are not necessarily articulated by informants in the clearest terms—“it is normal … it just comes natural”—there are ingrained cultural values and contextual factors that come to light in the testimony of these Ugandans that inform the conditionalities that sustained schools through these periods of chaos. The next chapter addresses such elements.

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Notes 1. See Cohn and Rossmiller (1987), Fuller and Heyneman (1989), Jansen (1995), Levin and Lockheed (1993), Purkey and Smith (1983), and Samoff (1993). 2. *C. Mbanga, personal interview, 18 September 1997. 3. *G. Bakole, personal interview, 16 September 1997. 4. *J. Flores, personal interview, 12 August 1997. 5. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997. 6. Uganda, like many other countries in the world, uses tests and examinations to assess a candidate’s academic performance and educational achievement at all levels of education. The results of national tests and examinations are used to select candidates for the next stages of the educational ladder. The “student selection” referred to is the annual meeting of secondary school heads at which student placement in the government-aided schools is assigned. 7. *A. Ngonzi, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 8. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997. 9. *S. Bazoora, personal interview, 3 October 1997. 10. *D. Rutabisa, personal interview, 29 August 1997. 11. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 12. Ibid. 13. *C. Mbanga, personal interview, 18 September 1997. 14. *J. Kagoya, personal interview, 8 August 1997. 15. *D. Byamukama, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 16. *C. Kaijuka, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 17. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. 18. *M. Nyarwa, personal interview, 26 September 1997. 19. Ibid. 20. *P. Jivens, personal correspondence, 19 January 1998. 21. Group interview (21 October 1997) with three library staff members. 22. *J. Kagoya, personal interview, 8 August 1997. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. *C. Mbanga, personal interview, 18 September 1997. 27. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997. 28. A school administrator reports: “Boarding schools wouldn’t have survived without the World Food Program. So they kept bringing us in the food like [tinned] fish, chicken, beef … also rice, [and] yellow maize.… We used to collect it from Kampala, the Center for World Food. World Food also came in with the idea we also try to have self-reliance. But still it did not work as they thought.… They told us we should acquire land … [so] we had gardens, but far away from here.… But our program of study could not allow us to continue taking the students out [to tend the gardens] … they would get really tired by the time they came back, and everything; it was [causing] a lot of problems.… The land is there, but the students cannot go out and work on that land” (*S. Bazoora, personal interview, 3 October 1997). See also “Projects approved: Uganda” (1982). 29. *J. Kagoya, personal interview, 8 August 1997. 30. *C. Mbanga, personal interview, 18 September 1997. 31. Amin Decree #1 of 1973. 32. *A. Kagenda, personal interview, 11 September 1997.

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33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

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42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

*F. Waibi, personal interview, 25 August 1997. *S. Bazoora, personal interview, 3 October 1997. *B. Kasigazi, personal interview, 25 October 1997. *S. Bazoora, personal interview, 3 October 1997. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997. *C. Kaijuka, personal interview, 26 August 1997. *M. Nyarwa, personal interview, 26 September 1997. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. A description of secondary school funding logistics by a local education official documents the point: “The [current] school fee per [three-month] term at Kyebambe or St. Leo’s is around 150,000 shillings. The government statutory fee per term is 4000 shillings, or 1300 shillings per student per month. Since the government also gives a capitation grant of 1200 shillings per student per month, that adds to 2500 shillings per month [US$ 2.50] to maintain a student in boarding school. Impossible! Even if you were only to buy food, leaving out other administrative costs, you wouldn’t maintain a student for that amount! So the parents are forced to pay 50,000 shillings per month in school fees.… So who’s sustaining these secondary schools? The parents! So briefly, perhaps, when you ask ‘how did the schools cope?’ they turned to the parents, and the parents maintained—and still maintain—the schools. Except that would not be wholly accurate, because the government has been paying salaries. But again that has not been enough” (*C. Mbanga, personal interview, 18 September 1997). *B. Jasani, personal interview, 27 August 1997. *A. Kagenda, personal interview, 11 September 1997. *G. Kanyabugoma, personal interview, 29 September 1997. In this case, the officer may have been referring to the imminent expulsion of Asians from Uganda. *D. Rutabisa, personal interview, 29 August 1997. Ibid. *A. Byakuyamba, personal interview, 28 August 1997. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. Ibid. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. Ibid. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997.

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– Six –

DISCUSSION The View of an Outsider

o

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I

n the previous chapter, African voices narrated an account of Kabarole secondary schools, enumerating difficulties faced by the school communities during the Amin/Obote II years. These same voices revealed various instances of systemic support that helped preserve the schools, and described local initiatives implemented to cope with the rapidly deteriorating social and economic situations that threatened school survival. Moreover, these informants recounted strategies and procedures undertaken to maintain everyday school activities during these difficult times, and they recalled the role of heads, teachers, and extended families in protecting students and preserving the opportunity to study and learn through periods of insecurity and war. The advantage an outside observer might bring to such a scenario is an animated curiosity coupled with a desire to learn and a sincere attempt to make sense of what has occurred. At times the “view from the ground,” as revealing, detailed, and privileged as it may be, is so commonplace to the actors that they may fail to recognize the potentially broader significance of the experience. Commenting on the possible place of the expatriate Africanist in research study, Marion Johnson (1989: 80) notes hopefully that Africans may “be persuaded that the outsider can see things which are so familiar to them that they pass unnoticed, and be able to make comparisons which the local scholar cannot make.” Two African informants for this study confirmed the utility of such “an outside view” in the following remarks. “When you told me about

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your topic of research, I said: ‘Now how did this man actually think of this?’ I hadn’t personally thought about it: why should education have actually survived in Uganda?… [So] I started thinking, thinking … and then started connecting how these things [happened]. I think it is a very important topic.” “You picked a topic which will make Ugandan’s like me wonder why we have not given time to this question, ‘How did we survive?’”1 So the generalized categories I have chosen to explain why schools survived in Uganda, while arising from the firsthand experience of Kabarole informants, nevertheless are formulated to proffer an explanation that would make sense to me, and would relate to the larger question of school survival under conditions of intractable social conflict. The disadvantage of a generalized view is that it may become so complicated by scholarly jargon that simple facts and processes are obscured or, worse, squeezed and stretched into forms that are unrecognizable. Attempting to categorize conditionalities as purely macro-level or micro-level, replicable or non-replicable, universal or context-bound, illustrative of stability or change, and so forth, could engender confusion rather than clarity. However, two analytical frameworks do seem helpful: a research outlook that pays attention to contextual variables, and the perspective on continuity and change utilized in studies of organizational survival. Based on contingency theory and largely supported by qualitative studies (Rondinelli et al. 1990; Verspoor 1989), research focusing on contextual variables attends to specific conditions that impact on the ability to implement and manage educational change. Historical, social, political, economic, geographic, and cultural factors, as well as institutional conditions, set the implementing context in which any change takes place; it is argued that research findings are stripped of meaning outside of the implementing context. Context research, therefore, provides us a view of schools as dynamic, changing organizations highly responsive to internal and external conditions (Herschbach et al. 1992). Organizational survival has to do with the simultaneous interplay of continuity and change. Failure to adapt to changing conditions typically is associated with organizational decline. Successful schools are portrayed as those that anticipate and accommodate change. But continuity, under certain circumstances, actually may be as crucial to school success as change. Some conditionalities help maintain stability and reinforce traditional school values, thus preserving order amid chaos. Other conditions illustrate organizational change generated in response to a rapidly deteriorating

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environment that threatens the very continuity of schools. While students of organizations tend to concentrate on explaining change rather than continuity, organizational continuity should not be taken for granted (D. L. Duke 1995). Hence, in this study the generalized categories identified as baseline for the survival of Kabarole’s secondary schools reflect contextual variables as well as continuity and adaptation.

Conditionalities Enabling Kabarole Schools to Survive

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Government Non-interference in Schools From 1971 through 1986 Ugandans lived through seven changes of government; none of these governments interfered directly with schools. As has been seen, this situation differs considerably from that found in other countries. Furley (1988) reports that Gayaza Girls’ High School, near Kampala, was attacked in 1983 and nine girls killed, but there is no evidence that the students or the school as such were targeted. That horrible situation appears to have been an incident of being caught in the crossfire of a Ugandan army anti-guerrilla sweep. When schools in places like Mbarara and Masaka suffered bombing damage, or where areas like West Nile and Luweero were depopulated due to guerrilla warfare, there were temporary school closings; however, schools that remained open in relatively peaceful places like Kabarole absorbed such students. Ugandan informants declared that if you “kept your head low,” “practiced the art of keeping quiet,” “did your job and posed no threat to Amin,” then the government was satisfied to “let sleeping dogs lie.” When civil servants found that their security position was exposed, they often opted for the quieter life out of the limelight, returning to the safer obscurity of a secondary school teaching post (Furley 1988). Hence, despite the political and economic chaos that eventually enveloped the country, secondary schools in Uganda—unlike in many other countries afflicted by civil war—remained safe from any systematic persecution, and this contributed to their survival. In fact, government did more than not interfere. Amin made many declarations supporting the development of education, and some actually were implemented. With the expulsion of the Asians and the fleeing of expatriate teachers from the country, his government bonded university graduates to teach, instituted “crash courses” for teacher training, invited Pakistani and Ghanaian

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teachers to fill classroom vacancies, and effected an instant “Africanization” of the secondary school staffs. Amin left the professional staffing of the Ministry of Education relatively intact, and appointed Brigadier Barnabas Kili, a trained teacher, to head that ministry. Heyneman (1983) has noted the managerial prowess of the Examinations Section in successfully conducting the annual Primary Leaving Exams on schedule and without scandal, and Kabarole informants confirm that the secondary school leaving exams were administered in a similar manner. While Amin built few new schools, in 1976 the increased demand for secondary school places forced his government to take over twenty-eight privately owned schools (Maloba 1991), including Mpanga Secondary School in Kabarole. It has been noted that school discipline was high during Amin’s military regime; the army was ready to intervene with harsh punishment at a headmaster’s request. Why might an uneducated leader, with a Cabinet of semi-literate ministers and a personal reputation for brutality, boastfulness, and buffoonery, be solicitous toward education? The perspective of an educated Ugandan informant—teacher, headmaster, Board member—provides some insight here. “In Amin’s time teachers were respected because they were dedicated. Amin’s semi-literate government cadre considered themselves somewhat inferior to the educated elite; they had that kind of subconscious fear that they would be laughed at if they did not manage education wisely. So they made sure that they put in somebody of good repute to head the ministry, and as Permanent Secretary.”2 With that kind of leadership, sub-levels of the ministry—like the Examinations Section of the Inspectorate, or the Curriculum Division—could somehow function, prompting Furley (1988) to remark that education was acknowledged to be one of the better and more efficient ministries of the time. Obote’s second regime reopened the external donor pipeline, which had been cut off during the international community’s isolation of Amin. International Development Agency (IDA) project funds assisted facility rehabilitation, and the World Food Program provided boarding schools with food supplies and an incentive to develop self-help projects. However, that assistance was woefully inadequate in the face of the ill-planned school expansion of the early 1980s, an expansion initiated for purely political purposes. In fact, educators depict the Obote II regime as intent upon politicizing the schools. Evidence in this study confirms the disruption, fear, political harassment, and indiscipline that accompanied the unleashing of Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) youth wingers

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and National Union of Student of Uganda (NUSU) chapters in some schools. In Kabarole the political effect was mixed: St. Leo’s and Mpanga experienced disruptions caused by UPC youth activities; Kyebambe remained relatively untouched by such activity, while one informant credits politically organized students at Nyakasura with pressing for a restoration of order and discipline in the face of a school administration considered to be derelict in its duties. Some administrators in Kabarole reported political harassment, including the removal of two school heads for allegedly political reasons. It has been noted that the interim National Resistance Movement (NRM) government moved quickly to organize for educational provision in Kabarole and the western region, including taking the unprecedented action of setting alternate school leaving exams for the liberated areas. While the NRM secured control of the remainder of the country before such examinations were independently administered, the government initiated special preparation courses for those students from the western region who had missed the regular leaving exam sittings, and offered similar accommodations for Makerere University students to catch up to their classmates in studies. Despite the dire condition of the country during fifteen years of civil and economic disruption, these situations illustrate that institutional education in Uganda was revered enough to merit some assistance as well as non-interference. Perhaps this is not so surprising when one considers that the children of military leaders, civil servants, and government officials were students in these schools. Many people had a vested interest in keeping schools as safe as possible from the societal chaos surrounding them. Schools were respected at the time as places of safety and stability; it was only in the 1990s that Ugandan schools suffered attacks and abductions by insurgents attempting to discredit and destabilize the government. Perhaps it is the fact that education is the one government agency that touches the lives of so many Ugandans—elites as well as peasants—and offers hope and opportunity for the rising generation, that makes the work of the Ministry of Education and local education officials so politically sensitive. Be that as it may, none of the eight governments that held power in Uganda from 1971 to 1986 could afford to let the education system collapse. That fact is a major reason for the survival of schools through this period of conflict and a contributing factor to the organizational continuity in the schools.

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Questions remain, however: Why would the often illiterate military and government officials send their children to school? Why were schools and teachers respected, particularly when the gun was a more prominent symbol of “statesmanship” than the pen? From where does the hope and opportunity symbolized by education spring? Why do both politicians and peasants perceive education as one of the most sensitive of government-aided services? What ingrained values served to preserve this system when the rewards of a magendo economy, the easy and obvious wealth of the mafutamingi, and a rampant culture of corruption mitigated against the years of sacrifice and intense study needed to advance through a system rendered elite more by excess demand than immediate reward? There are contextual variables that may explain both the continuity and the adaptation effected in Ugandan schools during this conflicted period, conditions that helped those institutions to survive.

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Ingrained Cultural Values Situations revealed in the oral testimonies of the African informants for this study on school survival surely confirm the Afrocentric themes identified in the introductory chapter, and specific reference will be made to those themes as cultural values are investigated. However, for the sake of simplicity, I have identified four categories that surfaced as I sought to understand and explain the reasons motivating this extraordinary effort of Ugandans to preserve their schools. These categories, though formulated by an outsider—that is, as general categories not necessarily articulated directly by informants—ought not to distort or misinterpret African peoples’ lives and experiences since they arise, nonetheless, from the oral history accounts of “African voices.” THE ROLE OF PARENTS, FAMILY, AND CLAN. With neither teachers, nor students nor schools specifically targeted by the oppressive regimes of Amin and Obote, economic and social chaos encroached somewhat gradually on the schools. School infrastructure had been expanded and developed in the ten years following independence, so facilities were initially adequate. Economic woes affected foodstuffs supply first, and hyperinflation made even locally grown produce expensive, so parents stepped in to help subsidize food costs not met by the inadequate government capitation grant. As salaries became worthless, teachers took to “part-timing,” and parents began contributing to “top off” the government salary in order to keep teachers available in their posted school. Entrepreneurial projects were begun by schools to generate non-fee income,

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and fund-raising for building and maintenance needs was initiated. Soon parents were involved in decision-making on budget development and school fee structure, and even intervened to address misuse of funds and lack of discipline. School fees eventually provided as much as 90 percent of school operating expenses, a situation that continues to the present day. Why would parents assume such financial obligations for schools that once were nearly free? How could such “practical governance” evolve in supposedly government-controlled schools? Traditional cultural values help explain such developments. African solidarity requires that the community assume responsibility for the socialization of the young into adulthood; schools perform a significant part of this function for many families, so schools need to be supported in time of crisis. Labor partnerships and selfloaning bodies have indigenous roots, so harsh economic circumstances engender collective responsibility for problem solving, often providing communal forms of labor or reinforcing gender-specific roles. Referring to building construction in a government secondary school, one parent noted: “Government put [in] a contribution, but the main work was done by the parents. They put their own labor—manual labor—and then they provided some material; sometimes those who were not able to put their labor made some funds available.”3 Furley (1988: 190) reports this same procedure in primary schools. A Muganda student reports: “Fathers worked for cash; their responsibility was to pay school fees. Mothers tended the shamba, so no cash was needed for food; all cash could go to fees.”4 Furthermore, in order to retain their status and prestige, those with economic means are obligated by tradition to share such wealth with the rest of the community; hence clan/extended family members contributed to school fee payments beyond the capacity of individual families to shoulder. In fact, with the expulsion of the Asians precipitating a redistribution of assets among Ugandans, there may have been an infusion of previously unavailable “economic means” into the clan/ extended family support networks through the contributions of mafutamingi. Perhaps this tradition also motivated the practice of the African business community to contribute school fee payments by sponsoring bursaries for children of some employees. “Old boys” and “old girls” of the schools were regular contributors to school fund-raising activities, too. Of course, these types of external support are associated with private schooling universally, and are currently becoming more common in government-supported institutions. What may be particular to Uganda

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is that they became a constitutive part of government-sponsored schooling so early. Family and clan members provided in-kind support, also. At day schools like Mpanga, off-compound housing for students was provided by relatives; supplying students with local foodstuffs and/or essential commodities was often shared among “cousin-brothers” and “cousin-sisters” from the immediate vicinity. Assistance by members of the same village was noted, too, in the arrangements for common transport of students at term breaks and the informal supervision/visit of one parent to all students in a school hailing from that village—perhaps illustrating an extension of the extended family. Beyond economic assistance, other cultural factors appear to support schooling. A family’s educational heritage may encourage the individual child’s persistence in his or her studies. All the African informants who were students in the Kabarole schools during the period under study had a family tradition of formal education. In most cases either the father or mother was educated through secondary level; in all cases the siblings of the informants had reached secondary level schooling or beyond, and the informants stated that education was a priority in their families regardless of the family’s economic status. While Heyneman’s (1983) studies indicate little relationship between parental education and mathematics achievement in Ugandan schools, he nevertheless notes that the “push” on the part of parents for their children to perform well in school still does not differ greatly between wealthy and impoverished families. This would imply that Ugandans believe the returns associated with educational success outweigh the considerable private costs. The experience of informants seems to confirm that this implication extends to the social costs expended to continue schooling in conflicted times. Traditional relationships may also serve to “shore up” a modern institution like the secondary school. In school settings, student self-government through an elected system of student prefects, student-organized seminars, “coaching” and peer tutoring, and student self-reliance in studying and meeting the expectations of parents and school authorities illustrate ways in which the communal values and sense of collective commitment and solidarity valued by traditional age sets are experienced today. This age comradeship experienced in the school community may account for the solidarity and support most Kabarole students exhibited toward their Langi and Acholi peers during Amin’s ruthless persecution of those ethnic groups.

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Social networks forged through ethnic and/or religious ties can be illustrated in the experience of informants. The Langi and Acholi students at St. Leo’s escaped an impending manhunt through warnings delivered by their fellow ethnics. An expatriate teacher, recalling an incident from the 1979 Liberation War, reported, “We didn’t know where the Tanzanians were, but the kids at Leo’s knew about [the bombing of Mbarara] right away … relatives and friends of people tell.”5 A Nyakasura teacher noted that serving supper at the school was complicated by the dubious identity of suspected National Resistance Army (NRA) “child soldiers” in the food line: “It would become difficult for us even to tell who was who! The boys are the same age; they all speak the same language.… We would say ‘who is that you are with?’ ‘My brother,’ [would be the response]. They would all be schoolboys or resemble schoolboys.”6 Above all, ethnic and kin-groupings are informationsharing groups (Dei 1994), and factors such as the language of communication in the home, kinship, and marriage ties remain very significant (Kajubi 1987). While perhaps too much has been made of the competition engendered between religious denominations (Kassimir 1995), several informants testify to the bonding of Roman Catholic and Church of Uganda (Anglican) Christians in a common defense against a Muslim hegemony enhanced by Amin’s preferential policies on behalf of his co-religionists. “Islam was coming in with great force; whoever converted to Islam would be given free money.… [So] the element of divisions [among Christians] was out. They were having now a common enemy, Islam.… If one had some project he was carrying, he would rather involve a fellow Christian, though not of the same denomination, other than a Muslim.”7 Head teachers, teachers, and support staff in schools provided students with a sense of comfort, identity, and community during this stressful period. Heads describe working collaboratively with their staffs to meet the challenges of the times, intervening for students in times of ethnic tension or student safety, and stressing good communication. Students credit their head teachers with “keeping calm, taking charge, telling us what was happening, doing the best they could under the circumstances, and keeping us focused on our studies”; heads are described as “paternal or maternal.” Support staff saw the school children as “their kids” and took personal responsibility and risk to secure food supplies and to implement creative financing structures. Teachers were concerned not to alarm students and so “kept a happy face” despite their own personal anxieties. Teachers lived with the students on campus,

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moved into the student residences at times of insecurity, and fled with students into the bush when violence threatened. Such accounts illustrate the influence of traditional African values like solidarity, collective responsibility, and mutual support. Students at the Kabarole schools in these years were lower class or middle class, and many were from the village. At home the students lived very traditionally: “… the parents were boss and you literally bowed down to them [in a Batooro or Bakonjo home] … tradition is very strong in the village.”8 Here we see the gerontocracy tradition alive and well. On the other hand; “In senior school … most kids live like First World students, in a sense.… In senior school you can yell at teachers and insult them or anything else you want; you can act like kids!… So you are living two lives.”9 Remarks like this suggest that traditional values may be changed under conditions of war and under the influence of modern institutions like schools. There are more examples. Several informants note the moral decline in the country and in the schools occasioned by economic and social woes. Although the phenomenon is acknowledged by a number of African informants, an expatriate teacher ’s description offers a rationale: “Things disappeared, things became very primitive … textbooks deteriorated. As textbooks got scarcer, then thefts started to take place because somebody would have a chance to get one.… That was a negative attitude … but still the country is suffering from that. But the idea of the African tradition to share and everything, that went out because there’s not enough to share.”10 Other than those whose lives were threatened by violence, people who left Uganda for “greener pastures” often were looked upon with disdain by those who remained. These emigrants were judged to have put personal gain ahead of mutuality, solidarity, and collective responsibility. A teacher informant articulated the struggle many faced: “OK, I have a chance [to leave] because I have my degree; I can go to Tanzania and work; I can go to another country and work; but then how about my family? How do I take them? Then I take them to where? Would they accept these … all the grandmothers, the mothers, and so on?”11 Josephine W. Andama (1987: 53), in introducing a detailed description of the compromises needed to survive this period, explains the parents’ dilemma eloquently. I am a parent. A concerned and educated parent. Our family lives in Uganda. To be a parent in Uganda today is to be in a crucial dilemma. As a parent you have to teach your child social values which will

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equip him to be a responsible and caring adult. But most of the qualities which have been the basis for our stable well-ordered society are no longer respected. In order to survive we have to set aside those principles which we believe are right, and without which our national and community life, even our family life, will disintegrate.

While I contend that traditional relationships that define the role of parents, family, and clan enabled schools to survive through this period of social conflict, there is no doubt that those same relationships were compromised by the very processes of war and violence. “SPIRIT OF ACCEPTANCY.” As I listened to informants describe their personal experience of the Amin/Obote II times in Kabarole schools, inevitably I asked questions like “How did you deal with discouragement? When were you most afraid? What motivated students to study through all this turmoil? Who helped you persist? Why did you stay in school? How did your parents feel? How did you feel?” Just as inevitably my informants would reply with a proverb or a saying: “War is temporary, but life is long”; “let’s continue with our mission of study, and whatever comes, whoever will die, he will die”; “after the rain, the sun shines”; “the one who struggles the best will be the one who survives”; “our slogan [at roadblocks] was ‘the beating wouldn’t kill you,’ so long as they beat you and let you go”; “well, we better continue; good days will come.”12 The dominant ethnic group in Kabarole district, the Batooro, are often characterized—even stereotyped—as a laid-back, tolerant, gentle, amenable, soft-spoken people; their detractors would call them lazy. But above all, the Batooro seem to be philosophical; they are known for their proverbs and their proverbial long-range perspective on life. “It is coming …” seems to be a favorite phrase to express what others might call an unrealizable hope, but what has been dubbed for me by one of my informants a “spirit of acceptancy.” This multi-faceted spirit that is found in Kabarole— perhaps in all of Uganda and the world—may depict an ingrained cultural value that helped people and institutions endure and survive, and may help illustrate what sort of mental habits were in evidence over this period of time. Perhaps this “spirit of acceptancy” can best be grasped by paraphrasing the metaphor offered by an informant. There is a book called Man the Manipulator. Now, as the manipulator you can be a bully, and you get things. Or you can weep—weeping willow: I weep, I ask for this or that, and you give it to me. Or I can be a climbing vine: I go to you, then to your boss, then to his boss, etc.,

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until I get what I want. Then you can be a nice guy and charm your way through. Then you can be the calculator: you calculate “now what makes so-and-so happy? So I’ll get that thing.” Now this “acceptancy,” I think, is more of a calculator and weeping willow combination, because you weep but at the same time you calculate. You accept the situation of the moment, but you know you’ll get out; you sense that this present situation may be difficult now, but it will be better, or I may find a chance to make it better.… You accept the situation in order to get into a better world. You are saying “I will hope for the future; while I breathe I hope.”13

Before launching into examples that purportedly illustrate this “spirit of acceptancy,” let me add another story, in true Batooro fashion, that will serve as a caveat to any participant observer’s facile interpretation of an attitude ingrained in another culture.

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An expatriate missionary drove to the border at Malaba to pick up his sister who came to see him in Uganda. As they drove toward Kampala the woman kept repeating “Amin is a very bad man, a very bad man.” Each time they passed through a town she would repeat this phrase. Finally the missionary said “But what do you mean?” She pointed to the unfinished buildings and said “Amin is a very bad man; he bombed all these buildings.” The missionary laughed and said “No, that’s how Africans build!”14

One lesson to be learned here—that Africans need not have all the resources in hand before commencing a project or activity—will be important to remember later with regard to policy-making. But for now, the relevant caveat is that things in another culture are not always as they appear to be. With that in mind, it is worthwhile to search for possible illustrations of this “spirit of acceptancy” in the narratives of informants. One of the expatriate teachers at St. Leo’s characterized Ugandans as having an unbelievable amount of patience. “On the whole, they don’t get excited; they’ll put up with what’s there.” To illustrate what he meant, he told a story. When the NRA took over Fort Portal, one of the rebel leaders—a commander—came and gave a talk to the St. Leo’s staff. He said when they were in the mountains they had political education every night, and there were like five theories of how to have a revolution. One is like South Africa: you have a protest; the army comes and shoots a couple of people, and the next day you have twice as many protesters. He said that doesn’t work in Uganda. You have a protest, somebody fires a gun in the air, and everybody runs away! So in the bush, he said, we eventually voted for a “protracted people’s revolution,” or some such phrase. You go to the bush and fight slowly, slowly.15

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Some informants had no alternatives—no passport, no money, family obligations—so their patience may be more an expression of resignation. “We didn’t stay because things were good.… we were resigned [to the situation]; we said ‘after all, this is as good as any other job; let me stay.’ Once you [become] resigned like that, then you become more comfortable.”16 Others report that they got used to it; “the abnormal situation of war becomes normal everyday life” (Dyregrov and Raundalen 1987: 123). “People used to fear, but that was the situation, the order of the day. You would fear but tomorrow you would go back to your work.… People felt that by giving up—saying ‘I will not do this, I will not do that because of insecurity’—you are just wasting your life for nothing.… So we had the fear, but there was no solution; you have to go on and deal with it.”17 “But the hope was there.… We usually have things that make us live. We are always expecting changes; there is always the sun rising and it is setting. So that to us is a change. And each day, you would expect something different.… So we are [going] through a rainy period in our history, but we always expect the sun to come.… And that time we have seen!”18 Sometimes “acceptancy” would mean accommodation. An African headmaster reports: “The officers in Amin’s army brought their children to school. And I think for a Headmaster, you could not say ‘well, there’s no place for you’; we could not say that! Even when the school was full, or a particular class was full-up, you tried to squeeze them in. I think that also helped us to get a little closer to them because we had their children [enrolled in school].”19 Even students could accommodate such realities. With regard to poor food, often a cause for strikes in the past, a student-informant commented: “We looked at the situation … not [just] the situation at [this school] … we looked at the situation in the whole country as it was. Because one realized the Headmaster was feeding on such food, too; it was not his fault, but it is how the economy was. So we lived with it.”20 Another student notes: “If you had very good students that could organize—say, collecting money to get a teacher—then you would be very fortunate. But if it was a school where students say ‘no, somebody must do this for us,’ then they would go on strike and start blaming somebody else. And that happened in several schools; it happened here before. But then I think students realized that strikes were not going to be the solution; we had to find a teacher…[and] pay the person ourselves.”21 Making use of local resources—using charcoal in the absence of chalk, stretching laboratory chemical supplies by conducting demonstrations in lieu of experiments, copying notes on the blackboard

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from the one surviving textbook—were other examples of accommodation. Heyneman (1983) notes similar practices utilized by Ugandan primary schools during this same period. To practice “acceptancy” it helped to have a long-range perspective. One headmaster, when explaining why closing schools was not an option in spite of the collapse of the economy and the insecurity, said: “Life had to go on! This was not a situation.… which brought everything to a standstill; this was a situation which was likely to continue for years. The best thing to do was get these children in school, [and] keep them in school.… Going back to the village was not an option; it was worse there.… The chances of getting involved in some kind of event where one would get killed, I think, was more likely to happen if one was out of school than in school. I think school gave some kind of protection.”22 An activist informant framed an educational long-range perspective as a concept held by people who opposed the Amin system. “The people said this is a man who, unfortunately, doesn’t have much education, and does not value education. So in order for us to resist, we must find a system which can struggle on regardless of him having chased people out of this country. Provided he is not after our lives, we can try our best to continue with this system. That was one good thing that people used as a method to resist Amin in one way.”23 Of course “acceptancy” has its negative aspects. Andama (1987) details the compromises of principle and morality that often accompanied parents’ attempts to survive in a corrupt environment. An Irish medical doctor who served in Uganda immediately after the war years describes an attitude developed by many people: They learned to live one day at a time, to keep their heads down and not question things. At times they learned not even to think, just to get on with the routine of living and perhaps the evil would pass. They saw their friends and relatives killed; many people simply disappeared, and those left didn’t ask questions. Eventually those who survived saw [that] their formula for life worked, i.e., they got on with their lives, kept their head down and hoped the problem would go away, and it did. One day the soldiers were gone, people weren’t being abducted and killed any more, and people could move about freely. It all obviously went to prove that if you ignore the problem, it will go away. (Clarke 1993: 273)

The “spirit of acceptancy” is an attitude, a way of being and acting, a way of coping with chaos, that helped people and schools survive in Uganda. It embraces virtues like patience and hope, Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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and strategies that require ingenuity, adaptation, compromise, and manipulation. It demands a long-range perspective, a willingness to both endure and resist, and an ability to accommodate, accept, and be resigned to reality. Some might call it fatalism or passivity; others might see it as a way Ugandans institutionalized the contradictions, turning liabilities into new sources of collective resolve (Miller 1994: 10). It is all and none of these. Remember how Africans build; things in another culture are not always as they appear to be. A former student of mine, a native Guatemalan, once remarked how Americans tend to tackle problems directly: “If a boulder is blocking the road, you attack it head-on with machines and explosives and technology. In the Third World we often lack such resources; so we go around the problem and continue on our way.” Perhaps this final metaphor explains the “spirit of acceptancy” that helped Kabarole’s schools survive. THE LEGENDARY DESIRE FOR EDUCATION. When Stephen Heyneman resurveyed some of his 1971 Ugandan school study sites ten years later, he concluded that “Ugandans do not appear to have lost any of their legendary desire for education …”(Heyneman 1983: 412). The word “legendary” can be taken literally with regard to the history of education in Uganda. In the kingdoms that pre-date colonial Uganda, it was common not only to have indigenous education in the village—where young boys and girls were initiated and trained in the customs of the clan or tribe—but also to have centralized education, epitomized in Buganda by the corps of young pages who served the kabaka while training to become future chiefs (Byrnes 1992). In Tooro, for example, the omukama sent chiefs-in-training to the Mwenge area24 of the kingdom to perfect their Rutooro language skills. When Christian missionaries arrived in Buganda, they found the elite corps of pages to be ready and willing students. While the missionaries capitalized on the chance to convert and educate these elites in Christian and Western ways, the Baganda perceived immediately the usefulness of reading and writing to their system of chiefly training (Twaddle 1993). The missionaries and colonials furthered the elite status of education by directing their best students to the teaching profession, laying the foundation for a small but highly organized school system in the kingdoms, a system recognized as one of the best in sub-Saharan Africa. While these schools could be questioned as a national system, since they were concentrated only in areas where there had been extensive missionary activity, and an excess demand for placement

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limited enrollment,25 nevertheless, education has long been perceived by Ugandans as directly linked to political and economic upward mobility and higher social status. After independence, Obote’s first government gave priority to expanding the secondary school infrastructure, thereby lending further respect for these institutions, which already enjoyed religious support, the nationalization of mission schools notwithstanding.26 Education was culturally embedded in the consciousness of many Kabarole Ugandans. One informant, speaking from his perspective as both former student and current teacher, said:

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Nyakasura was known among schools in this country … [like] Buddo … Ntare … for their good academic performance, good character, and the rest.… So we people who came in [during the 1970s] … we felt there was something to inherit, and this was the good spirit and the history of the school. So we struggled on with the history, trying to keep this—the fire—burning. So that’s where I think that [students’] self-initiative, drive and the rest came in. [Currently] our whole goal is to restore the school back to its former glory, being among the first three schools in this country. [This can be done] especially with the cooperation of the O.B.’s of the school; we have a long history. See it is our desire, maybe before we pass from this world, to lead this school to its right position.27

Other informants tied their school and the education culture to upward mobility: “Once you knew you reached the facility … it would be [possible to] graduate to Makerere. Because the people who would pass here would eventually end in Makerere, most of them. So as we joined here [we would say] ‘OK, I have a ticket to reach Makerere.’”28 “Education to me was a lifestyle. I would hear remarks of how my brother preformed well, and that was good; my sister performed very well. I’m the third-born, and so I looked forward to doing the same.”29 School traditions, school pride, and positive peer pressure—which was enhanced in some cases by family tradition and sibling rivalry—motivated families and students to invest in education, an investment that could not be looted. This culture of education did not go unchallenged, however. A headmaster reports that on one occasion a local official of the Amin government came to speak at a school assembly. When the head introduced the official, I said good things about him: that he had helped us quite a lot, had provided some of the things we needed—soap, the diesel for the lorry; maybe some rice, the cooking oil—these he had to recommend.…

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Although he was not an educated man, he could speak some broken English. So one of the things he said [was]: “Me, I was in school and I completed P-3. But now I am District Commissioner of Tooro.” So you see, that says quite a lot! You can become a very important person, you can go to the top [and] you don’t have to be well educated. And yet that is contrary to what we were saying to these children. All the time we were saying: “We are thinking about the future; we are talking about the future world, and without a good education you cannot get anywhere.…You have the ability; all you have to do is work hard at school and develop this ability in you, the potential in you. Complete your course [here at school], go to the next stage—higher school; go to the university. That may not even be enough; if you have the ability, continue for higher, further education.” This is what we said. But this [other] was the message they were getting from the leader—“You don’t have to be educated.”30

That the culture of education prevailed—and that the efforts of such educators who continued to champion the cause won the day—is confirmed in the writings of Ugandan children about the future. “For the success of their own life and personal career they put much hope and confidence in education. Their belief in education as a force to improve the general state of the country and as a stepping stone for their own improvement is very evident. In many cases going to school is the only constructive answer they can find to their difficult situation” (Raundalen et al. 1987: 92). In light of this belief in schooling and the consequent desire for education, the collapse or closure of these established Kabarole schools was unthinkable. In fact, not one of the boarding secondary schools established in Uganda before 1971 collapsed, although some had to close temporarily.31 Entrepreneurial projects; local administrative strategies; individual efforts of parents, teachers, students, and Boards of Governors; and the culture and networking of the boarding schools themselves all helped these schools survive. And what is more extraordinary still, this system—like public sector education in some other parts of the world—“involves a wide base of basic education followed by a narrower range of opportunities at each successive level in the educational hierarchy, with students having to pass rigorous exams in order to advance; large proportions fail and either have to terminate their education or move to the private sector” (Cummings and Altbach 1997: 145). The goal of the system is to “weed out” students; the goal of the students is to survive. But survive they do, by cultivating their own strategies: endurance, self-preservation, manipulation, contact-making, guarded self-disclosure. Those who survive may

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also develop unrealistic expectations of what government, the economy, or other social institutions ought to provide them as a reward for running this gauntlet.32 This latter aspect is a negative feature of the strong desire to advance through the narrow educational funnel, but one which may have been tempered somewhat by the troubles of the 1971–86 period and beyond. “It should now be clear to people that education itself is not automatically a way to wealth; people may now see how they can relate study to reality.”33 Two final illustrations attest to the legendary educational desire among Ugandans. One long-time teacher observed: “We used to keep on thinking that as school fees went up we’d only be educating the rich class. There were kids who would have to drop out.… But my impression is that there wasn’t massive dropping out.… The rich kids today tend to go to Kampala schools, because they have stupendous school fees.… But unless they are very, very poor, kids can find ways to do things and get school fees … and then the extended family assists, too.”34 Enrollment in the four Kabarole site schools, as determined by the number of students taking the annual O-level exams, held nearly constant and at full capacity for the three boarding schools during the Amin/Obote II period,35 with Mpanga increasing in enrollment dramatically after it was nationalized and expanded in 1976. Of the other post-primary education institutions in Kabarole at that time,36 the teacher training colleges operated at capacity since they charged no school fees and frequently received secondary-level students who dropped out of the boarding schools for financial reasons.37 When the “mushrooming” schools were started during Obote II, additional opportunities for secondary school placement became available for those in tight financial circumstances. In fact, several informants noted examples of kin who, for financial reasons, had finished their education in such schools.38 Not only in the survival of the established secondary schools, but in support for the unprecedented quantitative expansion of schooling, it is clear that Ugandans love education—and it shows. THE INFLUENCE OF CHURCH AND RELIGION. “For most Batooro it is difficult not being a ‘something’—Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal, Muslim. As long as it is common sense to have an institutional religious affiliation, those who share a common denomination will continue to find symbolic importance in the notion of religious community” (Kassimir 1995: 137). Religious symbolism has an obvious and evidently long-accepted place in the Kabarole schools. At Catholic-founded St. Leo’s, crucifixes, murals depicting lives of the saints, and even a statue of school patron Pope St. Leo the

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Great are apparent; Nyakasura and Kyebambe, both Protestantfounded institutions, express their religious heritage with pictures of Jesus and quotes from the Bible posted or painted in prominent places on campus. Mpanga, while lacking the heritage of a particular religious founding body, demonstrates the natural inclusion of religious symbolism in school life by incorporating into the ritual inaugurating new student prefects a public oath of service to the school community, sworn on the Bible or the Koran at the incoming prefects’ choice. Moreover, the three boarding schools each have a school chapel on their compounds, employ Catholic and Protestant chaplains on staff who conduct regular religious services, and make provision for Muslim students to worship. All schools have student organizations—Young Christian Students, Scripture Union, Muslim Students Association—that work with the student religion prefect to coordinate religious functions and make known to the administration student religious concerns. School publications attest to the active presence of these societies in school life throughout the period. Traditional African wisdom and spirituality are manifested in the frequent use of Batooro proverbs in school publications and in metaphorical explanations frequently employed by informants, as well as in the veneration of ancestors in memory and/or ritual. For the Kabarole school communities, Dei’s (1994: 14) comments about the effect of African aesthetics and spirituality—and one might add the influence of Christian and Muslim religion, too—“serve as a potent force in the social conduct of Africans as they struggle with the fundamental problems of everyday living.” Trying to distinguish which traditions influence what practices, however, is slippery. The psychological aspects of belonging to a church are complicated by other loyalties that cross social categories of region, tribe, class, gender, and clan (Kassimir 1995). How might one distinguish the influence of Christian teachings of faith, hope, or redemption from traditional cultural values of “acceptancy,” ancestor veneration, or proverbs? Does the moral decline experienced in society and schools during the Amin/ Obote II period indicate an erosion of Christian/Muslim religious morals or African traditional values? Clerics and elders both expressed dismay that neither religion nor tradition were sufficient deterrents to the sometimes despicable behavior manifested by those struggling to survive; desperation and despair often carried the day. On the other hand, when informants were questioned about what might have motivated the risks they took to hide Acholi and Langi who were being purged by Amin, they quoted

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neither doctrine nor proverbs; most looked blankly and said something like “but they were our colleagues; they were our classmates; they were our students.” Clearly, there was an obligation to colleague, friend, or charge that sprang to action without much prior reflection. Centuries of African tradition and more than one hundred years of Christian/Muslim influence provide a legacy requiring more systematic study before one might attempt to ascribe a particular action to a particular tradition. The influence of church and religion on the schools was more than moral, however. The church exercised significant structural influence that helped schools survive. Unlike the situation found in American publicly supported schools, religion and religious values are constitutive to Ugandan education. Religious Studies is a compulsory subject in the Ordinary-level secondary school curriculum, and Divinity qualifies as a subject combination in the Advanced-level syllabus. The majority of secondary schools in Uganda were founded by private organizations, and the bulk of these were religious-based organizations.39 In many cases the foundation bodies legally own the land and buildings on and in which the government-aided school is conducted, besides holding four seats on the Board of Governors exclusive of the chairman’s seat. Such power can be used judiciously. A government education minister recalled a case in Mbarara involving Obote’s minister of state: “He tried to cause problems in Maryhill S.S. And here the bishop came up and said ‘Look, you can pull out your girls. The school was built by us [i.e., the foundation body, the Catholic Church]; the land is ours. Goodbye. Take your girls and your teachers, whatever you like, and leave us in peace.’… But on the whole, there was no alternative secondary school for girls [in Mbarara], and [the minister] lost his job.… Even during Amin there was a bit of harassment. I remember there had to be changes at [one school] … the Sister who was there was replaced by a lay lady. At some point the Cardinal had to come in and she [i.e., the laywoman] was removed. In fact, I remember what they did was to organize and put all her things on the lorry, and drive her to the Ministry of Education and say ‘Bye!’”40 These situations illustrate several points. Church leadership was a powerful voice of resistance to the government, even to the Amin/Obote dictatorships. The risks were great,41 but churches were often the only institutions to speak out corporately against government, revealing and condemning injustices. In the minds of most Ugandans, the churches were institutions that were respected, that were perceived to be relatively corruption-free, and that

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offered a sense of stability in the midst of chaos. Furthermore, the churches sponsored an alternate social infrastructure—schools, health care facilities, community organizations, development projects—that government could not replicate in some areas. Hence, even a military government like Amin’s was forced to compromise on occasion. Churches and church people were generally trusted. Informants testify42—and other outside sources confirm— (Kassimir 1995) that the July 1985 surrender of the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) at Muhote barracks, Fort Portal, was negotiated by clerics on the Catholic Diocesan compound at Virika.43 And finally, as institutions with international contacts, the churches established financial accounts outside the country— often in Kenya—where monies could be deposited and school and other supplies could be purchased and smuggled into Uganda overland.44 Church-founded schools, therefore, benefited from association with these respected institutions. There are some clarifications that need to be made regarding the church/religion-school connections, however. While student and teacher informants frequently commented that the churches supported the schools financially and otherwise,45 clarification with school heads and church officials reveals the limited extent of such support.46 Church farms supplied local produce to the boarding schools at times; however, little or no direct monetary funding occurred beyond a small loan, an in-kind donation or support for grant funding from an external donor. Roman Catholic and COU organizations cooperated extensively to give moral support to all schools, especially in pastoral planning for youth-related religious events, promoting chaplaincy services, and so forth. “This was a situation where you had to forget about your religious differences, tribal differences, and what have you, and get down to business in order to save the situation.”47 With regard to the actual involvement of foundation bodies in the affairs of their founded schools after nationalization, an informant who is himself Protestant and a parent and board member in both Catholic- and Protestantfounded schools, remarked: “The Catholic Church remained with one hand in, assisting … their original [mission-founded] schools, whereas the Protestant Church pulled out almost wholly. And I wouldn’t hide this. I have told the leaders of the [Protestant] church ‘You did poorly. Even now you don’t see your original schools, the schools you started, as your institutions.’ This was a favorable factor on the Catholic side. St. Leo’s did in fact benefit [from its Catholic connection].”48 His main contention was that the Catholics continued to prepare personnel—clergy and religious—to teach in

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their schools and were able to retain some expatriate missionaries as teachers; the Protestants did not do this. Overall, the Christian religious connection with the schools was most frequently articulated by informants in expressions of personal faith, such as “God saw me through.”49 There was also the personal conviction to live a moral life based on religious values, the comfort of belonging to something more stable than the nation-state, and the ritual activities such as worship and shared prayer. “People became attached to God!… that’s when the churches would be filled to capacity. Even those people who used not to pray, at that time people were going to church.”50 Real religious faith is not found so much in the tangible as it is in the ability to see beyond bleak circumstances and to imagine possibilities. In sustaining many of those who were dedicated to preserving education, religion made a definite contribution to the continuity and stability of schools in a time of chaos. These ingrained cultural values—the Afrocentric themes, the parent/family/clan connections, the “spirit of acceptancy,” Ugandan’s legendary desire for education, and the influence of church and religion—provide some answers to the critical question “Are there traditional relationships that serve to ‘shore up’ a modern institution like the secondary school?” Yes, there are, and schools in Uganda survived because of them. The story is incomplete, however, without detailing a final conditionality that supported the survival of Kabarole’s secondary schools. One aspect of that condition is raised by Furley (1988: 183) in assessing the effect of the Amin years on education. He wonders “whether climbing the educational ladder to collect qualifications was either feasible or worthwhile” for a Ugandan student. The other factor—what advantages might Kabarole District have had over other areas of Uganda—also played a significant part in school survival there. In discussing opportunity structures that contributed to school survival, the latter factor is considered first, before turning to the former.

Opportunity Structures Geography was an advantage for Kabarole District, but not in the traditional sense. Most geographers would normally categorize an area as advantaged by noting its physical centrality, its access to transportation and trade routes, the diversity of its industry, its balance of urban and rural dwellers, the vigor of its political and cultural life, the availability of its education and health services, and its climate. In times of civil war, the tables are turned. Kabarole’s advantages included geographic isolation, a marginal transportation infrastructure, remoteness from trade routes, a subsistence

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agricultural economy with minimal, mainly cottage industries, and one major town inhabited by only 5 percent of the district’s total population, the predominate ethnic group being the nonpolitical Batooro. While Kabarole matches the capital district of Kampala in population and number of schools,51 the comparison ends there; Kabarole was non-strategic and of little interest to the central government. Furthermore, while informants indicate that the magendo economy was surely present, they confirm the conclusions of several other observers that this parallel cash economy did not develop to the same extent in Kabarole as in other areas of the country (O’Connor 1988). On the positive side, Kabarole’s climate and soil fertility is “second to none” in Uganda. Furthermore, the hasty withdrawal of Amin’s army in 1979—without executing the wholesale looting of Fort Portal that was reportedly planned—and the surrender of the army barracks in 1985 without a battle and siege provided Kabarole relative peace compared to some other areas of the country. Assistance from ancillary bodies like the Kabarole Public Library, which functioned uninterruptedly, private-sector transport providers, and suppliers who extended financial credit to schools was an advantage, as was the support rendered during Obote II by external donors and NGOs. That being said, the more germane question is why a student would want to struggle through the education system under the circumstances of war and chaos; what was the perceived reward? It has been common practice, particularly among external donor institutions, to evaluate educational effectiveness, success, or reward by paying attention to issues of access, equity, quality, and efficiency, and to look to outcomes, which are usually reported quantitatively, when recommending and monitoring public policy priorities (World Bank 1995). By this yardstick, there should be little motivation for secondary school study in Uganda. In “1972 it was reckoned that some thirty percent of leavers from government-aided secondary schools were neither in employment nor in training. By 1975, of some 8000 Standard Four school certificate leavers, less than fifty percent [had] found employment ‘commensurate with their qualifications and aspirations’” (Furley 1988: 186). Yet secondary schools experienced a situation of excess demand for places. Why? Other studies offer evidence of reward. Heyneman (1980: 406) cites a study by Currie, which “finds that performance in school appears to be the single most important predictor of success in the Ugandan labor market.” In assessing the persistent demand for education in Uganda from 1971 to 1981, Heyneman (1983: 406–407) reports:

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Employment in Uganda has always been dependent upon the academic performance on the PLE, and for the twelve percent who gain entry to secondary school, upon performance on the “O level” examinations at the end of their fourth secondary year … [W]ith the exodus of all Asian and many Ugandan entrepreneurs and middle-level manpower, employment for secondary, as opposed to school leavers with less than secondary school, has remained competitive despite economic stagnation.… The most powerful determinant of occupational attainment was said to be the level of an individual’s past academic performance; it was more powerful than either sex or social status. This was attributable to two things: the high degree to which educational qualifications have been used as formal determinants of labor market entry; and the degree to which educational attainment itself is determined by academic performance rather than by quotas or by political recommendations.

This situation certainly contrasts to that of Cambodia where “most local cadres considered higher education as useless and people who had obtained it less reliable than the uneducated.… The proper mien was to tread a very fine line between ignorance and reluctant admission of a very small amount of skill” (Duggan 1996: 365). Even in countries like Lebanon and Northern Ireland, where education survived through periods of war and social turmoil, researchers found secondary students frustrated. “The war and the ongoing problems of staying alive prohibited young people from thinking about a future at all. A [Lebanese] sixteen-yearold asked why he should get an education: ‘What do we have next?’ he wondered. The only place to go to college is Beirut, and that, he said, was a ‘nightmare.’ ‘The end is the same,’ he added, ‘frustration, unemployment, and no future.’… Any excuse would do for skipping school days at a time. The high school population declined dramatically during the war” (Assal and Farrell 1992: 282–283). “In a similar way, at the beginning of the period of political unrest in Northern Ireland and in the early 1970s, the vast majority of schools did tend to stay open on a daily basis but did suffer from a marked drop in attendance rates.… Official statistics for the whole of Northern Ireland indicated that, in the secondary sector which tended to be most affected, attendance was probably around 70 percent” (Cairns 1996: 80). Somehow, Ugandan children still managed to hope; the Kabarole schools remained full. But while excess demand may account for some of this phenomena, the influence of parents and intervention by the extended family were influential in thwarting the idea of some boys to join the National Resistance Army (NRA) in

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the bush, too. “Definitely we used to get discouraged.… I remember one time, we were almost saying ‘why don’t we leave [school] and join the NRA instead of struggling here? Every minute bullets around our head; we may be killed anytime!’ But this intent would not be allowed by our parents; our parents were very strict. Other students joined … [but] we had pressure from our parents.”52 “[When] we missed exams in 1985 … we lost hope. A number of my former classmates joined the army with Museveni to fight the government. And I had also passed a thought about it. In the end I withdrew … at the request of my family. My mother said no, that is not a wise idea … and other relatives. So they worked around the clerk and said: ‘no, don’t enlist this man.’ Of course, those who were recruiting were people from my area! [chuckle] They wouldn’t accept me, so I gave up and accepted it … [but] I wanted to go.”53 Kariuki was doing well at school—I paid his school fees. In him we saw the hope for the future. There is nothing like education.

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A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1967/1995)

Perhaps this excerpt from East African literature reveals more succinctly the place of education in the African opportunity structure. No informant quoted employment statistics to explain the value of an education. All expressed belief and hope for a better, even bright, future once endowed with an education; in the aggregate, their beliefs and hopes define the role of an educated child in the family. Education offers more than a job possibility. It endows the child with a status and prestige that is shared by his or her family. Education is a long-term investment; if not here, if not now, eventually this certification, this credentialing, will show a return in a hiring preference or as a foundation for future skill development here or abroad. Such an opportunity will enable the child to assist other siblings financially, and to provide for the parents in their old age. To speak, read, and write English well is a badge of honor, as well as a safety net. The educated child is equipped to negotiate with authorities—courts, government, business—to adjudicate potential problems. The educated child can serve the country in government, can serve the church in ministry, can serve the nation in education. While education is no longer seen as an automatic guarantee of wealth, the very fact of excess demand and the progressively narrower route of advancement through the certification of external exams engender an awe and reverence that the observer need experience to believe. One informant who

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had studied in the United States put it this way: “[In the U.S.] it is the right of every member, every citizen to have an education, but here it is a struggle. And so people who manage to get it, they treasure that as a very important thing.… For us here you have to struggle; if you have no fees, you don’t get that right, even if it is your right.”54 The hoped-for social rewards to be accrued by the educated child and his or her family and extended family—even absent immediate financial reward—were sufficient motivation to conquer the hurdles of war, poverty, violence, and fear. Ideals such as these helped schools survive.55 The conditionalities that sustained Kabarole secondary schools during periods of conflict were gleaned from the life stories of informants and arranged in categories that made sense to me. They have the advantage of an outside participant observer attempting to make sense of what African voices reveal, and the advantage of portraying the school experience of real people— students, parents, teachers, administrators—who were there and lived through the times. One need not wonder “Where have all the people gone?” in this educational and organizational history. But is that all there is? Should this study be consigned to oblivion or irrelevance—“well, that’s history!”—as is often exclaimed in the popular parlance? Or should future generations be reminded that “those who forget the past are bound to repeat it?” Barbara Finkelstein (1992: 256) suggests a middle road, concluding that history is simultaneously identified as irrelevant and powerful and that historians function as mythmakers in society. By analyzing the past, they reveal meaning and make sense of reality. “Through the recovery of the past, historians can sow seeds of hope and/or despair, encourage and/or discourage particular courses of action, sound political or moral calls, or otherwise shape the forms that future imagining can take.” The final chapter of this volume explores what the history of Kabarole’s schools may contribute to this imagining. By relating this study to research of organizational survival, institutional persistence, and public-private responsibility for education, the results suggest areas in which education planners and policy makers in Uganda may capitalize on the baseline conditionalities that support school survival.

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Notes 1. *D. Byamukama, personal interview, 26 August 1997; *A. Kagenda, personal interview, 11 September 1997. 2. *T. Kiiza, personal interview, 16 September 1997. 3. *B. Jasani, personal interview, 27 August 1997. 4. *R. Muhumuza, focus group interview, 7 August 1997. 5. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. 6. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 7. Ibid. 8. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. *D. Byamukama, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 12. *S. Tiwangye, personal interview, 21 August 1997; *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997; *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997; *C. Kaijuka, personal interview, 26 August 1997; *A. Byakuyamba, personal interview, 28 August 1997. 13. *T. Kiiza, personal interview, 16 September 1997. 14. Ibid. 15. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. 16. *D. Byamukama, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 17. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997. 18. *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 19. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 20. *C. Kaijuka, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 21. *D. Rutabisa, personal interview, 29 August 1997. 22. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 23. *A. Byakuyamba, personal interview, 28 August 1997. 24. Now a county in Kabarole District. 25. Furley (1988), who gives a good history of the colonial educational heritage in Uganda, reports that despite two five-year plans, only 29 percent of the age cohort was enrolled in primary school in 1971. More recent reports estimate that 53 percent of school-age children are enrolled in school and that approximately 50 percent of those who do start school drop out before they have mastered basic reading, writing, and arithmetic (USAID 1995). State Minister for Primary Education Brigadier Jim Muhwezi, speaking at a school fund-raising event in mid-1997, claimed that 90 percent of the children six to twelve years of age attend school under the Universal Primary Education Program; 54 percent of children complete Primary Seven, 35 percent go to secondary school, 15 percent to higher, and only 5 percent to the university (Bishanga 1997). 26. The 1964 Education Act aimed to reorganize the ownership and management of the schools; the 1970 Education Act completed the process. For a fuller description, see Furley (1988: 177). 27. *C. Kaijuka, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 28. *D. Byamukama, personal interview, 26 August 1997. 29. *D. Rutabisa, personal interview, 29 August 1997. 30. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 31. *A. Kagenda, personal interview, 11 September 1997; *C. Mbanga, personal interview, 18 September 1997.

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32. See Mazrui (1975: 238) regarding psychological consequences for a child who has had to struggle too hard for his education. 33. *J. Wamara, personal interview, 14 October 1997. 34. *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. 35. Kyebambe enrollment figures show some fluctuation in the early 1970s, but this may be more reflective of facilities expansion—the first IDA project was completed in 1970. 36. St. Mary’s Seminary and St. Maria Goretti Secondary School were private; Kinyamasika Teacher Training College (TTC), Canon Apolo TTC, and St. Augustine’s TTC were government sponsored and supported Grade II teacher training facilities; Kichwamba Technical College was for post-primary technical training. 37. *Sr. Marie Agnella, personal interview, 27 October 1997; *K. Rwabuhinga, personal interview, 25 September 1997. 38. *B. Jasani, personal interview, 27 August 1997; *A. Kagenda, personal interview, 11 September 1997. 39. Maloba (1991: 41) lists only four truly government-founded secondary schools in Uganda—Mbale Senior Secondary School, Kololo Senior Secondary School, Old Kampala Senior Secondary School, and Kitante Hill School—a point to be reiterated when discussing public-private educational delivery. 40. *C. Mbanga, personal interview, 18 September 1997. 41. Church of Uganda Archbishop Luwum was murdered in 1977, presumably by Amin’s forces. 42. *A. Byakuyamba, personal interview, 28 August 1997; *J. Nicastro, personal interview, 6 June 1997. 43. This saved Fort Portal and Kabarole from suffering the bombing and infrastructure destruction that occurred in Mbarara and Masaka where the NRA laid siege to capture those UNLA-controlled barracks. 44. *E. Kamega, personal interview, 8 September 1997; *T. Kiiza, personal interview, 16 September 1997. 45. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997; *G. Tigaikara, personal interview, 5 September 1997. 46. *A. Byakuyamba, personal interview, 28 August 1997; *E. Kamega, personal interview, 8 September 1997; *T. Kiiza, personal interview, 16 September 1997. 47. *A. Byakuyamba, personal interview, 28 August 1997. 48. *A. Kagenda, personal interview, 11 September 1997. 49. *M. Nyarwa, personal interview, 26 September 1997. 50. *S. Tiwangye, personal interview, 21 August 1997. 51. The 1995/96 Uganda Districts Information Handbook lists Kabarole District with 746,800 people served by 309 primary schools, thirty-two secondary schools, and three teacher training colleges; Kampala District lists a population of 774, 241 people served by 308 primary schools, thirty-six secondary schools, and three teacher training colleges (Rwabwoogo 1995). 52. *E. Kadhamali, personal interview, 30 August 1997. 53. *J. Kagoya, personal interview, 8 August 1997. 54. *Sr. Marie Agnella, personal interview, 27 October 1997. 55. In contrast, Heyneman (1997: 29) attributes the general lack of a desire to learn among American children to failed public policy toward children: “In general, children in the United States are provided with too much opportunity and too few obligations; too much choice and too few responsibilities.”

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– Seven –

DISCUSSION A View toward the Future

o

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T

his study of the government-aided secondary schools in Kabarole District, Uganda, concentrating on the period from 1971 to 1986, reveals aspects of the internal functioning of schools, the organization of everyday school realities, and teachers’ and students’ lives and experiences. For educational historians, the study details valuable information about the internality of school workings in moments of conflict or rupture (Novoa 1995). Some educational historians studying the internalities of school workings—that is, what happens within the “black box” of schools under stress— might utilize such information to investigate a number of interests, for example, “the ways in which curriculum entrenches or legitimizes inequality, or examinations reinforce and justify patterns of social stratification, or textbooks privilege some perspectives over others” (Samoff 1996: 7). The interest of this study, however, is internal school functioning—specifically, how and why these schools survived, and what might be learned from this experience. Why is this important? Education is a process, and as Samoff (1996: 6–7) states, “[P]rocess is itself an output. Schools select and socialize. For both society and individuals, frequently schooling matters more than learning. While specific circumstances of course vary, the education system everywhere is central to constructing and maintaining a particular sort of social order.” Understanding how and why a particular system of schools survives, when under similar circumstances other school systems collapse, is important. In practice, however,

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education is interactive, replete with discontinuities, and always locally contingent, so there is a danger here to generalize from what may be unique experiences. But given the diversity of education experiences, it is often necessary to draw lessons from individual cases to develop constructs, craft interpretations, and make recommendations of potentially wider applicability. Drawing conclusions from an individual case study is not in itself problematic; what must be remembered is that any such claims under the circumstances ought to be tentative and conditional (Samoff 1996). This study, using a research strategy focused on context and interactions, provides a look at the Ugandan education system through the eyes of a particular set of participants in a particular setting. The results are necessarily partial but significant in that they are baseline; they may be regularly redefined by further research and as they are used to guide actions. This study may contribute to thinking about the global implications of a large number of discrete local processes, may privilege the perspective of the insider, and may foster innovative social science research. If indeed for many “schooling matters more than learning,” the lessons that can be drawn from maintaining schooling during times of conflict may contribute to planning effective schooling that meets the demands, abilities, and objectives of parents, students, and society.

Did the Schools Survive? Interpretations Did the schools survive? The answer to that question is contingent on one’s definition of survival. If to survive means “to remain or continue in existence or use,” or “to endure or live through (an affliction, adversity, misery, etc.),” then, empirically, the schools survived. If the connotation “to get along or remain healthy, happy, and unaffected in spite of some occurrence” is used, then the answer may not be given so readily (Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary 1992). While the question of educational survival in Uganda is indeed an evasive topic and not the subject under direct consideration, school survival is not unaffected by the assumptions and practical implications of a particular interpretation. Where history is concerned, meaning varies with the beholder. For example, there is much in the narrative of the Kabarole schools that might bring to mind a discussion of “permanently failing” organizations, that is, those characterized by “high persistence” and “low performance.”1 An important focus of organizational histories is interpreting the meaning of responses to challenges. Hence, it is

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important to briefly consider at least three interpretations of Ugandan schools’ history through the conflicted times from 1971 to 1986. One general interpretation considers Uganda’s schools as disabled war veterans. The deterioration of service provision in Uganda’s schools is a fact taken for granted in light of the cumulative effects of war, economic disaster, infrastructure decay, lack of administrative capacity, and moral decline. Some schools suffered heavy damage or looting, schools in depopulated areas were abandoned, and most schools suffered from widespread insecurity. Hyperinflation, stagnant salaries, insufficient capitation grants, reduction in force, and deteriorating conditions of service induced an exodus of intellectuals for “greener pastures.” Lack of materials, supplies, books, and textbooks contributed to a loss of scholarship and intellectual curiosity, paving the way for a decline in written and spoken English and the lowering of academic standards. Lack of administrative capacity at all levels compromised the professional preparation of teachers and heads, the regularity of school inspection and monitoring, the systematic posting of teaching personnel, and timely salary remuneration. The resultant effect on schools included poor management, rapid turnover of Heads, corruption and abuse of power, lack of accountability, de facto haphazard decentralization, and a decline in morale and morals in schools. Schools have not yet recovered; perhaps they are beyond recovery. This scenario has been dubbed an organizational pathology, with the observation that if any significant headway is to be made in arresting and removing such pathology from the system, the employing organization must demonstrate its own accountability just as employees are expected to demonstrate theirs. There is real fear that the discipline required for such accountability has been absent too long and that strategies for improvement ignore the cumulative effect and long-term moral impact on the wage-earning class (Munene 1995). This interpretation parallels Furley’s (1988: 194) general conclusion: “[T]he education system and structure survived, but it was almost a skeleton; fleshing it out in subsequent years has been painfully slow.” The assumption is that the system has been sorely wounded and the battle for recovery must be fought on several fronts. The practical implication is that the patient has not died—yet; strategies proposed to remedy the situation must be comprehensive. The prognosis seems questionable. Another interpretation regards the story of Uganda’s secondary schools since 1971 as a tale of slow death: irreversible decline, erosion of standards, and vanishing glory. Interpreting the schools’

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recent history as a persistent process of decline may result from a comparison of the schools during and after their glory days. One informant, a long-time board member, school head and parent, wrote a note to follow up his conversation that captures this comparison: “[In our initial conversation] we had discovered that education was saved by the parents and the foundation body. Although we say it was saved, it was left maimed. Standards dropped considerably. Look at our so-called elite; how [do] they conduct themselves? Corruption of all forms has become a way of life! How about academic standards? A junior secondary student of the 1950s knew more than an HSC2 student of today, who cannot write legibly, express himself clearly and conduct himself gentlemanly.”3 Others lament the fact that when experienced teachers left precipitously, “crash course” teachers, poorly trained teachers, or unqualified teachers replaced them. Even those who were graduates of teacher training institutions were classed as “A-level failures and university rejects,” reflecting a perceived decline in the status of the profession from colonial and mission times when the best students were encouraged to pursue a career in education. Heyneman and Jamison (1980) found that three school variables—teachers’ English language skills, textbook availability, and physical facilities—had positive and consistent effects on all cognitive tests. The fact that examination results have declined and instances of cheating on examinations have been widely reported underscores the cumulative deterioration of moral, professional, and physical standards. Older and not-so-much older informants offer that “students today are not the same as they used to be. Students are less interested in hard work, less respectful, less competitive, more demanding of teachers, and more distracted by material goods.” In fact, the rapid expansion of secondary schooling has contributed to more regionalization in student catchment areas and stratification in school quality and performance caused by disparate economic, regional, and historical factors. Competition for school entrance varies markedly from school to school, without, however, ameliorating “excess demand” for placement. While “old boys” and “old girls” seem to remember even the “bad old days” with some glory, current students are quick to note that they have known little else but war and its aftereffects during their school days. While it is sobering to think of Ugandan secondary schools in light of their past glories, one assumption inherent in this interpretation is that the “good old days” were the best days. The practical implications are several: concede that many secondary schools have become “permanently failing” institutions, existing more on

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paper than in reality; return to the days of elite, quality secondary education; abandon current attempts to universalize educational opportunity. This prognosis, if politically feasible, seems shortterm at best. Comparing the post-war Ugandan schools with their vintage version may induce a sense of loss, but attending to positive factors forthcoming from the evolution of education over this time produces a more favorable impression of survival. The Africanization of school faculties and administrations not only put de facto control of the schools into African hands, but eventually spurred expansion of the National Teacher Colleges, revision of the teacher training courses, and involvement of the Ministry of Education (MOE) with the university in the preparation of teachers. Where Africanization was planned, like at St. Leo’s College, the results were less traumatic than where the change of administrations was precipitous and unplanned. The curriculum was Africanized, and self-help projects—non-existent in the 1970s, tolerated through the 1980s, and considered normative by the 1990s—brought an expectation of self-reliance and practical responsibilities to school life, though not without student and/or parent resistance in some cases. The PTAs, which arose to supplement gaps in government aid, have evolved into active, involved, and influential—though extra-legal—entities. They have come to play a necessary and tolerated role in the funding, management, and governance of schools, rivaling—and sometimes becoming more active and effective in the management of schools than—the Boards of Governors or the MOE. While lack of staffing in the over-centralized Ministry of Education seemed to leave schools rudderless for a long time, the foundation bodies frequently became more active in the governance of schools as a result, and “old boys” and “old girls,” the civic and business community, parents, and external donors initiated and embraced fund-raising projects for school expansion and improvement. Some people remember past glories as a standard that they hope to achieve again. Even adversity has its silver lining in the eyes of some observers. Students—who at one time were considered “spoiled,” demanding everything be provided for them—now seem more self-reliant and inventive, especially in garnering school fees and coping with a declining standard of living. Teachers indicated that being forced to use “local resources” in lieu of typical supplies helped them become more creative in their teaching. Interschool collaboration and mutual support among secondary school administrators and between and among the teacher training colleges

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(TTCs) and secondary schools became a norm rather than an exception. It became clear, too, that education per se was not an automatic path to wealth, which helped to moderate the once arrogant elitism of some graduates. Even the unplanned expansion and increase in the number of schools in the 1980s—fraught with inadequate provision of facilities, poor management and administration, irrational location, poor staffing and conditions of service, inability to meet curriculum demands—began the transformation from an exclusive education system inherited from the colonial past to a more inclusive system with the guiding principle of “education for all.” This shift from elite education to mass education, from expensive boarding schools to community-based day schools, from predominately single-sex schools to mixed schools motivated a surge of local support for schools and began to transform the shape of Ugandan education fundamentally. The 1987 Education Policy Review Commission (EPRC) began an extensive consultation process that resulted in a White Paper (Government of Uganda 1992) that became the official government policy document on education. A conclusion basic to this interpretation is that the system survived but was fundamentally transformed in the process. The practical implications demand “a redesign of the education system … [so that it could be] properly tuned to and more adequately fulfill the needs and aspirations of Ugandans and … function as a powerful instrument for society’s progress” (Irumba 1995). This prognosis, which may be politically feasible because of the extensive consultation involved in its formulation, seems long-term, incremental, and possible. Did the schools survive? It is a matter of interpretation. Miller (1994) notes in his study of the history of an evangelical mission in Ghana that to the missionaries the troubles must have seemed endless and the record of success—measured by number of converts—meager. Yet in the final analysis they did not fail, either on their own terms or by any objective assessment of their eventual impact on Ghanaian culture. In fact, Miller suggests “organizational stubbornness” as a better description of their persistence than “organizational failure.” Though troubled by dilemmas, the missionaries were able to find the energy and determination to press ahead; an eventual alignment of beliefs, interests, and circumstances ensured their place in the history of Ghana. The Ugandan situation may be interpreted in a similar manner. The schools faced unbelievable difficulties, and all traditional benchmarks of effective education declined. Nevertheless, the school

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people pressed ahead and, through an alignment of circumstances, ingrained cultural values, and perceived opportunities, persevered in a situation that collapsed other systems. Perhaps the reader must test an assumption here about the evolution of Ugandan education during a period of fundamental change. As in the metaphor of the expatriate lady visiting Uganda: “Is the ragged, unfinished building bombed out, destroyed? Or is that the way Africans build?”

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Organizational Survival The topic of school survival is nearly absent in educational literature,4 so studies of organizational survival in general need to be tapped to reveal which school strategies and practices utilized in Uganda may conform to generalizations about how institutions survive. Pfeffer and Salancik (1978), for example, identify an organization’s ability to acquire and maintain resources, manage interest groups, adapt to changes in the environment, diversify, maintain stability and legitimacy, and so forth, as universal practices for survival. Weick (1976) speaks about systems approaches in education, noting that certain functions of survival can be served by having a system in which elements are “loosely coupled.” Purkey and Smith (1983) offer insights into processes by which a given school climate develops and is maintained. Certain strategies and practices found in the site schools, therefore, may be reinforced by comparing them with successful procedures generalized in the literature. The findings of one case study of school survival in rural Uganda hardly can confirm aspects of organizational theory; employing such information to advance compelling arguments in favor of one interpretation or recommendation over another would be generalizing from what may be unique experiences. However, the particular experience of Kabarole’s schools may illustrate congruence with established principles of organizational survival. Such illustrations may serve to demonstrate the universality of some theoretical constructs because it is most likely that the informants were not schooled in organizational theory in any formal way prior to implementing strategies to maintain their schools. Illustrating where Ugandan strategies and practices are congruent with broader theoretical findings supporting organizational survival, then, may lend credence to certain practices over others. Such knowledge may assist educational planners and policy makers in future decision-making,

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although contingency theory reminds us that the appropriate style of behavior depends on the situation.

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Strategies and Practices Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) discuss how organizations manage to survive. The key to organizational survival is the ability to acquire and maintain resources, and this depends on managing the interest groups upon which the organization depends for resources and support. Organizations are linked to their environments, but this environment is not dependable. When environments change, organizations face the prospect either of not surviving or of changing in response to these environmental factors. Future adaptability requires the ability to change and the discretion to modify actions. On the other hand, there are requirements for certainty and stability that necessitate the development of interorganizational structures of coordinated behaviors; this requires the focal organization to surrender some of its own autonomy. The evolution of “de facto school governing structures,” including parents, foundation bodies, and the Ministry of Education, illustrates this requirement. Legitimacy is necessary for the continued survival of an organization. To survive, the organization need only maintain a coalition of parties who contribute the resources and support necessary for it to continue its activities—activities which themselves are outcomes desired by the coalition members. The coalition of PTA, Boards of Governors, and the Ministry of Education fulfilled this function for the schools. These participants were partially included in the organization through their activities, and the organization survived to the extent that the activities included were sufficient for the organization to maintain itself. Diversification represents an attempt to reduce dependence on a single customer, and can be viewed as an organizational response to the environment. Diversification buffers the organization against the potential effects of dependence. The merger of two privately controlled secondary schools—Mpanga S. S. and Kabarole High School—set the stage for growth and the eventual nationalization by the government of this successful private entity. Growth enhances an organization’s survival potential because it provides additional stability and reduces uncertainty. Kyebambe, St. Leo’s, and Mpanga expanded to include the Higher School Certificate during the conflicted period under study, even though this was accomplished without the requisite resources in place. The expanded enrollment and enhanced status that the organizations accrued provided a cushion against organizational failure during that uncertain time.

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Achieving stability is in the interest of all coalition participants. If participants have come to rely on an organization for performances or resources and these become unpredictable, the benefits of participation in the coalition diminish, and it is in the interest of all participants either to abandon the unstable organization for a more stable coalition, or to stabilize the uncertainty confronting the organization. Such reasons may have motivated the decisions to merge or expand in the site schools (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978). Organizations cannot survive if they are not responsive to the demands from environments, but not every environmental demand needs to be met. The interesting issue becomes how organizations comply with or attempt to avoid influence. St. Leo’s attempted to accommodate Amin’s government and troops by offering the campus as a site for army sports competition, training programs, and official events; they felt this familiarity with military and government officials helped them win influence. Kyebambe avoided any unnecessary contact with the world outside the compound; they felt this approach protected their girls from potential exploitation by the army and government, whom they perceived as an undisciplined lot, and helped preserve their legitimacy. Mpanga informants relate their inability to control the situation of their environment; at times they were forced to tolerate army incursions and/or intimidation, and this affected the quality, though not the number, of students they attracted. While it is necessary to attend to contextual variables, every event confronting an organization does not necessarily affect it. The term “loosely coupled” has been used to denote the relationship between elements in a social system such as those between organizations. Organizations are only loosely coupled with their environments. Loose-coupling is an important safety device for organizational survival (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; Weick 1976). In Weick’s (1976) portrayal of educational organizations as loosely coupled systems, he describes potential functions and dysfunctions of loose coupling that illuminate the relationships observed between and among site schools in this study and with other coalition partners in the schools’ environment. Certain functions of survival can be served by having a system in which elements are loosely coupled. Loose coupling allows some portions of an organization to persist; it lowers the probability that the organization will have to—or be made to—respond to each little change in the environment that occurs. For example, the seven turnovers in government in Uganda between 1971 and 1986, and the consequent changes in Ministry of Education (MOE) personnel, had far

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less of an effect on the site schools than did the single change of a school head. A loosely coupled system may be a good system for localized adaptation; when the identity, uniqueness, and separateness of elements is preserved, the system potentially can retain a greater number of mutations and novel situations. The variety of entrepreneurial projects developed by the Kabarole schools witnesses to this effect. If there is a breakdown in one portion of a loosely coupled system, then this breakdown is sealed off and does not affect other aspects of the organization. Maloba (1991) notes that the overly centralized administration of secondary schools in Uganda was managed by three senior officers at MOE headquarters for the entire country. This “lack of capacity”5 may have sparked questions about the relevance of government to the life of the schools, but it hardly threatened their survival. Since some of the most important elements in educational organizations are teachers, classrooms, principals, and so forth, it may be consequential that in a loosely coupled system there is more room available for selfdetermination by the actors. However, this factor may also have exacerbated problems associated with “part-timing”: absenteeism, poor class preparation, failure to cover the syllabus, “coaching.” Finally, a loosely coupled system should be relatively inexpensive to run because it takes time and money to coordinate people, and time and money were in scant supply during the period under consideration. On the other hand, organizations that are only loosely coupled produce situations in which the action of one element bears little predictable relationship to the action of other elements; in this situation, loose-coupling may be perceived as a problem by managers of organizational systems such as the MOE (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; Weick 1976). The problems inherent in loose-coupling are often confounded by demands of external donors. External agencies expect sharply delineated hierarchies, clear lines of authority, functional divisions of responsibility, and reasonably direct paths of communication when they deal with education ministries. For Uganda and much of contemporary Africa, this is not the order of the day. Furthermore, external authorities have often insisted on authoritative central planning for African education. “It is understandable that the assistance providers prefer clear and detailed plans. It is less clear that proceeding in this way makes the most sense for those responsible for education in Africa.… Indeed, many contemporary conditions in Africa suggest the importance of flexibility, responsiveness to changing circumstances, and an ability to both reorder

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priorities and … modify implementation at short notice.… Education’s administrative apparatus is not tightly compartmentalized and only partially functionally specified. Rather, it is loosely coupled and regularly operates by muddling through” (Samoff 1993: 218–219). A loosely coupled system of institutions, therefore, embodies what Samoff (1993: 219) considers more important that any plan: “[A]n apparatus sufficiently resilient to respond effectively as events require, to seize opportunities as they occur, to build on successful strategies, and to discard those that do not work will contribute more to education and development than a clearly articulated plan and authoritarian decision-making.” The experience of the Kabarole schools illustrates that the loosely coupled system of Uganda’s secondary schools—developed more in response to existing realities than to any proposed administrative posture—allowed the type of decisions and procedures listed above to be effected in support of school survival. The success of this de facto situation is directly related to theories about the influence of school culture on school improvement. Purkey and Smith (1983) articulate the concept of schools as dynamic social systems made up of interrelated factors; hence, attention must be given to the process by which a given school climate develops and is maintained. The fact that schools can be viewed as loosely coupled systems suggests that they might not be so amenable to command structure approaches; rather, implementing changes in schools requires changing people’s behaviors and attitudes, as well as school organization and norms. This seems to parallel what Munene (1995) indicated as the necessary solution to Uganda’s organizational pathology in its service provision agencies—the process needs to be two-way. Building consensus among the staff is more powerful than overt control, say Purkey and Smith, yet the need for leadership should not be ignored. This, too, echoes Afrocentric themes of solidarity, mutuality, and collective responsibility. Obtaining staff agreement on specified norms and goals becomes the focus of school improvement strategy, then. As if to confirm this point, one school head informant reports that his collaborative effort with staff was, in his opinion, the single most important factor in leading his school successfully through the traumas of the Amin/Obote II period.6 Studies of implementation efforts reinforce the validity of this school culture perspective. Though specific tactics may vary, the general strategy identified by theorists as preferred for school improvement is characterized as one that promotes collaborative planning, collegial work, and a school atmosphere conducive to

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experimentation and evaluation. These same strategies were necessarily brought about in the site schools by the difficulties of the times; might they not be harnessed again for future planning by schools? The theorists continue that ongoing activity is best carried out by involving the people affected in the decision-making and implementation process. Increased and active parent involvement, engagement of students and staff in entrepreneurial projects, the solidarity that all felt in the face of difficult situations give evidence that these procedures were practiced in Kabarole schools and contributed to their survival. Finally, the leadership of the head teacher, best exercised through influence and informal authority, is a key factor for success. Is it coincidence that at the time Purkey and Smith’s (1983) article was being published—an article which synthesizes ideas from organizational theory and research on the implementation of educational innovation—successful secondary school heads in Kabarole were exercising these very attributes? The intuitive knowledge of what to do was there; it should be tapped again. The upshot of this portrayal is that Kabarole’s schools and school personnel had the loosely coupled school structure and possessed the requisite personal skills to lead their institutions through situations of formidable conflict. These factors are significant in explaining the survival of those schools.

Institutional Persistence Strategies and procedures implemented in Kabarole’s schools to ensure their survival may also be reinforced in light of institutional persistence studies. Scott provides an omnibus definition of “institution,” and explains three “pillars” of institutions that provide the basis for institutional legitimacy. It is instructive to consider these concepts briefly in order to apply them to the process of maintaining institutions, which is the concern of this study. “Institutions consist of cognitive, normative, and regulative structures [i.e., “pillars”] and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behavior. Institutions are transported by various carriers—culture, structures, and routines—and they operate at multiple levels of jurisdiction” (Scott 1995: 33). In the broadest sense, all scholars emphasize the regulative aspects of institutions: they constrain and regularize behavior. Some scholars7 give prominence to explicit regulative processes: rule-setting, monitoring, and sanctioning activities; the primary mechanism of control is coercion—force, fear, and expedience. Economists8 tend to favor this stance. Others emphasize normative rules9 that introduce a prescriptive, evaluative, and obligatory dimension into social life:

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roles, values, norms. Actors conform not because it serves their individual interests, narrowly defined, but because it is expected of them—they are obliged to do so. Sociologists10 are most likely to embrace this viewpoint. Anthropologists11 stress the centrality of cognitive elements of institutions: rules that constitute the nature of reality and the frames through which meaning is made—words, signs, gestures, rituals. “Individuals construct and continuously negotiate social reality in everyday life, but they do so within the context of wider, preexisting cultural systems: symbolic frameworks, perceived to be both objective and external, that provide orientation and guidance” (Scott 1995: 41). These constitutive rules are so basic to social structure, so fundamental to social life, that they are often overlooked or taken for granted. The development of such rules takes place over many years, but once established they can serve as a cultural model for the molding of other similar forms. For cognitive theorists,12 then, compliance occurs because other types of behavior are inconceivable; routines are followed because they are taken for granted as “the way we do these things.” Individuals and organizations deal with uncertainty by imitating the ways of others, seeking to behave in conventional ways, in ways that will not cause them to stand out or be noticed as different. Within this framework, evidence from Kabarole’s schools may be analyzed to reveal further insights about the survival of schools in Uganda. Recall that the three “pillars” (Scott 1995) on which institutions are built—regulative, normative, and cognitive—help theorists identify bases for institutional legitimacy. Certainly, regulative elements—force, fear, and coercion—were experienced in the schools, but less by a stable system of rules backed by surveillance and sanctioning than by the prospect of indiscriminate violence; in its incapacity, the state was hardly a consistent rule maker, referee, or enforcer. Examples of actors conforming because they were obliged to do so—a normative element—is evident in the testimony of informants, but adaptation to the demands of the particular situation often caused them to compromise their principles and defy social obligations in order to survive. However, this study, by identifying conditionalities that may account for school survival in Kabarole, assumes with cognitive theorists that much of the coherence of social life is due to the creation of categories of social actors, both individual and collective, and associated ways of acting that require explanation. While theoretically “from an institutional perspective, legitimacy is not a commodity to be possessed or exchanged but a condition reflecting cultural alignment, normative

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support, or consonance with relevant rules or laws” (Scott 1995: 45), this data suggests using the lens of cultural alignment to view school survival. The approach this study takes to school survival—called “maintenance of institutions” by organizational theorists13—follows process theories that deal with “a series of occurrences of events rather than a set of relations among variables.” A process approach addresses the question: How did the observed effects happen? This approach assumes that “history matters,” that how things occur influences what things happen (Scott 1995: 64–65). There appear to be relatively few process studies that explicitly focus on ways in which institutional structures are maintained (Scott 1995), but one—a study by Miller (1994) of a mission organization in Ghana that has survived for almost two centuries— surfaces factors that may illuminate the Kabarole school study. Miller found that if members in his study had followed the regulative structures to the letter in the field, they would have been left with little room to address the uncertainties in their work in creative and effective ways. To be responsive to the demands they faced, they sometimes needed to move outside prescribed procedures. Similarly, in the Kabarole schools, heads hired needed teachers outside the prescriptions of Ministry of Education (MOE) procedures; for lack of transport and to ensure their safety, students were housed and fed on school compounds over term breaks in defiance of regulations. For Miller’s Protestant missionaries, the trials of mission life were rationalized—not in the sense of being “excused,” but rather in the sense of being “made to seem reasonable”—by defining them as “the cross to be borne.” Miller notes that in this way “troubles were enclosed within the members’ emotional and ideological zone of forbearance” (1994: 10). Perhaps the “spirit of acceptancy” articulated by Kabarole informants, or the influence of religious teachings about suffering, or personal loyalty and commitment to the institution from which one graduated turned Uganda’s liabilities into sources inspiring collective resolve. If troubles and contradictions can be institutionalized in the minds of actors—recall the “proverbs and sayings” offered by Kabarole informants when asked if they got discouraged—then this “social anesthesia” against “social pain” may well be a key to how schools as ideological organizations manage to survive difficulties (Miller 1994: 155). Considering schools as ideological organizations leads one to speculate about what binding values might be held beyond question, thus serving as a “glue” to hold schools together through

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adversity. In the Kabarole study, no informant considered closing the schools a viable option—that prospect was unthinkable. In fact, an education official in Kabarole indicated how difficult it would be to close down even currently underachieving schools. Other informants spoke of school pride, heritage, and a legacy that must be rebuilt to account for their own as well as a particular school’s persistence. Sharing core values can enable participants in a common quest to endure acute social distress in their lives. The common will to endure exemplified in the Kabarole situation is a key to explaining the schools’ survival. Was that common will to endure based on a sharing of core values, an ideology, a unique spirit? Might Kabarole’s school survival be linked to a juridically “public” system of education acting more like a “private”system?

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Public-Private Responsibility for Education It has been noted in the introduction that James (1994) considers schools that were privately founded and privately managed to be “private” in practice, regardless of how they are legally constituted. Where do the Kabarole site schools fit in? Cummings and Riddell (1994a: 755) propose a more comprehensive framework for investigating public-private sector educational differences. They find it easier to distinguish between the actors who deliver education and those who pay for it. “Funding is a reliable and manageable dimension for a typology … those who pay for a particular educational service tend to have a considerable influence over its provision. Similarly, it is easier to categorize who delivers education—be it the local council, a community group, or the national government—than it is to determine who controls education.” This framework, they contend, helps sort out situations in which the private sector is the predominant supplier of education because government has either failed to establish a reliable education system, or has relied on a grant-aided system in which private authorities govern the schools with government monies.14 For example, in war-torn and/or financially distressed situations, governments have largely abandoned their responsibility for education, as witnessed in Lebanon and Haiti, and in Zimbabwe prior to the establishment of a unitary, non-racial education system. Without some sort of central hub to set standards and regulate disparities, “a country ends up with an education system which may or may not meet national goals. This may go to the extreme in a country such as Uganda in which the national educational nexus was virtually destroyed due to civil war” (Cummings and Riddell 1994a: 769).

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Bray (1994) counters that a close examination of privatization versus publicization reveals many complexities. Between the extremes of schools with no government funding or control and schools with full government funding and control lie private institutions receiving varying amounts of both, and government schools that supplement their resources through fees and other means, and have varying degrees of autonomy. He asserts that the issue of control cannot be avoided and contends that in many instances schools legally owned by churches and other bodies, but for which government provides overall supervision, pays teachers’ salaries, and controls the basic curriculum, should be considered part of the public rather than private sector. Cummings and Riddell (1994b: 826–827), by way of rejoinder to Bray, note that intermediate bureaucracies may exert an extraordinary degree of control not reflected in organizational charts; in reality, they obfuscate a clear view of control by their willingness to ignore orders and implement autonomous strategies. For example, in some national systems “aided private schools have significant autonomy levels in the selection of heads (the trustees decide) and in admissions (children of old boys and old girls are given priority), and these same schools also seem to have considerable influence over the process of teacher appointments. Through these subtle means of influence, the aided private schools are able to garner privileged resources that contribute to a unique school spirit and often to impressive student outcomes.” Cummings and Riddell agree that the issue is complicated and needs more extensive investigation, but continue to hold that “financing determines who is in control.” By discussing the governance of Kabarole’s schools in light of this body of literature, insights into the effective management of schools may be revealed more clearly. A brief review of the historical legacies of Kabarole and Ugandan schools will set the stage. The Anglican Church Missionary Society, which came to Tooro in the late nineteenth century, was the initial sponsor of Tooro Girls School (Kyebambe) in 1912 and Nyakasura School in 1926. The Roman Catholic White Fathers established St. Leo’s College in 1921 at Virika, the Catholic mission. This pattern conforms to that in all of Uganda: until 1925 virtually all school education was controlled by the missionaries, referred to as the foundation bodies. The Education Act of 1964 reorganized the ownership and management of Uganda’s schools so there would be a predominance of government representatives on the Boards of Governors; in addition, schools were to be non-denominational. The implementation was

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gradual, but the old mission domination of education went and nationalization took its place, although the degree of mission devolvement was more radical in the primary schools.15 The process was completed by the Education Act of 1970 (Furley 1988). For the secondary schools this nationalization meant that the government abolished all managerial powers of the foundation bodies over schools and colleges and took over direct administration and inspection of all government-aided schools. All finances— salaries, allowances, pensions—were centralized at the MOE headquarters. The selection of students for Senior One and Senior Five was also centralized. The National Teaching Service Commission took charge of the interviews, appointments, promotion, and discipline of qualified teachers, and the chief education officers or the district education officers were made responsible for posting and transferring head and other teachers (Nsubuga 1996). The day-to-day running of the schools was entrusted to the thirteen-member Boards of Governors, of whom four represented the government, four represented the local community, and four plus the chairman represented the foundation body, which retained the legal title to the buildings and the land. Neither of the original education acts, however, is articulate regarding the ownership of the secondary schools, and this becomes problematic considering the fact that the majority of secondary schools were founded by private organizations (Maloba 1991). A related issue of control— democratization of all governing bodies of education institutions as recommended in the 1992 White Paper—was challenged by religious leaders, who sought to retain the dominant presence of their denominations on the governing bodies of their founded schools. A compromise was struck retaining foundation body presence without losing the main objective of establishing democratic governance of education institutions (Irumba 1995). This background for Uganda and the Kabarole schools is necessary in order to consider the question of common ideology raised in the previous section. Could these Kabarole secondary schools be considered de facto private schools, since all of them were founded by private entities, and those foundation bodies still have a measure of control through their representation on the respective Boards of Governors? This question is key for the study of school survival because James (1994: 777) contends that “private schools behave differently than public schools; a system that is largely private may provide a different educational service from one that is largely public, and the underlying raison d’être for the private sector helps to explain these differences.” James (1994: 778)

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confounds the question by defining “private” schools “as those that were privately founded and privately managed: they usually have some private funding, although considerable funding and control may also come from the government.” Where do Kabarole’s schools—where do Uganda’s schools—fit in this definition? Foundation-body members are represented in the chair and four members of the secondary school governing boards; the parents pay up to 90 percent of recurrent funds for the schools, including monies to “top off” teachers salaries; significant fund-raising monies are generated to support school building and special projects. Yet the government pays the basic salary for heads and teachers, officially posts them to the schools, and provides a small per-pupil capitation grant; there are a national syllabus and national certifying examinations, as well as a national student selection process. What is private for Uganda? Cummings and Altbach (1997) note that readily available international statistical sources accept as private those schools that are legally private and thus classified as such by the statistical bureaus of the respective nations. Cummings and Riddell (1994a), however, also note that there is considerable variation in the fiscal and regulatory arrangements accompanying this legal status. At issue is the question of deciding which schools legally constituted as private are sufficiently private to be classified as private and which are not. Consider this conundrum posed by Cummings and Altbach (1997: 197): In the Netherlands and Ireland, most primary schools are legally private but fully funded from public sources; yet in these societies, scholars and officials think of the schools as private. In contrast, in Hong Kong and some other Commonwealth nations where the same situation prevails, distinctions are made between private or independent schools, government-aided schools, and public schools. Hong Kong once treated the first two groups as private; currently it only treats the first group as private.

In the situation described, the authors’ approach is to follow the local convention when reporting data. For Uganda, as a Commonwealth country, the local convention is the one practiced currently by Hong Kong, namely, government-aided schools are considered public. But James’ (1994) categorization is based neither on legal status nor local convention; she tags foundation and management as defining factors. Under that definition it may be argued that Kabarole’s secondary schools survived—indeed, Uganda’s secondary schools survived—because they acted like private schools.

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The situation of Kabarole’s schools reveals an evolution from mission or private ownership and control, to commonly defined public control, to a hybrid situation in which educational delivery, finance, and control are shared in reality among several groups. Despite the debate on the public-private responsibility issue outlined above, none of the theoretical typologies articulated by James (1994), Cummings and Riddell (1994a), or Bray (1994) is sufficient to categorize Uganda’s situation. This hybrid situation happened by default rather than by design. Perhaps the significance of this situation is reflected in the adage “where there’s a will there’s a way.” Kabarole parents, school staff, boards, alumni, and educational authorities so desired to prevent the schools from collapse that the strategies and practices employed in that venture produced a working model of educational delivery, finance, and control that defies categorization, remains extra-legal, but works. Lack of capacity and insufficient financial resources on the part of government; the creative ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and leadership demonstrated by school personnel and parents; the willingness of Boards of Governors to go beyond legal prescriptions and “seize opportunities as they occur [and] build on successful strategies” (Samoff 1993: 219); and the acquiescence of government to these realities contributed to that evolution. From this standpoint Kabarole’s schools may very well have “acted like private schools” by finding ways to acquire and maintain additional resources, by developing new interorganizational structures like PTA or reinvigorating old ones like “old boys/old girls” Associations, and perhaps by rediscovering and nurturing a unique school spirit— some might even call it an ideology—that carried them through a period of great institutional stress. Strategies such as these helped the schools survive. In this sense, an ideology—based on the particular circumstances, cultural values, and opportunity structures identified as conditions contributing to school survival—may have developed; such an ideology shares characteristics parallel to factors that have enabled institutional and organizational persistence in other situations.

Conclusion Baseline Conditionalities Seven principal findings were identified that enabled Kabarole secondary schools to survive:

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1. Government non-interference in schools. From 1971 through 1986 Ugandans lived through seven changes of government; none of these governments interfered directly with schools. Amin’s government accomplished the Africanization of school staffs and curriculum, professionals were retained in Ministry of Education posts, and teachers were respected. Obote’s second regime reopened the pipeline of external donor support for education and initiated a quantitative expansion of secondary schools. The National Resistance Movement (NRM) quickly moved to organize for educational provision in the liberated areas under its control. 2. Role of parents, family, clan. Parents stepped in to compensate for shortfalls in school funding caused by hyperinflation; eventually, they provided nearly 90 percent of recurrent school funding and assumed significant decision-making responsibilities. Family and clan members secured in-kind and cash support for individuals’ school fee obligations. Social, ethnic, and religious networks complemented traditional African cultural values of solidarity, mutuality, and communal responsibility in supporting the education of children. 3. “Spirit of acceptancy.” This is an attitude, a way of being and acting, a way of coping with chaos that helps people survive in Uganda. It embraces virtues like patience and hope, and strategies that require ingenuity, adaptation, compromise, and manipulation. It demands a philosophical, long-range perspective on life, a willingness to both endure and resist, and an ability to accommodate, accept, and be resigned to reality. This ability to maneuver around difficult situations is a way Ugandans institutionalize contradictions, turning liabilities into new sources of collective resolve. 4. The legendary desire for education. Rooted in the indigenous kingdoms that pre-date colonialism, elites readily embraced the reading and writing skills that accompanied mission education and established a small but highly organized school system that was recognized as one of the best in sub-Saharan Africa. Education became culturally embedded in the minds of most Ugandans as a means of upward mobility, prestige, and investment. The collapse or permanent closure of schools was unthinkable—Ugandans love education. 5. The influence of church and religion. There is symbolic importance in the notion of religious community among Ugandans. Religious instruction, symbolism, and ritual have a long accepted place in schools. Besides the expected moral

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influence, churches exercised significant structural influence, like speaking out corporately against government, and revealing and condemning injustices. Churches were perceived as relatively corruption-free institutions and a source of stability in the midst of chaos; they sponsored alternate social services and used their international contacts to obtain needed supplies. The church negotiated and mediated the military surrender of the UNLA in Kabarole, avoiding widespread bloodshed and destruction. 6. Opportunity structures. Geography was an advantage to Kabarole. Its isolation rendered it non-strategic to central government, and it enjoyed relative peace during the time of the Amin/Obote II regimes, making it a fitting “laboratory” for the study of school survival. Performance in schools appears to be the single most important predictor of success in the Ugandan labor market; thus, despite the uncertainties of the time, Ugandan students did not lose hope in the future as long as they could continue with their education. To speak, read, and write English well is a badge of honor as well as a safety net. There was always excess demand for schooling. Schools were also considered safe places in wartime. 7. Strategies and practices. These actions illustrate congruence with broad theoretical findings supporting school survival and are noteworthy for their universal applicability. First, the education system and the schools were loosely coupled; this allowed schools to develop their identity and uniqueness, make changes required to adapt to their environments and preserve their legitimacy, and acquire and maintain the resources and support they needed to survive. Second, a model of educational finance/delivery/control evolved that included characteristics associated with “private” institutions: institutional autonomy and spirit; active involvement of parents, alumni, and governors in funding and fund-raising; and creative entrepreneurship. At the same time, schools retained characteristics associated with “public” institutions: appointment of heads and teaching staff by the Ministry of Education, a national student selection process, payment of teachers’ salaries and per-pupil capitation by government, a governmentauthorized syllabus and national certification examinations, and government oversight of policy and certain procedures. This hybridization of the public-private model evolved by necessity and remains in force as a practical reality of school organization. Third, schools were most effective in this new

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model when they employed practices that involved collaborative efforts with staff, when they attempted to change behaviors and attitudes as well as norms and organization, when they involved the people affected by decisions in the decision-making processes, and when leaders led by influence and informal authority rather than by decree. Finally, schools capitalized on the intuitive ability of participants to institutionalize contradictions in such a way that a common will to endure prevailed over potentially debilitating despair in the face of devastating situations.

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Recommendations for Action This is a case study of a group of secondary schools in a particular region of Uganda, East Africa; the findings are not able to be generalized per se. However, with the paucity of research on Uganda’s secondary schools in general, and the sure absence of study about secondary school survival in particular, this study reveals factors and baseline conditionalities that propose an explanation of how and why Kabarole schools survived. While these factors and conditionalities can be used as baseline findings, in-depth and systematic investigation is needed in other areas of Uganda, and other countries, in order to confirm or dispute their generality for explaining school survival. Nevertheless, in the course of this study of Kabarole schools, informants also related experiences of other Ugandan schools;16 in light of these tentative initial confirmations, conditional recommendations for action may be discussed. EDUCATION PLANNING. Education history should be of interest to educational planners who wish to take a longer view of alternative policies or practices and their consequences. It is recognized that the implementing context shapes the capacity to reform or sustain programs. Hence, lessons learned from past practice, especially the lessons learned about school survival, may inform educational planners. Key components of reform—making incremental changes in light of sufficient experience—may be favorably influenced by the findings of this study, since Uganda has already embarked on a broad-based quest to reform education. In 1987, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government appointed an Education Policy Review Commission (EPRC) to examine the entire spectrum of education in light of the objective that “education in Uganda produce job makers rather than job seekers” (Ministry of Education 1989: ii). The commission members initiated the widest consultation process on education ever in Uganda and produced a much larger volume of memoranda than

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did the landmark Castle Commission of 1963, making 220 recommendations; the report was submitted to the minister of education in January 1989. The minister appointed a White Paper Committee that reviewed the recommendations of the EPRC and prepared several drafts for Cabinet review, resulting in the publication of a 1992 White Paper (Government of Uganda 1992), the official NRM government policy on education. National consultative conferences were conducted for district political leaders, for religious leaders, and for women’s representatives prior to parliamentary debate on this White Paper. While the parliamentary debate did not end with clear-cut, formal approval, this type of rigorous and lengthy political and professional consensus on a policy proposed by a ministry was unprecedented in the history of policy formation in Uganda (Irumba 1995). Given the broad-based development of this national education policy, it is worthwhile to present the recommendations for secondary schools in full: R.43: The aims and objectives of secondary education should be: i) instilling and promoting national unity and an understanding of social and civic responsibilities; ii) promoting an appreciation and understanding of the cultural heritage of Uganda, including its languages; iii) imparting and promoting self-discipline, ethical and spiritual values, personal responsibility and initiative; iv) enabling individuals to acquire and develop knowledge and an understanding of emerging needs of society and the economy; v) providing up-to-date and comprehensive knowledge in theoretical and practical aspects of innovative production, modern management methods in the field of commerce and industry and their applications in the context of socio-economic development of Uganda; vi) enabling individuals to develop basic scientific, technological, technical, agricultural and commercial skills required for self-employment; vii) enabling individuals to develop personal skills of problem-solving, information gathering and interpretation, independent reading and writing, self-improvement through learning and development of social, physical and leadership skills such as are obtained through games, sports, societies and clubs; viii) laying the foundation for future education; ix) enabling individuals to apply acquired skills in solving problems of the community; x) instilling positive attitudes towards productive work. (Government of Uganda 1992: 60–61) Preserving Order amid Chaos : The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986, Berghahn Books, Incorporated,

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Furthermore, educational objectives articulated by African governments and educators add to the education agenda. These include “fostering an inquiring and critical orientation among learners, eliminating discrimination and reducing elitism, promoting national unity, preparing young people for the rights and obligations of citizenship, equipping them to work cooperatively and resolve conflicts non-violently, [and] developing among learners a strong sense of individual and collective competence, self-reliance, and self-confidence” (Samoff 1996: 7). With these national and continental objectives in mind, in what areas might the experience of Kabarole school survival offer insight to educational planners? FINANCE/DELIVERY/CONTROL. In the Kabarole schools, the model of finance, delivery, and control of education that evolved over the years enabled the schools to survive during conflicted times. This model exhibits characteristics often associated with “private” institutions, as well as traditional characteristics associated with “public” institutions. The model is still in place and seems to be effective; however, its actual operation is not legally constituted. Organizational survival and development demand resource availability and some measure of local autonomy. Local resources have been forthcoming through PTA and fund-raising activities, and decentralization has engendered increasing levels of school autonomy. Recruitment, disciplining, and promotion of staff are being accomplished locally, too. The engagement of parents in shared decision-making with Boards of Governors is a fact; a vagueness surrounding ownership questions and the proper influence of foundation bodies in secondary schools remains. However, the experience of organizational survival would also suggest that to achieve an efficient and quality school system with such schoollevel autonomy, there needs to be a central authority both for setting standards and for regulating disparities. To meet the national aims and objectives for secondary schools, experienced professionals in management and inspection of schools and curriculum development must be provided. As overseers, authorities need to regulate standards through a national examination system that would require and assess the development of the many different skills articulated in the White Paper. Perhaps the purpose and scope of secondary education need to be more clearly defined to accomplish these objectives. Especially relevant is the need to provide for an adequate inspectorate and an adequate auditing system to ensure accountability in areas such as school fund allotments and property maintenance and development. Observing what has evolved in educational finance, delivery, and control, educational planners

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might initiate research to propose a proper legal role for local-level entities like the PTA, and might look toward capacity-building at the central level to ameliorate abuses or disparities. At the same time, planners must recognize that in a loosely coupled education system—which was advantageous for school survival when the incapacity of central authority left individual institutions to fend for themselves—it is difficult to repair defective elements. For example, school stratification has been exacerbated by the inability to compensate for regional economic and resource disparities. Planners must also be mindful of the contextual situation described as organizational pathology. Without timely payment of salaries and capitation grants, without providing teachers a living wage, with moratoriums imposed by government on hiring in the civil service, which includes teachers, the accountability expected of heads and teachers will remain a sham. How to provide resources for such reforms in a tightly stretched national budget remains a conundrum (Cummings and Riddell 1994a; Maloba 1991; Munene 1995; Nsubuga 1996). LEADERSHIP. In a paper presented at a staff seminar for the Makerere Faculty of Education, Bennaars (1975) noted two basic views of the school head’s position. The long-standing tradition viewed the school as a community where the school was a “teacher and sculptor of character,” “a responsible community.” The ideal was a happy school community where the head was a participant leader with the primary charge to form “Christian gentlemen.” The head was a charismatic leader, paternal/maternal, and had the autonomy to govern effectively with undisputed authority; stability and tenure were considered important factors in the success of the school. However, a more recent view of the school as a production unit emphasized the need for skilled manpower development. The metaphor was industrial: education was the production line, teachers were the assemblers, exams assured quality control, and heads managed the affair; financial accountability and bureaucratic performance were ideals. Heads were directly answerable to the Ministry of Education; more centralization, secularization, uniformity, and standardization came in. Bennaars’ point was that neither model described the reality of school organizations or the positions therein. Schools are much more complex organizations, and alternative models of management are needed that allow flexibility and the diagnosis of reality in the context of a particular school. The experience of Kabarole school leadership may be instructive here. Schools seemed most effective when the staff worked

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collegially, when heads and boards attempted to be collaborative in decision-making, when leaders worked toward developing behaviors and attitudes to support change and involved the people affected by decisions in the decision-making process. Students and staff describe the effective presence and communication skills of heads, the common experience of distress as well as support in frightful circumstances, and the sense of mutuality that developed among their fellow staff and students. This marshaling of strength within the school community was seen as a result of the common will to endure in the face of difficult situations. It is also true that the hardships suffered by organizations and their members over the years engendered a culture that served individual rather than organizational goals. The “I got mine” behavior, stealing, cheating, and absenteeism were also spawned by hardship. Again, none of these characterizations describes the school situation exclusively. However, positive practices may be worthy of imitation. If education is to be more than a technical transfer of knowledge and skills, but also a tool to create a new society, then leadership must bring together the strengths of state, NGOs, family, teachers, and students to revitalize education. A “community model” of schooling that capitalizes on the traditional African value of collective responsibility for the education of children could prompt practices that promote the active involvement of the community in the schooling process. Facilitating conditions such as community involvement, school-based professionalism, and flexibility enhance the development of effective schools. Counterproductive attitudes —the disposition to equate collaboration with the construction of new organizational arrangements, the failure to integrate local culture and/or community perspectives into evaluation of service, assuming commonalities about habits of thinking or doing, or adapting “one shoe fits all” protocols—can be avoided by creating opportunities for dialogue. In-service programs and upgrading opportunities for administrators might include such bridge-building training, providing Heads with skills to create more functional relationships between their schools and the internal and external communities they serve (Dei 1994; Finkelstein and Croninger 1997; Habte 1992; Levin and Lockheed 1993). SCHOOL STRATIFICATION. Informants described the reality of school equity in Uganda using a familiar political-economic metaphor: “First World,” “Second World,” “Third World.” Kabarole’s secondary schools rank in the “Second World,” behind the established Kampala area boarding schools, but ahead of the “mushrooming” day schools. In 1981 when Heyneman (1983) revisited

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several of the primary schools in his original study, he found that, as far as may be determined by student achievement, the structure of social stratification was no more closed in 1981 than in 1971. He concluded that if the non-relationship between social status and examination performance, which continued to pertain in these schools, were to represent the country at large, then the parental “push” for good school performance by their children still does not differ greatly between wealthy and impoverished families. Heyneman (1983: 408) does qualify that generalization in a note explaining that access to education facilities does differ from one region of Uganda to the next, and therefore wealthy families have greater access to quality education by virtue of the fact that they are disproportionately situated in particular regions. For the situation from 1981 to the present, the informants of the Kabarole study would agree with the qualification, and reject the generalization based on their lived experience of secondary schools. Data collected in the course of this study do not include a systematic comparison of achievement results among Ugandan secondary schools over the same period as Heyneman conducted his study. However, a review of the external examination results in the Kabarole secondary schools reveals that achievement remained steady through 1978, after which there was a precipitous drop in student performance levels in the site schools, as measured by external exam results. The point is that secondary schools became very stratified over the Amin/Obote II period, and the stratification was based, among other things, on financial ability to pay. While selection in the education system may operate fairly enough, the “First World” schools charge exorbitant school fees compared to the “Second” and “Third World” schools; consequently, students who may win selection to “First World” schools are unable to attend for financial reasons. By charging such high fees—which are determined primarily by the PTA with Board of Governor’s approval—the “First World” schools not only attract the brightest students, but are able to pay higher teacher salaries, provide more amenities like adequate staff housing, and obtain materials and supplies. It is not coincidental that the “First World” schools lie in the urban areas adjacent to the capital city, although the causes of secondary school stratification in Uganda are more complex than can be explained simply by financial or geographical reasons. But the de facto regionalization and decentralization that evolved over the Amin/Obote II period has led to great disparities in educational provision, paralleling disparities existing in the country between different local resource bases.

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In Uganda, the quantitative expansion of “mushrooming” secondary schools to meet the political demand for access to education seems to bear the cost of quality impairment. Maybe this is acceptable in the short run, maybe not.17 This history of Kabarole school survival may contribute meaningfully to this debate. Some informants decry “mushrooming” schools as “schools on paper only”—that is, established without educational merit—and view them as a symbol of decline in Ugandan educational tradition. While others agree that such schools as founded were unplanned and unsuitable, they contend that the schools have evolved to serve a purpose by advancing literacy and numeracy, keeping adolescents occupied, and opening up secondary school access in rural areas; parents and local communities have surely supported them. Which assumptions underlie the debate: modern, Western ideas about educational quality, efficiency, and equity? Or traditional Afrocentric values of solidarity, mutual support, and collective responsibility symbolized by sayings about “this is how Africans build … it is coming?” Whatever the outcome of this debate, the implications need to be faced head on and not avoided, as if they were not contingent on the method of educational expansion and financing (Cummings and Riddell 1994a; Heyneman 1983). In summary, then, these are recommendations for action that could confirm and extend the “lessons from the past” identified in this study of Kabarole schools. First, in planning for educational reform in Uganda according to the aims and objectives of the White Paper of 1992, the ingrained cultural values that were found to support school survival could be tapped for their inherent strength. These strengths could become foundation blocks for future educational planning and for the development of policies that would help achieve these aims and objectives. Second, the strengths and weaknesses of current educational finance/delivery/control mechanisms could be evaluated to discover and perhaps institutionalize those elements that will ensure an appropriate and effective balance of resource availability, local autonomy, and central oversight for secondary education provision in Uganda. In this evaluation, and in the ongoing debate about expanding educational provision in Uganda, the problems associated with particular methods of school expansion and financing should be assessed in light of the realities of school stratification. This stratification is a resulting weakness of the hybrid public-private school organization model that occurs when the government oversight organs lack the capacity to function effectively. Finally, in order to promote a model of

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schooling that capitalizes on traditional African values of solidarity, mutual support, and collective responsibility for the education of children, existing in-service programs and upgrading opportunities for administrators could include training that would help heads develop skills to create more functional relationships between their schools and the internal and external communities they serve.

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Summary Despite chronic shortages in school supplies, underpaid teachers, and deteriorating school structures, Ugandans continued to send their children to school on a daily basis under the most difficult of circumstances. So widespread was this earnest desire for education that regardless of the constraints on foreign exchange, no Ugandan government has been able politically to afford the collapse of the school system as they have other public and private enterprises. How were educational programs sustained during this period? What strategies and procedures helped schools persist? Why did the education system not collapse when little else in Uganda functioned? What context factors and ingrained cultural values served to preserve the enterprise? What sort of mental habits were in evidence over this period of time? What can be learned about the evolution of Ugandan education during this period of fundamental social change? After conducting a case study of the four government-aided Kabarole District senior secondary schools that continued operating during the period from 1971 to 1986, this inquiry begins to answer these questions by describing how these Ugandan schools survived under conditions of intractable conflict and by identifying baseline conditions that enabled that survival. And how were programs sustained? Basically the Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) assumed responsibility for funding nearly 90 percent of school operating costs formerly provided by government capitation grants. Schools persisted because local, schoolbased entrepreneurial activities and administrative procedures were implemented to cope with the austere conditions brought about by social and economic upheaval. And while most other government-aided sectors in the country collapsed, Ugandans relied on traditional family and clan-based resources, and on an indomitable patience, hope, and “spirit of acceptancy” to sustain their legendary desire for education.

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Notes 1. See M. Meyer and L. Zucker, Permanently Failing Organizations (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1988) as cited by Miller (1994). 2. Higher School Certificate; namely S5 and S6, also known as A-level courses. 3. *E. B. Kamugisha, personal correspondence, 5 October 1997. 4. A notable exception is D. L. Duke (1995). He also cites a number of studies regarding organizational survival, organizational continuity, organizational culture, and organizational change. 5. The magnitude of this incapacity becomes apparent with a look at the numbers: in 1981 there were 179 government-aided secondary schools with 83,000 students enrolled; in 1984 the number of aided secondary schools had jumped to 430, enrolling 144,527 students (J. Tumusiime 1993). 6. *A. Mugenyi, personal interview, 9 September 1997 and 12 September 1997. 7. See DiMaggio and Powell (1983) and Dornbusch and Scott (1975), cited by Scott (1995). 8. See North (1990) and Pratt and Zeckhauser (1985), cited by Scott (1995). 9. See March and Olsen (1989) and Searing (1991), cited by Scott (1995). 10. See Berger and Luckmann (1967), Durkheim (1949), Hughes (1958), Parsons (1937), and Selznick (1948), cited by Scott (1995). 11. See D’Andrade (1984), Douglas (1986), Geertz (1973), and Rabinow and Sullivan (1987), cited by Scott (1995). 12. See Lord and Kernan (1987) and Schank and Abelson (1977), cited by Scott (1995). 13. See DiMaggio (1988) and Jepperson (1991), cited by Scott (1995). 14. The case in Ireland, Lesotho, Hong Kong, Swaziland. 15. See Heyneman (1975) and Nsubuga (1996) for the details of primary school control assumed by the government. 16. Besides the four site schools in Kabarole District, informants also related experiences from other Ugandan secondary-level education institutions including St. Mary’s Seminary, Virika, Fort Portal; St. Maria Goretti S.S.S., Virika, Fort Portal; Maddox S.S.S., Butiiti; St. Joseph College, Gulu; St. Henry College, Kitovu, Masaka; Kinyamasika T.T.C., Fort Portal; Jinja College, Jinja; Kitabi Seminary, Mbarara; Kihembo Hill Memorial College, Fort Portal; St. Augustine’s T.T.C., Butiiti; Canon Apolo T.T.C., Nyakasura, Fort Portal; Kichwamba Technical College; Masaka S.S.S.; Busoga College, Mwiri; Mbarara High School; Mbale S.S.S.; Kyarusozi S.S.; Standard Academy, Fort Portal; Tororo Girls S.S.; Ntare School, Mbarara; Maryhill S.S.S., Mbarara; Namilyango S.S.S.; King’s College, Buddo; Kyambogo Demonstration School, Kampala; Kigezi High School; Old Kampala Secondary School. Informants also related experiences at a number of primary schools and at tertiary-level institutions such as Makerere University and Kyambogo National Teachers College, and other more recently established Grade III- and Grade V-level teacher training institutes. 17. A similar debate currently rages over the implementation of Universal Primary Education (UPE) in Uganda.

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APPENDIX I A Viewing Lens—the Study Methodology

o

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David Kelly relates that at one point a group of Gail [Paradise Kelly’s] graduate students presented her with a T-shirt inscribed with the sentence, “But what is your question?” This was the hallmark of Gail’s gift as a teacher: … her insistence that we ask the right questions. For her a large part of asking the right question was the examination of our own assumptions. Answers were one thing that could be found through fieldwork, bibliographic research, and analysis. But most important was the question itself. (Rathgeber 1997: 214)

M

y experience of contrasts in the Uganda of 1985—a collapsed state infrastructure but functioning governmentaided secondary schools—set me to wondering “how are these schools surviving?” I was in Uganda in 1985 at the invitation of American Catholic missionaries working there.1 As a member of that missionary group, I was invited to observe and instruct in the formation program of studies that prepared Ugandan men and women to be Catholic missionaries. But with my background as a teacher of mathematics and physics and as a high school principal in the United States, I was also curious about the secondary schools. I accepted an invitation to give a lecture to A-level students in a local school, which was followed by invitations from other schools. My colleagues said I was bitten by the “Ugandan tse-tse fly” because I was fascinated by the place; I was consumed by the question: how did these schools survive? Several years later, when I had the opportunity for a sabbatical to complete my doctoral work, the field of comparative and international education—and particularly Ugandan education—became my chosen focus. And my chief assumptions? I believed the schools survived. Furthermore, I believed that people could and would tell me how that

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came about, and that their stories would not only answer my questions, but reveal insights into internal school workings that might be helpful to others.

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Background Information: Researcher and Informants Denzin and Lincoln (1994) note that behind the activities defined as the qualitative research process stands the personal biography of the gendered researcher, who speaks from a particular class, racial, cultural, and ethnic community perspective. The gendered multi-culturally situated researcher approaches the world with a set of ideas, a framework that specifies a set of questions that are then examined in specific ways. Empirical materials bearing on the questions are collected and then analyzed and written about. Every researcher speaks from within a distinct interpretive community, which configures in its special way the multi-cultural components of the research act. To understand this study, the findings, and the analysis, it is important to be aware of this particular researcher’s background. Coming from a middle-class English-Irish ethnic background, I was born in 1945 in the United States of parents who were both college educated to the master’s degree level. I was educated in the United States, taking a bachelor’s degree in physics after which I began a career in secondary school teaching. Having pursued further graduate study, I taught science, mathematics, and theology at the secondary and tertiary levels, and served thirteen years as principal and headmaster in two American high schools. As a male Caucasian-American secondary school administrator and graduate student, my interest in Uganda stems from my contacts with the Holy Cross missionaries; since 1970, when I professed vows as a religious brother in the Holy Cross community, I have counted both Americans and Ugandans as confreres. So I came to Uganda not just as an American researcher with tape recorder and note pad, but as a fellow teacher and headmaster, one who himself risked being there in 1985, and one associated as a brother to the Holy Cross men and women who remained in Uganda through the 1971–86 period. By returning to look at the four government-aided senior secondary schools existing in Kabarole District during this period, and to where I had lectured briefly in 1985, I hoped to find school people who would share with me their experiences of how they and their schools survived during that difficult time. If I could discern those reasons from their narratives—and perhaps organize

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them into a small-scale analysis fitted to the specific problems and specific situations of Kabarole—then such a study might serve as a baseline to help others in Uganda or elsewhere understand how and why schools deal with intractable social conflict and survive. The background of the informants is crucial to the mix, too. Interviewees are not passive subjects; they are active participants who bring their own baggage to the interaction. The informants in this study hailed primarily, though not exclusively, from western Uganda. Most spoke a Bantuphone vernacular language as well as English. Since my contact was the secondary school—and my interest was the secondary school situation—this group could be considered “elite” in the sense that all informants were at least graduates of secondary school and, as such, would rank among a minority of Ugandans. All this would be expected given the study focus: secondary schools in Kabarole District of western Uganda. Informants included men and women; Catholic, Church of Uganda, and Muslim adherents; and people whose ages spanned from the mid-twenties through the late seventies. Some adherents specifically identified their ethnic background—“I’m a Mutooro from Mwenge”—or their political leanings—“some might consider me DP”—but more as an afterthought related to their story. Any of these characteristics, of course, may skew an informant’s testimony. All informants were self-selected in that they themselves volunteered to speak with me, or I invited them to share with me based upon the recommendation of another. In the end, though, “there is no clear window into the inner life of the individual. Any gaze is always filtered through the lenses of language, gender, social class, race, and ethnicity. There are no objective observations, only observations socially situated in the worlds of the observer and the observed.2 Subjects, or individuals, are seldom able to give full explanations of their accounts or intentions; all they can offer are accounts, or stories, about what they did and why. No single method can grasp the subtle variations in ongoing human experience” (Denzin and Lincoln 1994:12). With that caveat in mind, a more detailed description of the research perspectives and process used to guide this study is described.

Theoretical Constructs A critical consideration in any research undertaking is to determine which approach is needed to answer the research questions. What theoretical template will guide the study? How will this

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story be told and analyzed? A concern for process; an interest in how people make sense of their lives, experiences, and the structures of the world; and an inductive bent that seeks to build abstractions, concepts, and patterns from details motivates a qualitative methodology for this study (Creswell 1994). “Qualitative interviews are especially useful when you need to bring some new light on puzzling questions … unravel complicated relationships and slowly evolving events … [or] whenever depth of understanding is desired. It is also the way to explore the broader implications of a problem and place it in its historical, political, or social context” (Rubin and Rubin 1995: 51–52). The puzzling question of school survival in Uganda and the complex political and social factors affecting this survival motivate a qualitative approach. Moreover, an investigation of schools in a defined historical period directs this study to history of education as a particularly relevant discipline. Now there are many kinds of history; what is common to historians is the commitment to describe human endeavor over time and to explore primary sources. However, a society experiencing disruptive social chaos often lacks the ability to keep records, and this surely is the case in Uganda, where the culture of data collection is at a seriously low level (Irumba 1995). To compensate for the paucity of written primary sources about the site schools, and to avoid dependence on data of purportedly questionable reliability, oral history and ethnography offer alternatives to traditional historical field research. These research approaches prescribe methodologies suitable for obtaining the testimony of informants utilizing the unstructured interview. The oral history of eyewitnesses is particularly valuable in recovering history and in revealing the actualities of practice versus policy. However, while such methods are invaluable for obtaining a record of African voices, they may not achieve a focus on school survival. Organizational history, therefore, also can be tapped to prescribe a number of criteria that would assist the reconstruction of events in the life of a school, particularly those documenting its survival. But the pure methodology of organizational history attends to organizational structure in detail, and devotes as much care to investigating prior periods in the history of an organization as the defined or culminating period (D. L. Duke 1995). Since such a task is beyond the scope of this study, some modifications and methodological innovation had to be attempted. Contemporary scholars note new trends developing in historical inquiry in education, and among these, interdisciplinarity is seen as an essential condition of post-modern thinking. “The historical

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repertoire needs to be extended through the integration of anthropological, cultural, linguistic, psychological and sociological points of view” (Novoa 1995: 34). Scholars of comparative education note the need for “an openness both to alternative approaches and methods and to critical scrutiny” (Samoff 1993: 222); “while scholarly focus on enrollment growth and organizational features of education systems has been productive, it has obscured education as a cultural system” (Kamens et al. 1996: 117). The upshot is that educational historians and comparative educators must be free to draw on those methods of inquiry that seem most appropriate to them to answer the research questions that have been posed (Keeves and Adams 1994); or as one historian states, “[T]here is not, nor will there ever be, one single true conception of the history of education, so that we shall probably have to learn to live with methodological pluralism” (Depaepe 1993: 3). The advantage of an innovative approach for this study is its suitability for investigating the research questions proposed; the risk lies precisely in the innovation’s eclectic nature—the approach may do justice to none of the constituent parts. The responsibility for taking the risk is entirely mine.

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Multiple Research Perspectives This study employs multiple research perspectives to gain an understanding of a very complex social, cultural, political, and institutional environment. Hence, this is a case study guided by an interdisciplinary approach that integrates the methodologies characteristic of oral history and ethnography with a variety of operations used to construct a school organizational history. Research strategies focusing on context and interactions that privilege the perspectives of participants by on-site observation and analysis are used to reveal the contextual meaning of education and the richness of detail in educational provision (Kamens et al. 1996; Keeves and Adams 1994; Samoff 1993; 1996). In particular, to uncover the complexity of educational phenomena latent in this study, oral history methodology is used, adapted by various ethnographical perspectives (Depaepe 1993; Novoa 1995). Organizations that fail to accommodate the needs, norms, and values of their communities rarely survive (Schein 1992). Therefore, detailing the persistence of institutions—how organizations go about change, maintain legitimacy, preserve tradition—is employed to reveal assumptions about human behavior, cultural values, coalitions, and environments (D. L. Duke 1995; Miller 1994; Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; Scott 1995). Operations important in identifying the

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above details are applied as suggested by practitioners of organizational history (D. L. Duke 1995; Scott 1995). Furthermore, recognizing that an interrelated set of historical, cultural, political, social, economic, and institutional conditions shape what has been and what can become education policy and practice, particular attention is given to such background for Uganda.

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Oral History Within the discipline of history of education, oral history is an important methodology for educational research, it offering both theoretical and practical advantages. In the context of a particular education institution, the personal perspective—people’s spoken recollections and reflections—can humanize the field, giving voice not only to “officials” but also to common people. Pragmatically, oral histories supplement written narrative or fill historical gaps when such narrative data does not exist. The value of oral narratives continues to be debated (Errante 1995), however, with issues and questions being raised that are not often encountered in other research methodologies. Wieder (1996) notes several of these issues: the trust established between the interviewer and interviewee, the different backgrounds of interviewer and interviewee that increase the potential for stereotyping and making assumptions, and the interaction of memory and history. Let us address these issues. First, there is a leap of faith required for someone to entrust a stranger with their story, especially when it is taped and later will be told. Hence, there is a consequent responsibility for the interviewer to uphold when someone bestows this trust. Bedolla (1992) calls our attention to the naive notion that “texts and artifacts speak for themselves,” noting that designs used in oral historical method must be flexible and open, similar to the designs followed by anthropologists in attempting to understand a culture. Those who desire to do such research must be ready to undergo conversion, attempting to enter the world and experience of the other. This arduous task begins by making explicit the dynamics that can skew the reality of interpretation. The interviewer brings conscious and unconscious baggage to the moment, such as other related research and background study, epistemological inclinations, institutional imperatives, social positionality, macro-cultural frames, and individual idiosyncrasies. Interviewees are not passive subjects, either; they are active participants who bring their own issues and perspectives to the interaction (Scheurich 1995). Another key problem in employing oral history is the impact of differences in world view between the interviewer and the

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interviewee—differences in setting, communication style, dress, even the reasons why interviewees respond. The oral historian does not merely regurgitate the contents of the interviews, but must place that document within his or her theoretical framework. To do this in the most unbiased manner possible, historians must familiarize themselves with the literature on interviewing techniques, conduct background research, and develop empathy and sensitivity to the subjects through participant observation (Okihiro 1996). Wieder (1996: 11) cautions that interviewers must continually remind themselves that human beings are complex: “[W]e do our interviewees and our stories a disservice if we are too quick to categorize and stereotype.” There may be class, race, educational or cultural factors that can impose a dominance-resistance phenomenon on interviewing, for example. This complexity makes the interviewing process both involved and complicated.3 Other questions posed by more traditional historians regarding oral histories include: How do you know that your informants’ memories are accurate? How do you know that they are appropriate representations of the events they purport to describe? While it is tempting to retort that written documents are similarly suspect, the fact remains that human testimony may be worthless unless it can be substantiated by other informants or documents supporting the testimony (Hoffman and Hoffman 1994). Memory is a treacherous thing. Thus, cross-examination—digging for details, and even gently confronting an interviewee with contradictory evidence—is critical, according to Friedlander (1996). He emphasizes the importance of delving deeply before the interview into documentary materials relevant to the interviewee’s experience, to anticipate several strategies of questioning and to be prepared with a battery of questions derived from an understanding of social phenomena. In examining the issue of long-term autobiographical memory, Hoffman and Hoffman (1994) discovered that events are likely to endure in memory if they have the following features: (1) they are perceived as highly emotional at the time they occur; (2) the subsequent course of events makes the event appear to be instrumental or perceived as a turning point; (3) the event is relatively unique, not blurred by repetition. Such elements are important in the formation of memories so resistant to deterioration with time that they can best be described as “archival.” Journals like the International Journal of Oral History and Oral History Review have published scholarly work on memory, interaction, and oral history. The literature concludes that memory is constructed rather than reproduced. This weds memory to interaction

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and brings up other issues, such as personal versus collective memory and the effects of class, race, gender, culture, ethnicity, geography, age, etc. Because oral history accounts are at least partially “memory books,” more questions are raised: How do people select their memories? What is the cultural process? How do we promote self-conscious and reflective memory? What happens to experiences on the way to becoming memory? (Wieder 1996). Frisch (1990) explains that we probe these questions by understanding who is talking, what they are talking about, and what sort of statements they are making. Dei (1994) contributes to this process of understanding by identifying Afrocentric themes that are very helpful in recovering the collective historical past from an African perspective; such insights serve to illustrate ingrained cultural values that condition school survival in Uganda. In oral history, qualitative interviewing, concepts, themes, and theories or explanations emerge in an ongoing process from the interviews, not as mere extensions of the literature. “Data analysis begins while the interviewing is still underway. After completing each interview and then again after finishing a larger group of interviews, you examine the data you have heard, pull out the concepts and themes that describe the world of the interviewees, and decide which areas should be examined in more detail” (Rubin and Rubin 1995: 226). Additional questions are asked as newly discovered themes emerge and as the researcher has a clearer idea of how best to ask them. On the other hand, more structured questioning is necessary initially, in order to introduce the research project, to gather relevant basic demographic data, and to look for knowledgeable informants willing to be interviewed in depth (Wolcott 1995). The researcher needs to be an interested learner, seeking to understand process and meaning by interacting with the informants in the natural setting. This poses a dilemma for the oral history interviewer: there can never be too much preparation for an interview session, but once on site, the interviewer must know how to listen and encourage the recovery of history. Ultimately, the oral historian should have read the literature and interviewed other people, and should thus be able to elicit the interviewee’s recollections and reflections. The interviewer’s job is to help the interviewee transcend both personal and collective blocks that alter memory. It is this type of interaction—an interaction that probes the heart and soul and allows the mind to represent the individual and the personal, as well as the collective and public—that enables oral history to make unique contributions to

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educational research. Such offerings tell stories that connect the personal and societal (Wieder 1996).

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Organizational History According to D. L. Duke (1995: 236), “Organizational history4 represents a merging of goals, perspectives, and methods of historical research and the language, concepts, and frameworks of sociology-based organizational theory for the purpose of understanding the evolution of particular organizations over time.” The theory provides the researcher with questions that help focus what is to be described, that assist the chronicling of stability and change often revealed in stories of the struggle to survive, and that help reflect on the meaning and significance of the organization’s history. Since this study is not a pure organizational history, some innovations to the theory have been adapted to fit it. For example, the period of time under consideration is 1971 to 1986, not the entire life of the site schools; hence, this work resembles more a case study. The story does narrate how the schools responded to threats and reveals internal integration and external adaptation that may differentiate Ugandan schools from those in Cambodia or Mozambique, for instance. Therefore, these findings contribute to the literature on school and organizational survival. The meaning of events as construed by informants represents current reflection on the meaning of events at the time they happened. While not describing classical organizational structures like curriculum, evaluation processes, patterns of change, etc., this study does illustrate change over time in areas such as teacher posting and employment, Parent Teacher Association (PTA) development, school financing, school governance, and so forth. Organizational history is a valuable template for a variety of reasons. Most people spend time in organizations, and formal schooling is one of the most universal of organizational experiences for many people; hence, understanding how to maintain a hospitable and effective school organization is crucial to the promotion and expansion of formal education. Uganda and other countries in the developing world see schools as a major link in national development plans. While specific practices of one situation may not be immediately transferable to another, insight into what is important to organizations at particular times in their history may permit other organizations to maintain viability by adopting previously successful steps with appropriate modification to local circumstances. Criteria for evaluating organizations—assumptions, behaviors, values, individual efforts/understandings of situations—may

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be generalized from past successful practices, too, or at least compared for variability. The survival of schools in Uganda may also provide a model for school adaptation to hostile environments; there is little doubt that schools in various parts of the world will surely be subjected to further insecurity, war, and lack of resources. So attending to the systematic form of inquiry proffered by an organizational history model helps describe, explain, and find meaning in the evolution of particular organizations, in this case, secondary schools in Uganda during a time of social conflict. However, arriving at generalizations about organizations as a result of in-depth histories of particular organizations is not a prevailing practice; additional comparative studies are usually needed to draw such general conclusions. This is a limitation inherent in organizational histories. Rather, studies like this one of the Kabarole schools establish baseline conditionalities to be tested for validation at other sites; in so doing, researchers may confirm these findings, discover additional conditionalities for school survival, or at least enhance their appreciation for variability across organizations. It is also important to eschew any illusion of autonomy on the part of a particular school; most schools are part of an education system, albeit often a “loosely coupled” arrangement. Finally, some observers may question the contemporary relevance of an organization’s history; focusing on the past could obscure explanations of the present or future nature of an organization.

Organizational Survival In relating this story of schools in Uganda, I have chosen to discuss the findings and implications in terms of organizational survival. The topic of school survival is found rarely in educational literature, so a brief reference to a few relevant areas of organizational theory helps situate the discussion. Some theorists speak about an organization’s ability to acquire and maintain resources, manage interest groups, adapt to changes in the environment, diversify, maintain stability and legitimacy, and so forth, as universal practices for survival. A systems approach to education also can be taken, where theory would assert that certain functions of survival can be served by having a system in which elements are “loosely coupled.” Other theorists offer insights into processes by which a given school climate develops and is maintained. Certain strategies and practices found in the site schools, therefore, may be reinforced by comparing them with successful procedures generalized in this theoretical literature (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; Weick 1976; Purkey and Smith 1983).

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Local strategies and procedures for school survival also may be reinforced in light of institutional persistence studies. Institutions consist of cognitive, normative, and regulative structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behavior (Scott 1995); practices that helped site schools survive can be investigated from this perspective. Yet another relevant viewpoint in organizational theory is the public-private dichotomy in educational provision (Bray 1994; Cummings and Riddell 1994a; 1994b; James 1994); where do the site schools fit with regard to this perspective? The particular experience of Kabarole’s schools may illustrate congruence with established principles of organizational survival.

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The Use of Multiple Research Perspectives in this Study The purpose of this qualitative investigation of school survival in the government-aided secondary schools of Kabarole District Uganda is an attempt to shed new light on a puzzling question: “How did the secondary schools in Uganda survive through the Amin/Obote II regimes when other institutional and social services in the country collapsed?” The survival of the schools is an empirical fact; this study does not render judgment on whether education survived, an open question at best. Rather, this work initiates what could become a rich, multi-level baseline study that identifies factors, contexts, and processes supporting school survival in Uganda during a conflicted time. Much of what is revealed may be confirmatory in nature to those who lived through the period and whose commitment is itself a factor explaining the phenomenon. But these factors have been neither documented nor assessed in a formal way; the point of this study is to begin this process, and the use of multiple research perspectives is necessary to achieve these ends. Uganda is unique; faced with similar circumstances, the education systems of most countries have collapsed. Even in countries where schooling continued, significant enrollment declines were recorded. The opposite is the case in Uganda. Why? The answers lie in the experience of those who lived through this period in the schools. The qualitative interviews that were conducted not only reveal the difficulties schools faced and the cumulative effects of such difficulties—a subject frequently explored in research focused on educational decline and failure—but also illuminate positive actions taken by people to salvage a valued institution mired

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in a dismal situation. This study documents such strategies and processes and identifies reasons that may have motivated this organizational success. Furthermore, this story of how the Kabarole schools survived is, perhaps, a source of lessons for other schools threatened with collapse. Educational planners and policy makers may discover herein foundation blocks for establishing, sustaining, and expanding an education system rooted in the hopes, dreams, beliefs, values, and culture of those people whom these systems are meant to serve. While this appendix began with appropriate background information on the researcher and the informants, it is well to remember that the interviewing process is complex. How do we know that informants’ memories are “archival” or even accurate? I believe the situations of the site schools and informants, and the survival strategies created to endure the difficult times of 1971–86, produced archival memories. Indeed, many informants’ recollections were precise in detail and accurate in content, corroborated by the view of multiple witnesses and with the available historical record. While some triangulation of detail was accomplished through records and published materials, most corroboration was confirmed through the testimony of multiple informants. Perhaps because of skills developed under the influence of a traditional oral culture, perhaps because of the necessity of accurate memory in schools without textbooks or supplies, the accuracy of the detailed accounts is extraordinary. Since memory is constructed rather than reproduced, in the oral historical interview process one must be sensitive to the cultural differences and nuances between interviewer and interviewee, and be careful not to impose preconceived categories and Western biases on an African experience. Hence, a semi-structured, open-ended interviewing process was conducted in this study, a process capable of discovering themes in response to limited predetermined categories of interest. Informants were not provided with a questionnaire to complete, but rather students, teachers, parents, administrators, support staff, and civic and religious leaders were asked to tell of their firsthand experience. These are African voices and stories not told before because of fear or danger of reprisal, or simply because no one asked. These experiences are told now to an interested outsider, a fellow teacher and administrator, who once wondered but could not then inquire without threat to his own safety and the safety of these others. So the narrative represents the reflection of mainly African participants on the details and meaning of historical events in which

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they actually participated. Ultimately, this African story is being presented and interpreted by an American. “How historians interpret the causes of events may be influenced by what they know about these events, how they came to this knowledge, their personal values and beliefs, and the times in which they live” (D. L. Duke 1995:256). The quest to find out how Ugandan secondary schools survived is certainly a key factor in the presentation and interpretation of this study.

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The Interview Process and Data Analysis Data for this study were collected through (1) semi-structured, open-ended, audio-taped and transcribed one-to-one oral history interviews, (2) archive research, (3) and data analysis. The majority of the data were collected in the field. While conducting fieldwork under a time constraint is a challenging exercise, short periods of fieldwork are better suited to the collection of single-point data— events that happen once or within a definite period of time—than continuous or ongoing data, according to Hoddinott (1993). He also notes three important specifics for successful “rapid assessment” work in developing countries: preliminary reading, a preparatory trip, and a well-defined methodology; I was able to employ all three strategies. In reconstructing events at the four Ugandan schools during the period from 1971 to 1986, the interview design and analysis was flexible, iterative, and continuous. Flexibility demanded that the questioning be adjusted so that individuals were asked about the particular parts of a subject they knew best. Phrasing initial questions in an open way allowed the interviewer to hear what the interviewee thought before narrowing down the options for questioning. Thus, in the early stages of the interviewing many themes were gathered; toward the middle of the research, concentration focused on winnowing to limit the number of themes to be explored; and in the final stages, testing of tentative analyses and understandings formed the basis of questions. The questioning was redesigned throughout the project in a continuous way (Rubin and Rubin 1995). An underlying concern in such non-directive interview strategy, as Wolcott states, is “how to find out what you want to know without framing questions in a way that you, rather than your informants, introduce and pursue topics. How can the context remain theirs, rather than your own?” (1995: 104). A strategy utilizing “grand tour” questions (Spradley 1979) such as “could you tell me about your experience at Kyebambe School, beginning

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from when you enrolled?” or “what was the relationship between teachers and students at your school?” would allow the conversation to begin with personal experience gathering and discovery. As the conversation evolved, questions about day-to-day activities and events, particularly during stressful or violent situations, would follow. In subsequent interviews with the same informant and/or with others, concepts that arose were explored, themes identified in conversation were examined, and an analysis or tentative set of explanations would often be tested for validity. In this study, then, concepts, themes, and explanations emerged from the interviews themselves or were influenced by the multiple research methods used and/or research conducted in other educational situations during similar periods of social conflict. Key informants for these interviews were chosen based on the following criteria: (1) their experiences representing certain comparison groups in the study: students, teachers, alumni, administrators, parents, board members, government officials, local civic community, missionaries; and (2) their personal experience at one of the site schools during the period in question, from 1971 to 1986; or (3) their personal experience of school persistence or school failure/abandonment/collapse in other sites that might inform and/or reinforce the findings in the site schools. To protect the current and future safety of all informants, pseudonyms are used to cite personal interview or personal correspondence references in this study.

Personal Reflections and Limitations The reader has seen that multiple research perspectives—oral history methodology, augmented by attention to areas emphasized in studies of organizational history and organizational survival—were used to guide the inquiry. This multiple research methodology introduces issues beyond researcher and informant backgrounds that must be addressed, namely establishing trust between interviewer and interviewee, entering the world and experience of the other, the interaction of memory and history, and the “triangulation” of data gathered. Although building trust is an oral historian’s task, bestowing trust is the people’s equally fine achievement. The people interviewed were happy that I was interested in their experience. “No one ever asked me about this before” was a common response. I feel they saw me as a fellow teacher and former headmaster who could empathize with their struggles, knowing myself how complex it was to run a school under the best of circumstances. They knew that I was a religious person—affiliated with the Catholic

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missionaries, some of whom were on staff at St. Leo’s College— that I had been to Uganda before, and that I had chosen to return. They were pleased that someone of my age and status would be interested in pursuing this topic on my own time and expense. I believe they were pleased that I wanted to learn from them, and I found them very willing to teach me. I believe their willingness to talk with me was in part due to the fact that I was an outsider, but one whom they rightfully regarded as sympathetic to the schools’ continued survival and success. This attitude influenced some of the narrators to ask my advice regarding current school practices and procedures. In attempting to enter and observe the world of my informants, I resided in staff housing on the compound of St. Leo’s College, and I moved by matatu—a local form of public transportation— and by bicycle. Living on the school campus gave me a daily opportunity to observe students, staff, and my surroundings. By accepting invitations to conduct several S3 general assembly sessions, and to preside as “guest of honor” for a Ugandan version of the senior prom, I became a participant observer! In preparing myself to enter this new world, I also conducted extensive background search on the historical and social legacy of Uganda, and I studied and practiced oral history interviewing techniques, further honing my own skills and talents as an empathic and sensitive listener. While one may never truly be inculturated in another’s world, and while I always had the option to return to my home in the face of danger or difficulty, it was encouraging for me to hear from an informant, “It was really nice meeting you; and every time I met you it appeared as if we had met for a long time!”5 K’Meyer notes: “In recent years scholars in a number of disciplines have explored the subject of memory. The underlying theme in the resulting body of literature is that what people remember about events is as important to understanding both the past and the present, as is the ‘scientific’ study of evidence which has characterized ‘doing history’ for the past century.… [H]istorians can understand the relationships within a community by examining individual reminiscences” (1997: 1–2). The differing perspectives that students, teachers, or administrators report in their reminiscences about a particular event, for instance, illustrate this point, and the richness of the relationships revealed contributes significantly to the narrative. As I have noted earlier, it appears that my Ugandan informants have developed excellent memory skills, in addition to their own unique perspectives, because the accuracy of informants’ historical memory proved extraordinary. Thus, most

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“triangulation” of data for accuracy and validity was accomplished by corroboration with the testimony of multiple interviewees. But site school librarians and clerks also assisted me in locating school publications, fund-raising brochures, and available records on student achievement, mainly external examination results published by the government. Two Congregation of Holy Cross archives proved very helpful: the Indiana Province Archives (IPA) at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and the Eastern Brothers’ Province Archives (EBPA) repository at Valatie, New York. The former archive provided background on the mission activities of the American Holy Cross priests, including newsletters and correspondence; the latter archive contained the St. Leo’s College House Chronicles, a regular “diary” account of the dayto-day events of the Holy Cross religious staff at St. Leo’s, as well as copies of school publications. Little of this material survived on the Uganda side. Multiple research perspectives are particularly useful in seeking to understand complex social, cultural, political, and institutional processes; such an interdisciplinary approach takes into account the total context in which the studied situation is nested. Valerie Yow (1997), a practitioner of oral history in the social sciences, extends this understanding to note the need to place published writing in a context that includes revealing our own agendas; this is particularly true when the reader needs to know what influenced the research and interpretation in order to evaluate the research. Recall that in oral history the emerging relationship between the interviewer and interview is a key component in understanding the meaning created during the interview. Di Leonardo (1987: 18–19) dubs such information the “interview context,” and notes that one should try to be more self-conscious about three common research problems of oral historians and ethnographers: “How can we approach fieldwork so as to ameliorate power differentials between ourselves and our informants? How can we be self-conscious about how we affect the information given us? And how can we construct texts so as to indicate as honestly as possible the specific personal collaborations that produced the narratives we present?” Keeping an “intellectual diary,” or personal research journal, during the fieldwork helped me be more reflectively selfconscious about such feelings and interactions. The power differential was perhaps most noticeable to me. First, being perceived as a white, American, male “expert” entails unavoidable associations. I tried to ameliorate such images by using a bicycle.6 In fact, I felt most comfortable with two groups:

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my professional and age peers, and the former secondary school students, now young teachers. Those men and women who were my “age-mates”—the experienced teachers, the heads and deputies, the Ministry of Education officials, the university professors, the parents, PTA, and board members—seemed to accept me without being overly deferent, were open and willing to tell of their successes and failures, and were confident and candid in personal revelation—especially about their fears and hopes. They seemed honored to be invited to testify and committed to providing me with a clear picture of events as they recalled them. Former students who had now joined the teaching ranks seemed honored by my interest in their experience as students and encouraged by my willingness to learn from them. They seemed proud of their accomplishment—and that of their peers—in surviving along with their schools. These reactions did not surprise me; I did not feel intimidated by any informants’ rank, and as a teacher with thirty years of experience, I have always gotten along well with young people. “You still like kids” is a familiar tease of some of my peers in school administration. I did have some disappointments, though. If a person whom I invited to interview really did not want to speak with me, it was rare that he or she would refuse; rather, the individual would fail to show up for an appointment. I would then make a second appointment; if the person failed to keep that meeting, then I knew the answer was no. Given no phones and travel by bicycle, I would have preferred a direct answer in such instances, if only for my own efficiency of time. But I became reconciled that such would not be the case, since protocol, apparently, would not condone a direct refusal.7 There were others who wanted a questionnaire to complete; I explained that I was interested in what they thought was important—I wanted to hear of their experience. Some responded well and launched into their story; others were less confident. Still others expressed feeling intimidated and worried that “they would not know answers to my questions”; usually they revealed this after their interview, which they said “wasn’t as difficult as they had imagined it might be.” My own expectations interfered at times, too. I was disappointed in some instances when an informant did not have a good memory for details, especially if his or her experience spanned a critical period for which I lacked corroborating information. With some informants, ulterior motives surfaced: the interview became an opportunity to seek funds for a project, or the informant had an obvious political agenda to espouse. I began to rank interviews as excellent, very good, good, or

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poor based on such criteria. Many interviews were beautiful experiences, though. People shared with me more than I had a right to know, and often more than I had asked. They invited me to their homes; they stopped me on the roadside to inquire about my research; they introduced me to others at public events. I felt very engaged and accepted in this place, and I admit to giving little or no thought to home during the fieldwork; I was made to feel at home right there. I brought skills to the encounter, too. I endured the endemic Ugandan bureaucracy at times, and my patience was rewarded with interview opportunities with some key ministry officials. These civil servants are almost always harassed by hordes of favor-seekers, and so often I was admitted for protocol reasons alone—“the American researcher is still waiting to see you, sir.” In most cases I managed to warm up the informant, who came to see the interview as a happy experience to share with another professional; oftentimes the person gave me much more time than I had requested and offered introductions to others who might aid my research. In setting up interviews, I found it important to be as general as possible when describing my interest in establishing a pending interview; inevitably, if a story began to spill out ahead of time, the retelling was less spontaneous or revealing than the initial unrehearsed recollection. This required some risk of the unknown on the part of most informants, but they took that risk, and the telling benefited from the spontaneity. As in all oral history interviewing, the less the interviewer has to say, the better. This allows the informant to frame the narrative in terms of what he or she initially deems important; the interviewer can subsequently ask questions of interest that may not have been raised. In this study, while I knew a great deal about the historical and social circumstances surrounding the period in Ugandan history under investigation, my stance was one of encouragement and affirmation—mostly conveyed by body language indicating undivided attention and interest, and by a plethora of “uh-huh”’s, “yes”’s, “wow”’s and other affirmative grunts. Thus, I was able to monitor my own methodology, noting in my journal where I thought I had spoken too much or too soon, possibly stifling an informant’s thought. This served as helpful “infield correction” to my interview techniques. I also observed that in a number of instances, informants held suspect the writing of Ugandan exiles about this period of history. “They weren’t here to know what was really happening,” they said. For example, Furley (1988) quotes UNESCO (1975; 1983) statistics to

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describe the expansion of Uganda’s secondary schooling in the 1980s. In fact, a number of those “schools” existed on paper only, and the majority had no facilities or teachers. Duggan (1996) reports similar circumstances in documenting Cambodian educational recovery. The U.S. State Department communications filed in the IPA archives indicated that the situation in 1973 presented a grave danger for the American missionaries in Kabarole; in fact, the missionaries in Uganda viewed Amin’s threats with less trepidation. The World Food Program required self-help initiatives as a condition for food provision; in fact, Kyebambe found the cultivation of crops on school land at a distance from the compound to be neither safe nor economical, and they soon abandoned the requirement, but not the program. While some critics may discount the objectivity of eyewitness accounts, the presentations in some external documentation require similar scrutiny. Jansen (1995) quotes a number of sources in presenting a comprehensive view of the state of research on effective schools. With regard to simple case studies like this one of the survival of Kabarole secondary schools, he notes that some case studies may form the basis for identifying baseline conditionalities; they may also contribute strong qualitative components into the literature and provide in-depth details of school workings often lost in largescale statistical investigations. On the other hand, they may simply generate non-prescriptive detailed ethnographic “portraits” of schools, since, as a group, case studies generally share weaknesses: small and unrepresentative samples, possible errors in identifying effective schools because of uncontrolled student body characteristics such as social class, achievement data aggregated at the school level, inappropriate comparisons, and the use of subjective criteria in determining school success. While the multiple research perspectives used in this case study may ameliorate some of these concerns, there may be parallels between a study of school survival such as this one and school effectiveness studies; hence, caveats about the generality of this study’s findings have been addressed previously. However, other problems that can crop up in simple case studies—observer bias, paucity of verifiable evidence for empirical claims, lack of control variables—point directly at limitations of the oral historical/ethnographic methods described in this appendix. “Liking or not liking, feeling repelled by difference in gender or age or social class or ethnicity, all influence the ways we ask questions and respond to narrators and interpret and evaluate what they say” (Yow 1997: 78). The detailed description in this methodological appendix, including a view of

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researcher and informant background and personal reflection on difficulties and pleasures encountered in the fieldwork, are provided as important data in their own right, and as a means for the reader to assess the influence of this investigator on the research, analysis, and interpretation presented in this study.

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Notes 1. The Congregation of Holy Cross, a Roman Catholic order of priests and brothers, came to Tooro District, Uganda, in 1958 to help establish a new Roman Catholic diocese in Fort Portal from what was then an area included in the Mbarara Roman Catholic diocese. The Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross joined the effort in 1967. While the Holy Cross communities are international in scope and membership, personnel from the United States were entrusted with the responsibility for establishing this new Ugandan foundation. The majority of Holy Cross religious in East Africa today are Africans. See Connelly (1981) for the history of Holy Cross in East Africa, 1958–80. 2. Two anecdotes are instructive here. Once when I was out in the village, an army helicopter gunship passed overhead as I bicycled to an interview. Later, the informant told me that his neighbors came to his house that evening demanding to know “why the army gunship had dropped off the muzungu on the bicycle!” When I gave a public lecture at Makerere University on my research findings, I was amused to read in the following day’s newspaper the headline: “U.S. researcher praises Amin education policy” (Mucunguzi 1997). The reporter had hit upon my comment that Amin’s army commanders helped enforced school discipline by eagerly slapping the kids around. 3. For qualitative interviewing, see Rubin and Rubin (1995); for interviewing techniques adapted to developing countries, see Devereux and Hoddinott (1993), and Wolcott (1995). 4. This précis is based on an essay, “Organizational History: A Source of Increased Understanding of Schools,” in Daniel L. Duke, The School That Refused to Die (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 5. *B. Jasani, personal correspondence, 13 January 1998. 6. In rural Uganda, the Bazungu—mostly European Union biological researchers working in the local rain forest—travel by Land Rover. This means that the other road traffic—pedestrians, bicyclists, cattle, sheep, swine, uniformed school children—dive for the bush when the Europeans, happily insulated in a First World conveyance, speed by leaving everyone else choking in a cloud of red dust. Using a bicycle allowed me to choke by the roadside with the locals, and perhaps reveals much about my own attitude toward some of my fellow Bazungu. 7. “A Danish businessman based in Uganda noted: ‘Ugandans will not say no to you, but they will waste your time and make you return at least three times, by which time you will know that the answer is a refusal or rejection. Maybe this is why people do not openly rebel against corrupt leaders’” (Obbo 1988: 213).

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APPENDIX II Calendar of Important Events in Uganda’s Educational History

1844 1862 1875 1877 1879 1894

19 June

1902

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1903 1905 1905 1906 1912 1921 1922 1924 1925 1925 1925 1927

1950 1962

9 October

Zanzibar traders visited court of Kabaka Suna. John Hanning Speke presented Bible to the omukama of Bunyoro-Kitara. Henry Morton Stanley gave Bible lessons to Kabaka Mutesa. CMS missionaries arrived in Buganda. White Father missionaries arrived. A British protectorate formally proclaimed over Uganda. Namilyango School founded: for sons of Catholic chiefs. Mengo High School founded: for Anglicans. King’s College, Buddo, founded: for sons of Protestant chiefs and Buganda royal family members. Gayaza High School founded: for daughters of leading Protestants. St. Mary’s College, Kisubi, founded: for sons of devoted Baganda Catholics and Goans. Tooro Girls High School (Kyebambe) founded: for daughters of Tooro chiefs; Protestant. St. Leo’s College founded: for Catholic boys in Tooro. Makerere College founded as a technical college. Phelps-Stokes Commission Report British White Paper on Education in Tropical Africa Department of Education established. Nyakasura School founded: for sons of Tooro chiefs; Protestant. Education Ordinance—government registers/classifies education institutions and controls general direction of education. Makerere College constituted as University College of East Africa. Uganda gained independence from British rule.

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1964 1965 1965 1966 1970 1971 1972

1973 1975 1976 1979

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1980

1982 1985

1986 1987 1989

1992

1993 1995 1997

Education Act—reorganization to non-denominational schools begun. Africanization of primary school syllabus Mpanga Secondary School founded as a private school for Asians. 24 February Suspension of 1962 Constitution by Obote Education Act—non-denominalization of schools completed. 25 January Military coup led by General Amin. 4 August Amin ordered all Asians holding British passports to leave the country in 90 days. Expatriate teachers exodus begun. Establishment of National Curriculum Development Center (NCDC) New secondary school curriculum introduced. Mpanga Secondary School nationalized. 11 April Liberation of Kampala 13 April Yusufu Lule proclaimed president. 20 June Godfrey Binaisa appointed president. Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) established. 13 May Military Commission established a Presidential Commission. December General election: Milton Obote returned to power. Revised secondary curriculum introduced. 27 July Obote’s second administration overthrown by soldiers led by Basilio Olara Okello. August Military Council formed. 25 January Military Council overthrown by NRA led by Yoweri Museveni. July Education Policy Review Commission (EPRC) established. January EPRC report submitted. November White Paper process initiated to outline strategy for implementation of EPRC recommendations. April White Paper published in official form as: Government of Uganda (1992). Government White Paper on implementation of the recommendations of the report of the Education Policy Review Commission entitled “Education for national development.” Kampala: MOES. National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) established. General elections. Yoweri Museveni elected president. Universal primary education (UPE) introduced.

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GLOSSARY

“A” level “coaching” “greener pastures” “IGM” kabaka katikiro mafutamingi magendo matatu matooke

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“mushrooming” muzungu O.B./O.G. “O” level omukama “part-timing” posho rwot shamba tea White Paper

Advanced Level: grades S5 and S6 extra lessons for pay better pay/working conditions outside Uganda “I got mine” king (Buganda) prime minister (Tooro) businessman; recipient of “abandoned” Asian property alternative/black market economy based on smuggling local form of public transportation; taxi banana; a staple food of southern and southwestern Uganda schools opened in the 1980s without facilities; political schools Caucasian; Bazungu (plural form) “old boys”/ “old girls” associations; school alumni(ae) Ordinary Level: grades S1 to S4 king (Tooro and Bunyoro-Kitara) teaching in several schools simultaneously a porridge made of ground corn meal chief garden a kind of bribe a government policy paper

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INDEX

Acholi, 18, 20, 46, 53, 54, 60, 82, 123, 124, 134 Achte, Father Augustine WF, 62 adapted education, 20, 36–37. See also PhelpsStokes Commission administrator(s), colonial, 33, 47; civic, 22, 25, 37, 79,81, 93, 98, 194–195; school, 8, 13, 47, 52–53, 54, 64, 75, 81, 83, 88, 92–93, 95, 99, 100, 101, 103, 106–107, 111, 114n. 28, 120, 132, 141, 148, 149, 153–154, 160, 169, 172, 175, 185, 187, 188, 190, 194–195 age set, 9, 123, 142n. 25, 190 “A” level schooling, 4, 14n. 3, 65, 71, 77, 79, 97, 107, 147, 173n. 2, 174, 196 Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), 90n. 43 American(s), 3, 26, 37, 45, 76, 130, 143n. 55, 175, 186, 189, 191; missionaries, 2, 35, 45, 64, 75–76, 109, 174, 189, 192; paternalism, 37; schools, 135, 175 American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 35 Amin, Idi, 2, 42, 45–46, 80, 87, 127; and Americans, 45, 76; and education/schools, 41–51, 54–56, 72–76, 118–119, 131, 135, 163, 193n. 2; and human rights violations, 14n. 2; and teachers, 45; Decree #1 of 1973, 114n. 31; economic war, 42–44, 69, 102, 109; fall of, 25–26; purges, 53, 104, 123, 134; regime, 2, 14n. 2, 25, 38–39, 41n. 13, 129, 164, 194–195; soldiers/troops, 2, 46, 49, 81, 87, 111, 128, 143n. 41, 152 Ankole, Kingdom of, 20, 60, 61; cattle, 3 Asians, 7, 43, 45, 68–71, 97; and abandoned property, 42–43, 45, 68, 69, 195; and Mpanga Senior Secondary School, 68–71, 75, 195; expulsion of, 42–43, 45, 68, 69, 75, 101, 115n. 45, 118. See also Goans, Indians, Pakistani Asian Education Society, 69, 97 Baganda, 23, 32, 40n. 3, 63, 122, 130, 194, 196. See also Buganda Baguma, D. K., 68 Bakonjo, 82, 125 Bantu, 23, 54; language, 18, 40n. 3, 176 Banyarwanda, 22, 83, 105. See also Rwanda Basaliza, Henry, 64 Batchelor, E. U., 68 Batooro, 7, 29n. 2, 62, 65–66, 81–83, 125, 126, 133, 138, 176; language (Rutooro),130; proverb/story, 108, 127, 134 Bhimji, Gulamali, 69 Binaisa, Godfrey, 195 Bito, 18. See also Bunyoro-Kitara Boards of Governors, 66–67, 69–70, 80, 90n. 21, 108–111, 132, 135, 148, 151, 159–162, 167, 169, 170; and religious leaders, 94; members,

8, 119, 136, 147, 187, 190; role of parents and, 83–85 Bolton, Miss, 61 Britain, 43–44, 195–196; authorities, 25, 33; Colonial Office, 35–36; commonwealth citizens, 43, 44–45; East Africa Company, 60; educational heritage, 14n. 3, 37, 73; government, 2, 18, 44, 60; imperialism, 18, 40n. 7, 60; indirect rule policy, 60; passports, 42, 196 British Council, 97 Brothers of Christian Instruction (Kisubi Brothers), 63 Brothers of Holy Cross, 64, 75–76, 89n. 16, 175, 189, 193n. 1 Buddo. See King’s College, Buddo Buganda, 18–19, 20, 22–23, 32, 34, 40n. 3, 60, 61, 130, 194. See also Baganda Buhinga Primary School, 68–69 Bunyoro-Kitara, 18, 20, 32, 60–61, 194, 196. See also Bito Busoga, 22 Busoga College, Mwiri, 67, 173n. 16 Butiiti, 63, 173n. 16 Calwell, Lieutenant Commander Ernest William Eborhard, 65–67 Cambodia, 4, 14n. 6 Canon Apolo Teacher Training College, 66, 173n. 16 Castle Commission (1963), 166 Catholic Church. See Roman Catholic Church Christian(s), 23, 27, 32–35, 43, 60–61, 64, 67, 124, 130, 133–137, 168; history in Uganda, 11; missionaries, 22, 32–35, 130; schools, 20. See also missionaries church, 13, 32–33, 34, 49, 76, 87, 111, 140, 159, 163–164; church/state relations, 40n. 7; influence of, 80–81, 133–137. See also Church of Uganda, missionaries, religion, Roman Catholic Church Church Missionary Society (CMS), 32, 34–35, 61, 65, 57, 159, 194 Church of Uganda (COU), 80, 90n. 21, 109, 124, 136, 143n. 41, 176. See also church, missionaries, Protestant (Anglican) Church, religion clan, 9, 13, 18–19, 24, 35, 61, 87, 104, 121–126, 130, 134, 137, 163, 172. See also family, parents coaching, 51, 123, 153, 196 colonialism, 11, 17, 19, 27, 33, 34, 44, 60–61, 163 Congo, 14n. 1, 61. See also Zaire Cooper, E. C., 67 Cosgrove, Brother Frederick CSC, 75

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cultural, contact, 18; diversity, 17, 185; domination, 34; environment, 178–179; factors, 117, 180; heritage/history, 17, 166; issues, 19–24; life, 137; perspective, 175, 178; process, 181, 189; resources, 81; systems, 17, 156, 178; themes, 8, 11; transmission, 72; values, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 113, 121–137, 150, 162, 163, 171, 172, 180

Hurditch, Miss, 61 Hutu, 18

decentralization, 101, 146, 167, 170 Democratic Party (DP), 23, 53, 54, 78, 176 Deneau, Brother Adrian FIC, 63 Derbe, Father Eugene WF, 63

James, Brother Lewis CSC, 64 Jinja, 7, 78 Jinja College, Jinja, 173n. 16

education, 1, 2–6, 138–141, 144–150, 163; agricultural, 36, 38, 39; and military issues, 24– 26; colonial, 22, 35–37, 142n. 25; context of Ugandan, 17–29; finance/delivery/control, 158–162, 164, 167–168, 170–171; girls, 23–24, 34, 35, 61–62; government, 38; history, 8, 11, 40n. 2, 95, 130–131, 144, 165, 177–184, 194– 195; leadership, 168–169; legendary desire for, 1, 6, 8, 130–133, 137, 163, 172; missionary, 32–35, 40n. 7, 163; pre-colonial, 31–32; primary, 37–39; public-private responsibility for, 12, 141, 143n. 39, 158–162, 171, 184; secondary, 37–39, 133, 147, 166, 167, 173n. 16; system in Uganda, 2, 14n. 3, 37–40; technical, 20, 36; traditions in Uganda, 30–41, 171; war and violence issues affecting, 26–28 Education Act of 1964, 142n. 26, 159, 195 Education Act of 1970, 142n. 26, 160, 195 educational actors, 6, 8, 9; faculty and students as, 93–94, 95–96; head teachers and deputy administrators as, 92–93, 95, 99; librarians as, 97–98; members of governing boards as, 94; Ministry of Education officials as, 91–92; parents/families as, 96–97; religious leaders as, 94; staff members as, 94; experience of, 8, 13, 95–97 educational planning/policy/practice, 6, 11, 12, 17, 33, 38–40, 41n. 14, 101,111, 141, 150, 165–167, 171, 179, 185 Education Policy Review Commission (EPRC), 39, 149, 165, 195 entrepreneurial projects, 44, 98–101, 107, 121, 139, 153, 155, 162, 164, 172 Eritrea, 4 essential commodities, 44, 49, 123 family, 9–10, 23,27, 35, 81, 95–97, 104, 113, 128, 131, 137, 140–141, 169, 172, 194; extended, 9–10, 95–97, 104, 109, 113, 133, 139, 141; role of, 9–10, 121–126, 163. See also clan, parents Fort Portal, 3, 7, 45, 62, 63, 66, 68, 69, 78, 80, 81, 90n. 21, 91, 97, 111, 127, 136, 138, 143n. 43, 173n. 16, 193n. 1 Goans, 34, 43, 63, 194. See also Asians Gayaza High School, 2, 34, 118, 194 greener pastures, 45, 46, 102, 125, 146, 196 Haiti, 158 Heyneman, Stephen P., 5–6, 14n. 4, 30, 92, 119, 123, 129, 130, 138–139, 143n. 55, 147, 169–170, 173n. 15 Hima, 18. See also Tutsi Higher School Certificate (HSC). See “A” level schooling Hong Kong, 173n. 14, 161 Houlihan, Brother John CSC, 75

Indians, 43. See also Asians International Development Agency (IDA), 62, 76, 119, 143n. 35 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 76 Ireland, 161, 173n. 14. See also Northern Ireland

kabaka, 18, 24, 32, 130, 194, 196 Kabarole District, 3, 5–13, 17, 46, 56, 59, 60, 81, 137–138, 142nn. 24, 43, 51, 172, 173n. 16, 175–176, 184; banks, 109; role of schools in wartime, 112–113; school initiatives and internalities, 91–112; school sites, 59–71; school survival, 71–89, 118–141, 162–165; tribal/ethnic tensions, 81–83 Kabarole High School, 69–70, 151 Kabarole Public Library, 97–98, 138 Kadoma, Aston, 70 Kampala, 7, 22, 53, 55, 68, 70, 77, 78, 79, 89, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98, 111, 112, 114n. 28, 118, 127, 133, 138, 143n. 51, 169, 173n. 16, 195; European Hospital, 67 Kasagama, crown prince of Tooro, 60–61; omukama of Tooro, 60–61, 65–66. See also Kyebambe IV, Omukama (King) David Kasagama Ikingura Kasiragi, Francis, 68 katikiro, 61, 196 Kenya, 14n. 1, 44, 46, 65, 67, 95, 102, 109, 136 Khan, Aga, 69; education network of schools, 68 Kigezi High School, 173n. 16 Kihembo Hill Memorial College, Fort Portal, 173n. 16 Kili, Barnabas, 73–74, 119 King’s African Rifles, 73 King’s College, Buddo, 22, 34, 65, 66, 67, 87, 131, 173n. 16, 194 Kinyamasika TTC, Fort Portal, 94, 103, 143n. 36, 173n. 16 Kisubi. See St. Mary’s College, Kisubi Kitabi Seminary, Mbarara, 173n. 16 Kitante Hill School, 143n. 39 Kichwamba Technical College, 173n. 16 Kololo Senior Secondary School, Kampala, 143n. 39 Kyambogo Demonstration School, Kampala, 173n. 16 Kyambogo National Teachers College, 76, 173n. 16 Kyarusozi Secondary School, 173n. 16 Kyebambe IV, Omukama (King) David Kasagama Ikingura, 60–62, 65–66. See also Kasagama Kyebambe Girls Secondary School, 61–62, 68, 70, 74, 80, 83, 86, 90n. 21, 94, 100, 103, 106, 113, 115n. 41, 120, 134, 143n. 35, 151, 152, 159, 186, 192, 194 Kyegobe. See St. Leo’s College, Kyegobe Lake Victoria, 2, 7, 14n. 1, 18, 40n. 3 Langi, 46, 53, 54, 82, 123, 124, 134 Lebanon, 14n. 6, 158 Lesotho, 173n. 14 Liberation War (1979), 5, 26, 38, 39, 51, 55, 71, 98, 111, 124

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Liberia, 4 loosely-coupled systems, 11, 150, 152–155, 164, 168, 183 Lord, Brother George FIC, 63 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), 90n. 43 Lugard, Captain, 18 Lule, Yusufu, 195 Maddox Senior Secondary School, Butiiti, 173n. 16 mafutamingi, 43, 121, 122, 196 magendo, 7, 13, 44, 49, 50, 57n. 6, 81, 98, 105, 112, 121, 138, 196 Makerere College/University, 1, 13, 21, 24, 29n. 4, 34, 38, 40n. 6, 63, 65, 67, 73, 74, 76, 96, 120, 131, 173n. 16, 193n. 2, 194; Faculty of Education, 73, 168 Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), x Maryhill Secondary School, Mbarara, 173n. 16 Masaka, 7, 68, 78, 118, 143n. 43, 173n. 16 Masaka Senior Secondary School, 173n. 16 matatu, 188, 196 matooke, 3, 80–81, 196 Mbale Senior Secondary School, 143n. 39, 173n. 16 Mbarara, 113, 118, 143n. 43, 173n. 16 Mbarara High School, 173n. 16 Mengo High School, 34 Military Commission, 195 Military Council, 195 Ministry of Education (MOE), 4, 52, 53, 62, 91– 92, 100, 101–104, 108, 119, 120, 135, 148, 151, 152–153, 163, 164, 190 missionaries, 2, 13, 19, 20, 22, 32–35, 45, 60–65, 74, 76, 109, 127, 130, 137, 149, 157, 159, 174– 175, 187, 188, 192, 194. See also education, missionary mock exams, 105 Mountains of the Moon, 3 Mozambique, 4 Mpanga Senior Secondary School, 68–71, 74, 75, 77, 86, 97, 98, 103, 106, 109, 119, 120, 123, 133, 134, 151, 152, 195 Mulengwa, Austin, 64, 65 multiple research perspectives, 12, 13, 178–179, 187, 189, 192; ethnography, 177, 178; oral history, 177, 178, 179–182, 186–189, 191; organizational history, 12, 141, 145, 177, 178–179, 182–183, 187, 193n. 4; organizational survival, 8, 10–11, 117–118, 141, 150– 162, 167, 173n. 4, 183–184, 187; use in this study, 184–186 Museveni, Yoweri Kaguta, 39, 55, 72, 78, 111, 140, 195 mushrooming schools, 77, 81, 98, 103, 133, 169, 171, 196. See also schools Muslim, 23, 27, 31, 35, 43, 124, 133–135, 176. See also religion Muslim Students Association, 134 muzungu, 193nn. 2, 6, 196 Namibia, 4 Namilyango Secondary School, 34, 173n. 16, 194 National Curriculum Development Center (NCDC), 74, 195 National Resistance Army (NRA), 55, 78, 86–87, 139, 140, 195 National Resistance Movement (NRM), 79, 120, 163, 165–166 National Union of Students of Uganda (NUSU), 52–53, 110, 120

Ndabakirira, Stephen, 75 Ndyanabo, Absalom, 71 Netherlands, 161 NGO, 76, 138, 169 Nilo-Hamitic, 23 Nilotic, 18, 23, 54 Nkojo-Murro, E., 70 Northern Ireland, 14n. 6. See also Ireland Ntare School, 131, 173n. 16 Nyakasura School, 65–68, 71, 74, 75, 78, 80, 87, 90n. 21, 94, 100, 103, 109, 110–111, 120, 124, 131, 134, 159, 173n. 16, 194 Nyakazingo, Moses, 64, 68, 75 “O” level schooling, 4, 14n. 3, 55, 70, 79, 92, 96, 105, 133, 196 Obote, Milton Apolo, 2, 46, 51, 76, 95; and education/schools, 51–56, 76–78, 84, 98, 105, 119, 121, 133, 138, 163; and human rights violations, 14n. 2; Obote I regime, 70, 75, 131; Obote II regime, 7, 11, 54, 76, 81, 83, 85, 98, 110, 119, 121, 163; purges, 53, 83, 85; soldiers/troops, 29n. 5, 54, 81, 109 Okello, Basilio Olara, 195 Old Boy/Old Girl, 22, 66, 68, 76, 87, 94, 109, 122, 131, 147, 148, 159, 162, 196 Old Buddonian Association, 22 Old Kampala Secondary School, 143n. 39, 173n. 16 omukama, 18, 24, 32, 60–62, 65–66, 194, 196 organizational survival, 150–162. See also multiple research perspectives Pakistani, 43, 74, 102, 118. See also Asians parents, 4, 8, 9, 13, 27, 28, 32, 39, 44, 56, 68, 69, 70, 80, 81, 83, 87, 89, 92, 93, 96, 97, 101, 107, 110, 113, 129, 136, 137, 139–140, 141, 145, 147, 148, 151, 155, 162, 170, 171, 175, 185, 187, 190; and school funding, 75, 77, 83–85, 115n. 41, 161; role with boards of governors, 83–85, 108–109, 132, 164, 167, 171; role with family and clan, 121–126, 163, 164. See also clan, family, Parent Teacher Association Parent Teacher Association (PTA), 75, 84–85, 108–109, 148, 151, 162, 167, 168, 170, 172, 182, 190 part-timing, 70, 102–103, 106, 121, 153, 196 Perrens, Rev. E. G., 67 Phelps-Stokes Commissions (1922 and 1925), 35–37. See also adapted education Primary Leaving Examination (PLE), 4, 14n. 3, 55, 70, 88, 104–105, 139 Pike, Miss, 61 posho, 83, 98, 196 Protestant (Anglican) Church, 23, 34–35, 41n. 11, 54, 60–61, 124, 157, 176, 194; as school foundation body, 7, 34–35, 60–61, 65–68, 109, 150; influence of, 80–81, 133–137. See also church, Church of Uganda regionalization, of schools, 56, 88–89, 105, 170; of students, 88–89, 104, 147; of teachers/staff, 88–89, 104 religion, 10, 22–23, 31, 35, 40n. 7, 43, 54, 124; influence of, 80–81, 133–137, 163–164; traditional African, 35. See also church, Church of Uganda, missionaries, Muslim, Roman Catholic Church Rhodesia, 4. See also Zimbabwe roadblocks, 3, 26, 29n. 5, 46, 48, 54, 82, 86, 94, 109, 126

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Roman Catholic Church, 23, 34–35, 41n. 11, 54, 60–61, 93, 111, 124, 174, 176, 187, 193n. 1, 194; as school foundation body, 7, 34–35, 62–63, 90n. 2, 109, 159; influence of, 80–81, 133–137. See also church, missionaries, religion Rwanda, 14n. 1, 18, 61, 83. See also Banyarwanda St. Augustine’s TTC, Butiiti, 173n. 16 St. Henry’s College, Kitovu, 173n. 16 St. Joseph College, Gulu, 173n. 16 St. Leo’s College, Kyegobe, 62–65, 68, 70, 74, 75– 76, 77, 80, 83, 84, 86, 89nn. 16, 21, 94, 100, 103, 106, 108, 109, 110, 113, 115n. 41, 120, 124, 127, 133, 136, 148, 151, 152, 188–189, 194 St. Maria Goretti Senior Secondary School, Fort Portal, 173n. 16 St. Mary’s College, Kisubi, 34, 63, 66, 194 St. Mary’s Seminary, Virika, Fort Portal, 173n. 16 school(s), Africanization of, 47–48; and Obote II politics, 51–54; boarding, 7, 37, 45, 48, 49, 61–68, 74, 77, 78, 80, 81, 86–88, 97, 100, 103, 106, 109, 114n. 28, 119, 132–134, 136, 149, 169; finance/delivery/control, 167–168; government non-intervention in, 118–121; hidden resources, 99–101; influence of church on, 80– 81, 133–137; internal functioning, 8, 11–12; leadership, 168–169; local initiatives in, 91–101; mission, 20, 22, 32–35, 37–38, 40n. 7, 62, 64, 69, 80, 131, 136, 147; morale in, 50–51; nationalization of, 59, 62, 64, 70–71, 75, 106, 131, 133, 136, 151, 160, 195; policy and practice in, 101–111; publicprivate responsibility for, 11, 158–162; quality of school life, 55–56; regionalization of, 88–89; fees, 54, 68–70, 75, 78, 81, 85, 88, 92, 94, 96, 100, 105, 115n. 41, 122, 133, 140, 148, 170; sites in Kabarole, 59–71; survival/persistence, 1, 3–6, 8–10, 11, 71–89, 145–165; systemic support for, 72–89. See also mushrooming schools Scripture Union, 134 social conflict, 1, 7, 8, 12, 42, 59, 105, 110, 113, 117, 126, 176, 183, 187 social stratification, 18, 146, 170 South Africa, 5, 14n. 6, 46, 127 Speke, John Hanning, 18, 32, 194 spirit of acceptancy, 126–130, 137, 157, 163, 172 Standard Academy, Fort Portal, 173n. 16 Stanley, Henry Morton, 18, 32, 194 Stevens, F. H., 67 student(s), 1, 3, 4, 8, 13, 14n. 4, 21, 23–24, 28, 31– 32, 34, 37–38, 43–44, 46–56, 61–71, 73–77, 80–89, 92–95, 97–101, 104–113, 114nn. 6, 28, 115n. 41, 116, 118, 120–126, 128–141, 144– 148, 152, 155, 157, 159, 161, 164, 169–170, 173n. 5, 174–175, 187–190, 192 Sudanic, 23 Swaziland, 173n. 14 Tanzania, 2, 14n. 1, 48, 55, 111, 124, 125 teacher(s), 2,4–6, 8, 13, 14, 21–22, 31, 37–39, 41n. 13, 44–56, 57n. 15, 61, 64, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92–94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101–104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 119, 121, 124, 125, 128, 131, 132, 133, 135, 141, 144, 146, 147, 148, 153, 155, 157, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 168, 169, 170, 172, 174, 175, 182, 185, 187, 188, 190, 192; African, 47–48, 62, 63–64, 66, 74, 75, 76, 102; American, 64, 75, 176;

British, 45, 61, 64, 74, 75, 102; expatriate, 44–45, 68, 76, 96, 118, 127, 137, 195; Ghanaian, 74, 102, 118; head teachers, 43, 44, 45, 47–48, 50, 52–54, 61–71, 72, 74–78, 82, 84, 87–88, 92–93, 95, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107, 110, 112–113, 114n. 6, 116, 119–120, 124, 128, 131–132, 136, 146–147, 153, 154–155, 157, 159, 160–161, 164, 168–169, 172, 175, 187, 190; Pakistani, 43, 74, 102, 118. See also part-timing Teacher Training Colleges (TTC)/programs, 22, 66, 70, 73, 76, 133, 143nn. 36, 51, 147, 148, 173n. 16 Tomblings, Dr. George, 67 Tooro, kingdom of, 12, 20, 60–62, 65–66, 80–81, 130, 132, 159, 193n. 1, 195, 196 Tooro Boarding High School, 65–66. See also Nyakasura School Tooro Girls School, 61, 159, 195. See also Kyebambe Girls Secondary School Tororo Girls Secondary School, 173n. 16 tribe, 14n. 1, 46, 54, 73, 82, 87, 104, 130, 134 Tucker, Bishop A. R., 35, 41n. 10 Tutsi, 18. See also Hima Uganda, 2–6, 14n. 1, 17–29, 59–60, 114n. 6, 158, 193nn. 6, 7; as research site, 174–193; educational traditions of, 30–41, 40nn. 2, 12, 13; historical legacy, 17–19, 142n. 25, 194–195; schooling, 42–58, 143n. 39; secondary level institutions, 173n. 16; social legacy, 19–29; view toward the future, 144–173 Uganda Advanced Certificate Examination (UACE), 14n. 3 Uganda Certificate Examination (UCE), 14n. 3 Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB), 79, 195 Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), 78, 81, 136, 143n. 43, 164 Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF), 78 Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), 23, 51–54, 78, 98, 119–120 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 77, 89n. 12, 191 Universal Primary Education (UPE), 142n. 25, 173n. 17, 195 war, 1. 2, 4, 5, 7, 12, 14n. 6, 18, 19, 22, 29n. 6, 39, 79, 83, 86, 96–97, 116, 125, 126, 128, 129, 137, 138, 139, 141, 146, 147, 158, 164, 183; and Kabarole schools, 112–113; and violence issues affecting education, 26–28, 39, 148, 158, 164; Amin’s economic war, 42–44; guerrilla, 42, 118; insecurity and violence, 54–55; Second World War, 67; violence and the effect on children, 111–113. See also Liberation War (1979) West Bank, 4, 14n. 6 White Fathers, 62–63, 159, 194 White Paper, 39, 149, 160, 166, 167, 171, 194–195, 196 World Food Program (WFP), 76, 100, 114n. 28, 119, 192 Young Christian Students (YCS), 134 Zaire, 14n. 1, 24, 44. See also Congo Zayera, Brother Alphonsus FIC, 63 Zimbabwe, 4, 46, 158. See also Rhodesia

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