"Martin's Report over School in the Anum Dstrict in 1895"

A second part of this report concerning a Sunday spent in Kpando is printed as an appendix to the 1896 Annual Report. In general the best school is at Ntwumuru, where the new teacher even teaches the less-well gifted in their homes after hours and clearly understands how to appeal to children. The most worrying school is that at Boso. Best learned are the biblical texts, and songs, and the catechism. But how much they are understood is questionable - they are learned off by heart, so much so that in in the youngest class you only have to say the first few words of the first text in the list the children know and they take it up and recite without a break 50-100 texts. Arnold's Stories for little children and Barth's Bible Stories are treated in the same way. 'Hardly any of the teachers ever tells a story in his own sords in a lively way so as to awake peoples' interest'. The language problem is partly an excuse for this, but Martin judges that by the end of a year the children have made great strides in Twi, and he divides the Class I. syllabus into two years. Arithmetic is the subject worst done by both teachers and pupils. The report offers two case studies of boys converted through the contact with the Anum School. In the first, that of Adae of Vakpo, the boy’s father destroyed his fetishes and amulets without actually registering as a catechumen. The second, Kwasi Mensah, was a son of the chief in Ntwumuru, and Martin transmits an account of a letter he had written to his father as Martin heard of it from Hall. The letter advises his father to become a Christian rehearsing the familiar point about the nothingness of the fetishes, and saying that he saw evidence of God every day in nature, and in his own heart.

13.02.1896

13.02.1896

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