This is a study of the political dimensions of education in Africa south of the Sahara, focusing especially on politics in primary and secondary schools and on the political knowledge and values both of the pupils attending them and of other young people of a similar age. Harber considers the comprehensive nature of the relationship between politics and education, the role of schools in nation-building, colonial education as a form of political domination, the role of political education in liberation struggles, the "modernizing" role of formal education, the problematic nature of political education courses in schools, the contradictions between government educational policy and the actual operation of schools, the conflict between authoritarian and democratic forms of school organization and the need to consider the political views of young people.