"Hassis' Report on the Boys Boarding School in Abetifi in 1895"

There are 112 pupils in the school, 57 of them boarding boys, 30 of those heathen. There had been changes in the teaching personnel - Preko was posted to Tafo, and replaced by Monitor Wm Asare. Benj Martinson went to Nkwatia after D. Okyere's death. Dan. Kumi will take over as boarding master when he has completed his exams in Akropong. The main complaint made against the teachers is that they are not consistent about order and tidiness - and more basically, that they do not see that bringing up is more than simply school work. A number of portraits of the year’s problems and successes are offered. One Nathan. Dankyi has organised a plot among the members of the two highest classes not to take the pupils' quarrels before the teacher, after the departure of Benj Martinson. Discovered he ran away to escape punishment, was brought back by his uncle and accepted only on the condition that he accepted corporal punishment before the school. A class IV boy called Yaw Kese had written encouraging two of his friends who had recently been thrown out of the Begoro Middle School for sexual offences by saying that there were plenty of jobs in Cape Coast, and that – quoting Amos - everything that happened came from God. One boy Kwakye, who had achieved Class IV after arriving in the school only in 1893 is offered as an example of success. A quiet and modest character from the beginning, he had become more frank and friendly in the course of his time at school. Another, Paulo Ano had been a problem pupil until in Class V under Haasis' teaching hey had both discovered he was excellent at mental arithmetic, since which his morale and behaviour had much improved. The school’s coffee plantation was proving unrewarding, being on stony soil, and Hassis is planning another - it is half planted already. The pupils are kept in the boarding school free of charge.

18.02.1896

18.02.1896

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