BOOK REVIEWSThe European Educational System In Southern Rhodesia, 1890-193© By R.J.Challiss, Salisbury, University of Zimbabwe,Supplement to Zambezia, 1982,vii, 127 pp., ZS4.50.A thorough reading of the previously almost untouched 'E* (European Education)series of correspondence files in the National Archives enables Challiss not only toconstruct a convincing narrative but also to explore the political, economic andsocial aspects of early European education.Challiss shows how education was crucial to the maintenance of settlereconomic and political power. While substantial revenues from the RhodesianGovernment, private funds and the support of the Imperial Government were allappropriated for White education (pp. 5-17, 28-42, 84-95). African educationreceived paltry state support and 'the course of African education was diverted inthe period 1914Š23 from progression towards secondary schooling and sophisticatedtechnical training into a simplified kind of instruction that was considered to bemost suitable for African aptitudes, abilities and needs5 (p. 37). Furthermore,construction and maintenance of a comprehensive European education systemdepended very much on the exploitation of African labour (pp. 67-83).In the course of seeking to maintain White supremacy and Empire loyaltyRhodesian schools developed a particularly racist, militaristic and jingoistic ethos(pp. 21-3, 26-8, 49-57, 57-66), A significant feature of the development ofEuropean education in Zimbabwe, manifestations of which can still be seen ingovernment 'A' and exclusive private schools today, was the early injection ofBritish ruling class 'Public School' values and institutions into schools (pp. 53-6),Challiss's analysis of the curriculum of European schools (pp. 96-9) issketchy, establishing only that academic subjects vastly outweighed technicalsubjects. His examination of some aspects of the relationship between educationand White racism (pp. 57-156) is more satisfactory, providing useful insights intothe fears that underlie racism and into the complete failure of early Europeaneducation to counter those fears.Although Challiss's monograph is far superior to the superficial andideological work he so acerbically and effectively criticizes in Ms footnotes, I findone major flaw in it, and that is its lack of a sufficiently developed theoreticalframework. This inadequacy pervades the monograph and a proper critique of itwould involve a more extended analysis than is possible here. A single example willhave to serve as illustration.In describing the establishment of European education Challiss refers to thespeed with which European schools were taken over by the state and to the roleplayed in this by the first two Directors of Education (pp. 10-12). His analysiswould have been more profound, aed of greater use to contemporary educators, ifhe had used the concepts of state and ideology. Challiss would then have been ableto show that it was the nature of the settler state that determined the role played bygovernment in relation to both European and African education throughout thecolonial period, and that the ideology of educatorsŠthe way educators explainedand justified their actionsŠplayed a very important part in the creation ofeducational policy. Today, of course, the nature of the independent state and theideology of educators, both of which reflect the class structure, continue to shape151152BOOK REVIEWSthe direction of education. Given Zimbabwe's professed goal of building ademocratic socialism, the most disturbing aspect of current debate on education inZimbabwe is the almost complete absence of class analysis and the consequentfailure to develop a coherent socialist education strategy. Histories such as the onereviewed here have an imporant contribution to make to the development of such ananalysis and strategy, but only if they use sharper, more committed, concepts.Sydney College of Advanced EducationG. FOLEYBilingualism, Language Contact and Planning 2?y E.A. Ngara. Gwelo, MamboPress, Zambeziana 12, 1982, xii, 162 pp., Z$8.70.Dr Ngara's book is a welcome addition to the Zambeziana Series as it is the firstwork in the series which examines issues of language in Zimbabwe.The phrase 'issues of language' bespeaks an enormously wide range of topicsand problems. Dr Ngara begins with a discussion of bilingualism, that is, therelationship between languages in contact within a particular boundary (here,Zimbabwe) and the problems of acquiring two or more languages for the individualmember of a community. This is followed by a survey of the language situation inthe country itself with some interesting observations from the writer's 1975 studyon the attitudes to language of Black teenage students. Clearly the war for nationalindependence created a growing awareness of a linguistic and cultural identity withShona, although, as a counterbalance to this, the study records a positive attitude toa neutral world language like English.The central chapters of the book discuss the specific linguistic and learningproblems for the Shona student in learning English, The contrastive studies ofShona/English phonology and grammar are the first easily accessible accounts ofthese subjects and should provide language teachers and laymen with a valuablereference source. To the linguist, these chapters are a spur to deeper study.Languages in contact inevitably influence each other's development in everyaspect of the linguistic systems from phonetics to semantics. Ngara introduces andanalyses the important principles of 'penetration', 'interlarding' (for example,when a Shona speaker is so accustomed to using particular phrases of English thathe cannot avoid using them in his first language) and the idea of'alternation' whichis 'an advanced form of interlarding where the bilingual introduces so much Englishthat it may be difficult to tell whether he is speaking Shona or English' (p. 97).There are some interesting examples:Hwahwa hunopinda right throughVanhu vacho vari devoid of sense ambuyalye ndiye trouble causerIt should be emphasized that from the linguistic point of view these are naturalprocesses of language interchange. They look forward to a future variety of spokenZimbabwean English in which there may well be so much 'alternation' in aspeaker's language that the new variety could in fact assume a separate languageidentity. Such speculation is of the future but decisions concerning the relationshipsbetween our three most widely spoken languages in contemporary Zimbabwe maywell affect the kind of language which future generations of Zimbabweans use.