ABSTRACT
Before the introduction of western-type schools, societies in East Africa socialized and educated new generations without schools in the modern, western sense, although institutionalized forms of education in several East African societies bore many of the characteristics which would identify them as schools. However, without entering here into a discussion of what is or is not a school, it may be said that western-type schools introduced an entirely new socializing factor to the societies of East Africa. Prior to their introduction, socialization and education functioned primarily to sustain knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and aspirations within a more or less ex clusively tribal context. It cannot be assumed that change did not take place in the process, but the emphasis was undoubtedly culturally and socially conservative, and specific for each tribal society, despite cultural similarities which extended over con siderable areas, as among the inter-lacustrine societies, for example.
