ABSTRACT
African society is distinguished by the characteristic prevalence of the idea of community. The individual recedes before the group. The introduction into a conscious participation in the communal life of the group and a knowledge of the rules of behaviour resulting from it, form an essential part of education. The most important group formations are family, clan, and village, to which for many parts of Africa, must be added the age grades and the men's associations grown out of them. While in the small and the extended family members of originally different groups are by marriage united into a new unit, the principle of descent is strictly observed in another institution, viz. the clan. The clan is a group of people who feel themselves united by common origin, in which descent either from the father or from the mother is decisive, so that father and mother clans are distinguished.
