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King's College Budo
Review of Gordon McGregor's book
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King's College Budo: A Centenary History, 1906-2006, McGregor, Gordon P., Kampala: Fountain, 2006. Review by Dr. H. Ray Buchanan, one-time Uganda Education Officer teaching at Budo A vital and progressive educational system wields considerable influence on the prospects for success in newly independent emerging nations. But contrary to what one might think, the training of engineers and technicians is not paramount, because, as discovered in Tsarist Russia in the 1890's, these people can be hired from foreign countries to advance industry. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other necessary professionals can also be obtained on the international market. It is, on the other hand, a something unquantifiable but real, something even more vital and more essential that the educational system must provide, something King's College, Budo in Uganda, East Africa, excelled in; and that is the education of leaders with all those remarkable leadership qualities that emerging nations need to sustain their independence and their stability. In addition to the highest possible achievement in reading Shakespeare and writing precis, in understanding calculus, in performing chemical experiments, in comparing the distance from the Kenya coast to Kampala with that of Liverpool to London, and in striving to bring about the winning goal in football there must be leadership training. How to organize processes, how to problem-solve, how to make judgments about what is possible, how to take risks, how to listen, how to read human nature - all these and many other leadership traits are and must be the central mission of educational institutions in emerging countries. King's College, Budo's success in this endeavor is chronicled with much care and appreciative insights by long-time teacher and patron, Professor Gordon P. McGregor. It extends his 1965 University of East Africa thesis - published in 1967 by Oxford University Press - as King's College Budo: The First Sixty Years. He identifies a spectacular legacy of Uganda leadership produced through the Budo ethos: three Heads of State; a Vice-President; a Speaker of the Uganda Parliament; a Chief Justice and a Lady Deputy Chief Justice; four Prime Ministers; traditional Kings of Buganda and Toro; as well as permanent secretaries, high commissioners, ambassadors, and prominent businessmen. This legacy began, really, from the inception of the school in 1906, which was among 7 other schools established in Uganda prior to World War I. The Anglican based Church Missionary Society from England founded the school in order to create "Christian leaders" for a "Christian Nation." H.E. Weatherhead, who spearheaded the creation of Budo, said: "I made no secret of being out for an institution that was to help provide the country with well-educated Christian laymen, who would in time take the lead in the development of their own country." (11) This mission was echoed by the then Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Buganda, Apolo Kagwa. He facilitated the location of the school on the "King's Hill" where Buganda Kings had been crowned for the past 400 years. And his aim was to promote the education of leadership for the future of the kingdom. With these injunctions at the heart of the school's very existence, the addition of girls and of students from all areas of the country to this boarding school setting brought King's College, Budo, into prominence as a "national" leadership training ground for the whole country. Only the best students were admitted, only the highest academic and extra-curricular standards were accepted, only the highest scores on the British Overseas O and A level exams were expected. English was the only language spoken on the campus - students incurred punishment for speaking to their friends in their local languages. And the traditional English Boarding School system of House Prefects contributed significantly to the practical training of leadership, as did also in their own way the Boy and Girl Scouts, team sports, and various clubs. As Professor Apolo R. Nsibambi, The Rt. Hon. Prime Minister of Uganda, stated in the Foreword to the book: "One of the aims of the school was to train leaders, by, inter-alia, creating an environment in which students would identify their talents and put them to use." (xi) The students and faculty demonstrated the ethos of this critical environmental underpinning when they sustained the school during the 18 years of national collapse under Idi Amin and under the second reign of Milton Obote. Sometimes without food or water or electricity, under attack numerous times, completely ravaged and destroyed at one point: the school continued with its mission - the student Prefects took over and ran the school for a time. And this section in McGregor's book is dramatically detailed and heartrending. But what really sustains the book and, likewise, the thesis about Budo and Uganda leadership is the numberous times when McGregor lets the students tell their own story about how being there influenced their lives. Ernest Sempebwa, student at Budo 1929-36, teacher from 1940, and deputy head from 1960, wrote: "The boarding element made a great contribution to Uganda. We came as Baganda, Batoro, Basoga and so on. We became Budonians. We went out as Ugandans." (84) Stephen Kamuhanda, a student in the late 1960's and later educational leader reflected: "Historically, Budo has always taken a clear academic lead, not only in Uganda, but in the East African region as a whole. Budo students regarded themselves as natural leaders in the country. My student days at Budo were very happy and enjoyable. I took an interest in many things - like everyone else. Great ideas fascinated Budo students; we read newspapers and magazines, both local and international." (189-190) And finally, Timothy Muslime, Head Prefect at Budo in 1998, identified one source of Budo's leadership attributes: "Many students from Budo who leave after O level and join other schools for A level, become prefects and even head prefects in their new schools. I would attribute this to the system at Budo which exposes students to various leadership roles right from their O level year. Being a house official at O level is quite an achievement and this is where the leadership starts." (350) Gordon McGregor has provided us with an outstanding story of how colonialism, dictatorship, and even military terror failed to create a leadership deficit in Uganda because, in part, King's College, Budo continued to fulfill its 100 year mission. |