"Buck's Report on the Kibi Boarding School in the Year 1879"

Reports inter al that one of their greatest battles is for cleanliness. He also takes a jaundiced look at the whole concept of mission schools in Akim. There are 4 Akim-born agents of the mission. Sakyi, Oware, Asumeng and Dako (Eisenschmid adds in the margin the dismissed Gyima and Adu, and there is of course also Ewi, dismissed from Kukurantumi). Of these four two were partly educated at the Kibi boarding school. Currently there are 2 Akims in the Akropong Middle School. The oldest class of the Kibi Boarding School recently handed over to the Akropong (Primary) Boarding School have simply run away, and the current oldest class of the Kibi Boarding School had not returned from the holidays in protest against Buck's telling them that they must go through the 5th and 6th classes before being accepted in the teacher's seminary. If the two Akims now in the middle school hold out to the end they will get 2 more Akim catechists in the course of the next ten year - for the current Kibi Class IV will take 10 years to graduate from the teacher's seminary. At this rate every Akim boy entering the middle school has cost £100 if the whole sums spent on schooling is divided among those who reach this level. The problem is severe, because a boy with 2 year's schooling can read and write, so that beyond that period the schooling is of little use unless he enters mission employment. Moreover the English school in Accra is proving very attractive. Some adjustment of the policy over boarding schools is needed. In another part of the report he writes that you cannot count the baptism of 8 boarding school pupils (as happened in 1879) as a victory . It is the fashion to become a catechumen after a year in the school, and you cannot refuse baptism to a boy who has been through the catechumens' class three times and who has not committed any serious irregularities. However there are many rogues in Akim who have been to the school and even been baptised.

29.03.1880

29.03.1880

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