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Caribbean Journal of Education

Louis Rothe’s 1846 Report on Education in Post-Emancipation Antigua

Authors: 
Pages: 
46-53
Publication Date: 
April 1987
Issue: 
Abstract: 

In an earlier issue of this Journal some four years ago, the present writer attempted to analyse the establishment of a publicly funded elementary school system for slaves in the Danish West Indies. Its formal inauguration in 1841 was an occasion of more than passing significance. Whatever its shortcomings, it marked the first time in the history of the Caribbean region that a local administration had committed itself in a statutorily binding way to make provisions from local revenue for the support of a universal primary school system intended for the children of slaves. Its objectives were considerably more generous, humane and racially optimistic than those of the primary educational systems which began to emerge in the British West Indies, and then only after emancipation had taken place.

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