Class Formation and Civil Society: Politics of Education in Africa(Making of Modern Africa)

This text compares field research from the capital cities of three African states to analyze how the decline of state-funded education and the appearance of private education is altering the composition of civil society. Specifically, urban elites have created an entire network of schools for their own use - under conditions of rapidly shrinking educational opportunity for the general population. Based on its analysis of field research in Cameroon, Kenya and Congo the book reaches the conclusion that schooling has increasingly become a force shaping the class-based civil societies emerging in contemporary Africa. It offers a theoretical perspective on civil society and class formation and synthesizes these in an approach which adapts its theoretical framework to account for changes in African states and societies.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Introduction. Part 2 The promise and deception of modern education in sub-Sahara Africa: colonial education - the civilizing mission, 1910-1960; independence education - for the grandeur of the whole nation, 1960-1980; austerity education - sauve qui peut, 1980-. Part 3 Social class, civil society, and political analysis in sub-Sahara Africa: elite theory and social class analysis; political elites and ruling classes; elite, classes, and civil society. Part 4 Schooling and social stratification in sub-Sahara Africa: social class analysis, civil society, and schools; private schooling - class formation for emerging civil societies; new political realities - passive social differentiation. Part 5 Cameroon - parents' organizations, private schools, and the development of educational privilege: schooling in Yaounde - growth, privilege, and fiscal crisis; schools in Yaounde II - the geography of educational privilege; signs of the times - parents' associations and private schools; emergence of a class-based civil society. Part 6 Returning to class - the Congo and the social costs of a collapsed educational system: a "vision" of national education, 1954-1970; egalitarian rhetoric in an exploitative state, 1970-1980; attempting to salvage the national school system, 1980-1985; private education - social flight or development? 1985-. Part 7 Enhancing the status quo - Kenya and the consolidation of educational privilege: Nairobi and the establishment of formal schooling; shifting the burden - fiscal austerity and new patterns of social stratification in the 1980s; Nairobi in the 1990s - street kids, European academies, and the reinforcement of privilege; the politics of passive social stratification. Part 8 Schooling for a new century - diversity for all, opportunity for the few: differentiating urban educational experiences; schools, class formation, and civil society in Africa; the prospects for formal schooling in Africa.