people manifest in the lives of the missionaries. Since mission stations were 'as efficacious for the extension of European influence as the opening of a government station',7 the next logical step was to provide western education. Schools became a means of downgrading African customs and of drawing children away from their traditional environment. Seen by many missionaries as the great means of christianizing Africa, schools had the effect of putting the child rather than the adult at the centre of Church concern, producing the situation in which, as has been said, 'while Jesus taught adults and blessed children, we teach children and bless adults'