Abstract

The Marist Brothers came to Malawi in 1946 and have been working in the field of education ever since. They came almost at the dawn of secondary school education because, by then, only two secondary schools in Malawi, namely, Blantyre and Zomba Catholic were operational. The research examines how far St Marcellin Champagnat’s aims of founding the Marist Brothers as a teaching congregation are being realized in Marist Schools in Malawi. One of the major findings is that Marist Schools earlier on combined academic work with no academic work such as agricultural skills training. As of now, these schools are renowned for their academic performance only. The research has taken note of the fact that Marist Brothers in Malawi have not yet introduced coeducational schools as in the neighboring countries. It is a well-known fact that in Malawi the Marist Brothers have been behind the beginning of some secondary schools in Malawi and taking over others from the Montfort as well as the White Fathers (Missionaries of Africa). Another major finding which sets apart the Marist Schools from others is what is known as Marist culture, sometimes called “Marist ethos”. One of the practical examples of this is, spending time with students. This provides opportunities to enter their lives, build up relationships, and understand them better. On shortcomings, the research notes that Marist Schools in Malawi put emphasis on academic performance only. Earlier on, the education syllabus was geared toward the needs of the developing society. Presently this is lacking because of emphasis on purely academic and leaving out the technical side. I have chosen the Case Study Methodology in this research. Case Study design has several approaches but the main one used in this research is the exploratory. Although much interpretation in this research is presented in tabular form, the main design adopted is qualitative research design. Despite the numerous figures, this design cannot claim to be quantitative

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School	: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Issued Date	: 2006

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