This book offers a detailed history of the development of teacher education in Zambia. Also analysed is the nature of education offered at different times and how the teacher and his/her education reflect this, arguing the need for a fundamentally new philosophy of education and a mode of teacher formation in line with it.

This book contains a grassroots history of schooling as an instrument of Catholic conversion at a Jesuit mission in southern Zambia over a 75 year period. It provides a threefold division of the history dealing with initial cultural contact of the missionaries with the local Tonga. It then outlines the mission's role during Zambia's pre-independence and its possible links to nationalism. The work finally identifies the challenge of being a denominational school in post-independence Zambia.

John M Mwanakatwe is well known and highly regarded in Zambia, and Zambian Studies. He was the first African to gain a university degree from the then University of Northern Rhodesia, and he went on to serve in the first independence government of Kenneth Kaunda, with portfolios including education, mines and finance. He has variously served as chairman of the Constitutional Review Commission, and as Chancellor of the University of Zambia. He is author of two previous landmark publications in Zambia: The Growth of Education in Zambia since Independence (OUP, 1968) and End of Kaunda Era (Multimedia, 1994). This biography chronicles his personal experience of politics, development, and the role of legal practitioners in providing effective safeguards for civil liberties in Zambia. It is characterised by his belief in hard work, engagement in public life, and affirmation in human endeavour, which he considers essential for both personal and national development.

Zambia, the butterfly-shaped, central African country has a population of about 11 million people, and as other Sub-Saharan African countries, has been trying to democratize since the early 1990s. Clearly, though, the promise of political reform did not fulfill the expectations of the public, and with about 60 percent of the population living below the poverty line, many Zambians are no longer confident that more open political systems can improve their lives. But the problem may not be inherent in the political process itself, and could be found more in the apparent disconnection between people’s needs and the way the country’s affairs are run. It is with respect to these and related issues that this book emphasizes the crucial relationship between education and political participation, and specifically highlights citizenship education as essential for Zambia’s social development. Social development, which should comprise, inter alia, the economic, political, and cultural wellbeing of societies can be enhanced by citizenship education, which focuses on elevating people’s understanding of their rights and responsibilities vis-à -vis government institutions, structures and functions. Indeed, it is the centrality of the political component in people’s lives, especially its relationship with public policy and public programs that should underline the important role of citizenship education. In describing these issues, the book analyzes the role of the media, women’s groups and youth in enhancing the political, educational, and by extension, the economic lives of the Zambian people. The book should interest students and scholars of Zambian (as well as African) education, politics, and social development. It should also be useful for policy makers, institutional managers and both public and para-public leaders in Zambia and elsewhere in the continent.

This is a socio-historical study of schooling at Chikuni, a Jesuit mission station in Southern Zambia. It includes an examination of the dynamic processes operative at the mission over a 75 year period. During these years, the Jesuits interacted with successive generations of students and converts and with the representatives of successive political regimes, all of which were secular but each willing to use the mission as a means to its own ends. For many years Chikuni was the major representative of the Catholic church in southern Zambia. The emergence of a Catholic community is of its making. As its educational role expanded it also helped to form many who became leaders in post-independence Zambia. Though the Jesuits had not planned a political revolution, unwittingly they helped to bring one about. While the study identifies some of the difficulties connected with running a denominational school in present day Zambia, it argues for a more pivotal positioning of conversion as a socio-personal religious phenomenon in the curriculum if the mission school is to continue to be an effective agent of transformation.

Originally published in 1978, this volume is divided into 3 parts. Part 1 presents an overview of the linguistic situation in Zambia: who speaks which languages, where they are spoken, what these languages are like. Special emphasis is given to the extensive survey of the languages of the Kafue basin, where extensive changes and relocations have taken place. Part 2 is on language use: patterns of competence and of extension for certain languages in urban settings, configurations of comprehension across language boundaries, how selected groups of multilinguals employ each of their languages and for what purposes, what languages are used in radio and television broadcasting and how decisions to use or not use a language are made. Part 3 involves language and formal education: what languages, Zambian and foreign, are used at various levels int he schools, which are taught, with what curricula, methods, how teachers are trained, how issues such as adult literacy are approached and with what success.