Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Literature I 26

to the colonies. For example, it has been cIained that in traditional
education

learning is not depersonalized but continues to be bound up with
the social status of the persons acting as teacher <Scribner and
Cole,1973:555)

or that learning is mostly by observation without much verbal
explanations, or that it is rarely ^,decontextualized' (Bruner,1972);
(Western) school learning would have the opposite characteristics, and
this would promote abstract thinking.

It seems possible to criticize this position along the same lines used by
Street (1984) in his criticism of the ’great divide' between oral and
literate language : at a closer examination, the differences are not so
sharp and they tend to be stressed mainly because of the ideological need
to justify the enormous expense on Western-type educational systems
(see 2.2.2).

Differences among colonial educational systems are also to be taken into
consideration. In general, the education policy in the colonies reflected
the conventional wisdom of the time in the metropolitan countries
(Watson,1982). The most striking difference between the French and
Portuguese policies on the one hand and the British on the other, were on
the issues of centralization of the educational system, the role of the
missionary Churches in education, and the extension of school provision.
In the British Colonies, policies In different countries, and even towards
different ethnic groups in the same territory, were markedly varied, and
the particular interests and attitudes of the governors were an Important
factor in the education system: only in the 1920s was a committee on
Education formed and guidelines issued, ending the tradition of Iaissez
faire. By contrast, the French and the Portuguese exported the highly
centralized educational system of the metropolis, with the same tight
control of curriculum, staff, language policies, in tune with their policy
of assimilation. It is also to be noted that, while the British
Missionaries societies were many and their staff not always British, the
Portuguese Catholic Church had almost the monopoly of African education

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