S. Galea & A. Grima (eds.), The Teacher, Literature and the Mediterranean, 29–39. © 2014 Sense Publishers and Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies. All rights reserved. MARCO GALEA & SIMONE GALEA 2. FRANCIS EBEJER’S STRUGGLE WITH EDUCATION Teachers and Their Students in Postcolonial Literature I saw history through the sea-washed eyes Of our choleric, ginger-haired headmaster – Derek Walcott, ‘Homage to Gregorias’ INTRODUCTION Modern colonial rulers used a variety of methods to control the communities they dominated. Force of arms and missionary work were usually at the forefront, but education was always closely behind. As late as 1929, the Jesuit H.M. Dubois wrote in the Journal of the International African Institute that colonised societies were made up of ‘inferior races’ and that the choice educators had was either to assimilate the indigenous people into Europeans (the irony of which escapes the writer) or else to adapt their pedagogy to the limits of the indigenous culture. The missionary/pedagogue/ethnologist was convinced not only of the superiority of European culture, but also of the conviction on the part of indigenous peoples that their culture was inferior and their willingness to accept that Europeanness which the European benefactors were willing to impart to them (Dubois, 1929a). His theory of adaptation was benevolently hoping to eventually permit ‘our blacks’ to become complete human beings (Dubois, 1929b). Although attitudes to education in the colonies varied widely from colony to colony and from coloniser to coloniser (British educators, for example, were less likely to make arguments for assimilation than their French counterparts) Dubois’s attitude is quite typical. Education in the colonies was very often left in the hands of missionaries, and governments were generally reluctant to part with their money to finance large- scale education efforts. However, measures were often taken to ensure that enough indigenous people got the type of education deemed necessary so that they could assist in keeping the colonial system running. FRANCIS EBEJER AND OTHER COLONIAL LEGACIES Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (2012, p. 36) reflects that these colonialist perceptions, which pervade even the mentality of the most well-meaning contemporary westerners today, can be attributed to the way knowledge started to be conceived during the Enlightenment, and especially through Hegel’s philosophy and his discussion of the relationship between master and slave. Since the Enlightenment, knowledge