[On F.L. Bartels] That lucky old son: Dr Francis L. Bartels of Mfantsipim

The relentless energies of Sir Winston Churchill caught the public eye yet again in 1983, with the new edition of the 4 volumes of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

In the 1956 issues, he had noted, "Knowledge of the trials and struggles is necessary (to) comprehend the problems, perils, challenges, and opportunities which confront us today. (An) inner selective power may lead to the continuous broadening of our thought (from the) tribulations of our forefathers".

Mr Churchill was in his hefty 80's when he finished that monumental task. It was impressive! To think that the literary laureate/warrior was still bountiful after his Great Contemporaries (published in1937 and 1943 about close encounters with Hindenburg, Marshal Foch, Trotsky, Clemenceau, Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, and others) and his heroic role to save Britain from the Fuhrer's wrath in World War II.

The Persistence of Paradox: Memoirs of F.L. Bartels (published locally by Ghana Universities Press, Accra) set its peculiar milestone also. The energies from Dr Bartels's trials and successes throbbed from the colonial times of Governor Guggisberg through Dr Kwame Nkrumah to the present. About 93 years old now, Dr Bartels continued to stand nimbly, unwavering in his gait, modesty, and mental acuity. His ambition was matched by his drive, and served by an eager ego. The launching of the book at the Teacher's Hall, Accra (September 24, 2003) confirmed his resolve not to rest from labour.

It was awesome witnessing the proud readiness of the grand ol-man to lead the Mfantsipim old boys assembled, to a bone-chilling rendition of the school anthem For all the saints who from their labours rest. Many had missed our dear song for decades and now sang it with proud passion. With the sonorous tone of Rev Kwesi Dickson and Dr J.A. Addison adding grace from the dais, the evening was unforgettable.

Dr Bartels's vigour - in fresh tokens of gaiety and purpose - coaxed the younger men under 90 years to avoid the mid-day naps. It was a surge of inspiration and a clarion call to measure to the top, and appreciate the twin-tower of perseverance and leadership. Mfantsipim was the richer having claimed landmarks from it. The vision thing came naturally to him; and it was likely that his (1965) book "The Roots of Ghana Methodism", and unpublished manuscripts provided a store of materiel.

Back in 1949, pondering his first speech day, the new, first African headmaster recalled: "The window on my right looked out to a new vastness of the Gulf of Guinea and a new majesty of the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Suddenly my surroundings had taken on a new immeasurable magnitude - My horizon was widening." This moment was but the early morning of his long stewardship. Following the heels of the trials and triumphs was the advice of Rev R.A. Lockhart (headmaster 1925 - 1936): "keep discipline. Without it all is lost. I had learnt the lesson in the First World War, and I applied it at Mfantsipim. I apply it still".

In his day, headmaster Bartels became a legend for integrity and quality education. And Mfantsipim responded in kind with a panache and aplomb in sync with Bartels's standing. Many firsts at the school bore his imprint. Like the Rev Lockhart, few were better placed as guides to Mfantsipim's achievements and provocations. [In his Mfantsipim and the Making of Ghana, Prof A. Adu Boahen, in a class act, dedicated the book (in part) to "The oldest surviving Old boys of the school, J. Kwesi Lamptey and F.L. Bartels". That was in 1996. Today, with Mr Lamptey called to his village, it stands that Dr Bartels is the oldest, living exemplar].

The Paradox is a superb 631-page work of riveting insights and humour. The narrative gifts of Dr Bartels carried the reader breezily through the author's growth at Mfantsipim, years at Unesco and, as Ghana's ambassador to Germany. [The latter two are a pathfinder's lessons in discretion and statecraft].

A visionary eye cast to unfold backwards is always a treat. It blows the lid right off an impending future, and reveals the trump cards to posterity. Rather than the clamps from nostalgia that crippled many lives, what a reward for a first class educator to share his impressions! When the history of education in Ghana is settled, one of the great influences will surely be Dr Bartels: Like the seers Mensah Sarbah, Kwegyir Aggrey, and Ephraim Amu, the list of his heirs is endless.

In a foreword to the Paradox, Mr Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary general recalled, "I was one of a group of boys who sat on the floor of his office for our weekly lesson in - Spoken English, Headmaster Bartels encouraged all of us to open our eyes, speak our minds, and engage with the issues of the day and the world at large in tune with the school's motto: dwin hwe kan (think and plan ahead). Each day takes me a little further on the road Headmaster Bartels helped to pave."

It's instructive how instinct draws visionaries to pay homage to others. Dr Bartels was clearly impressed by the nation's founder. With Nkrumah, he wrote, many felt "we could not continue to be treated like children by the British". He discerned Nkrumah's greatness in two areas including a national consciousness (which evolved into the famous code of the [Pan] African personality): "First, (Nkrumah) managed to rise impressively above tribalism. He downgraded it in cooperation with the Christian churches and their boarding schools - Secondly, he had a deep concern regarding purposeful higher education - he began developing his idea of a university for the preparation of educators. Me university no o! (Please, give maximum thought to my [Cape Coast] university!) he said, passionately". The Kumasi one, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, was already on course.

Alongside this thread of Nkrumah's foresight ran another thread as dark as the other was bright. Dubbing him "the Ghanaian Fuhrer", Dr Bartels's discontents with the Osagyefo included the Prevention Detention Act, and the "bid to build our future on the sands of loyalty to himself". He bemoaned the horror and sorrow caused by this fatal flaw, with Nkrumah having turned "Nsawam Hill into a Golgotha by erecting on it a prison for detaining those who said 'no' to him".

Dr Bartels's genius (to my mind) was profound in his vision for the University College of Cape Coast to which he was being considered "Principal-designate". His successes at Mfantsipim were fait accompli, and they kept safe distances from sympathy. But that which ought to have been but wasn't to be: that was the pity. I mean the fusion of Nkrumah's vision with Dr Bartels's to build A Great Society in Cape Coast. An excellent chance was lost to Ghana. Dr Bartels's emotions were cast gloomily on this matter: "I frequently looked back at our national education from the University of Cape Coast, which I might have headed - More often than not (I) was depressed by the sombre fate"

There's a sorrowful satisfaction in knowing that one is not alone in these thoughts. With a maverick lending his credence, posterity might develop a thick skin to avoid a future mishap. Let's follow Dr Bartels's strategic sense (as a member of the initial Committee of four charged to shape the new university):

"I did my best to persuade (Commissioner Hagan) to consider building the new university on, and among, the hills of Cape Coast (to) function as an enabling institution (to) give as well as take, grow and become a part of the town and learn to assist it in solving its problems. The project's possibilities were vast. Mount Hope could be a strategic point (to) begin and mesh with the slum clearance envisaged for the town - making it imperative for university personnel (to use) local amenities (and) in their own interest demand efficient management.

"The Cape Coast Castle could be converted into a research library and flats to promote academic tourism and a university extramural programme, (to) ultimately extend to the other castles and forts along the coast. The Cape Coast churches could be university chapels. Lastly, the Victoria Park - might be turned into an open-air theatre to promote drama and other cultural activities for town and gown".

The plan implied a re-invention of higher education for "hands-on" social and economic good. It was a rarity and a masterpiece, and was sold in a way in which it had to be bought. The Commissioner was not moved; he craved "another Legon'a self-contained showpiece (with) a separate existence".

To Dr Bartels, Another Legon, Accra, was the last thing Nkrumah fancied. But he got it. (The Commissioner's) thinking was (like) that of David Balme [a Classics scholar of repute], the Founding Principal of Legon "You've asked me to establish a university. The university I know is Cambridge." 

Undeterred, Dr Bartels considered what to teach, learn, and research in. He helped deliver a program that included Education, Health and Agriculture, Marine Biology, Art, Music, Drama and so on. The thrust of the sciences was "to direct the thinking of students to education for work, using the environmental resources of the area, (for example) the fishery industry that was being developed at Elmina (and) the support it would require from the interdisciplinary research in Geography, Meteorology and Refrigeration Engineering".

The plan was ignored. A later report from an "International Commission (with) Geoffrey Bing" came out, placing reliance on prospects "no different basically from Legon".

In seeking a New Deal for education in Cape Coast, Dr Bartels's ideas, perhaps, created a discomfort or worse, fear. The colonial convention was shaken. The new thinking implied a shift from the typical lecturing-and-copying format, to a preference for a purposeful re-design of teaching and learning in the wider context of a hands-on urban renewal. Without an assertive, practical access to freedom of judgement and imagination, education itself is stale.

Cape Coast, as an education capital, stood to generate a livelier, intellectual, research, and superior tourist industry, with leverage for clusters of jobs. The intellectual, the economic and the social go together. With a better quality of life, professional people who deliver important services would stay. A vision-gap is a costly thing. An urban renaissance created a dynamic and capacity strengthening a wider region. Many university towns have blazed the trail and flourished in the midst (not on the periphery) of urban renewals; e.g. the connection between UCLA and Westwood (in the U.S.), and the penchant of that union for creating employment, and student jobs.

Dr Bartels's vision, alas, shunned the habit of skimping on the maintenance of existing national assets, pouring good money into newish things, and setting in train a cycle of neglect. Possibly, the disregard for the plan mirrored two puzzles: one, the naïve assumption that, somehow, distribution of benefits is a zero-sum game; and two, the elitists' phobia for the teeming masses, and preference for the suburban nest and rest. For a new, independent nation, the opportunity loss was worse than a study of reflexes in the aristocratic psyche. It was hard to escape the suspicion that what was bliss for Cambridge turned out to be bale to Cape Coast. As between liberation and servitude, Dr Bartels drew the line between visions of national self-assertion and timid copies of the archaic.

The past is all very well. But why misjudge the echoes of the times? The conventional wisdom that tertiary education has to be packaged, somehow, from within enclosed quarters has come to seem as old-fashioned as the insistence that every phone has to have a wire attached. Odd myths need revision.

The Paradox is a victory celebration, and a must read. As a biography, the canvas is fully drawn with the texture and colour of a life spanning almost a century. It draws seamlessly on a vast repertoire with anecdotes, some highlighted with fun (and slaps) in Fanti: (Nkye mobobo n'asowa mu ma w'atse).

In a talk with Dr Bartels, his recall of untold stories, the personal takes on key historic events and people, and the details in the making of those experiences, held one like a bond. Asked, of the three main "adventures" - Mfantsipim, Unesco, and Bonn - which he relished the most, the answer popped like a habit.

Our conversation quieted down and ended on a passing debate. Dr Bartels was of the view that "Leadership emerges"; I differed that "Leadership is taught". He left for Paris the next day or so. The very thought of him today rings deep with the conviction of honouring our living heroes. Dr Bartels is a prime candidate. He gave so much to broaden and elevate our collective thought. More grease to his years.

Source: Francis Bartels