[...] Most significant, however, were the attitudes colonial administrators developed toward the activities of the missions. The construction of Black Europeans was overly ambitious in their eyes. In 1938, Arthur Mayhew would advise an Oxford University summer session for colonial administrators that “Before the Great War education was undoubtedly too ‘literary. ’” And he then reported, with satisfaction, that “[f]rom 1925 onwards great emphasis was laid on vocational training.”14 Forty years later, Penelope Hetherington would penetrate Mayhew’s objections:

In the past missionaries had counted themselves successful if their work in the field of education had produced black Englishmen, Africans who seemed to have assimilated Western culture. But these missionary-educated Africans were anathema to many administrators and others. They were “cheeky” and demanded social equality and political rights.15