Investigating the nature and scope of the conflict between the religious mission and academic mission in selected catholic secondary schools in Western province.

Abstract

The Church in general has made a tremendous impact to various communities worldwide. One of the notable areas where the church has made such an impact is in the area of education. This is because the Church in general and Catholic Church in particular has been one of the leading social institutions in terms of educational provision to the masses globally (Hambulo, 2016; Carmody, 2004; Snelson, 1974; O’Brien, 2006). The impact specifically by the Catholic Church in terms of educational provision in Zambia stretches long back in time to the 1890s when the white fathers in northern Zambia and the Jesuits in southern Zambia opened its first schools (Hambulo, 2016; O’ Brien, 2006; Carmody, 2004). From the early days of their settlement in Northern Rhodesia, an old name for the nation state of Zambia, both the White Fathers and the Jesuits established Christian villages among the indigenous people where they settled. The Christian village approach of both the White Fathers and the Jesuits entailed giving basic education to the locals. This form of education was crude in the sense that the teachers were mostly poorly qualified evangelists as they only had grounding in the three Rs and a little hygiene and only possessed some elements of Catholic faith (Snelson, 1974:28). These schools became Catholic missionary’s mode of access to the local population. Hence Catholics established schools for conversion to Catholicism as a way of enhancing religious conversion and church growth in the areas they occupied in the initial stages of their settlement in Zambia. The key purpose for the establishment of Catholic schools is what became known as the ‘religious mission’ of such schools. Therefore, it became important for a Catholic mission station to have a school in as many areas as possible.