A Reply to Professor Foster

BEFORE REPLYING TO Dr. Philip Foster's detailed criticism our paper we would draw attention to an underlying reproach which surfaces when he questions the originality our work. Of course we took existing research as our starting point and the questions we asked derived in part from Foster's pioneering work in Ghana (as the footnotes and textual references to his work indicate.) Moreover, the framework our research was in part a conscious attempt to replicate his study and as such requires no further justification. That we draw radically different conclusions from Foster is the major issue. With regard to Foster's criticism: 1. Foster correctly indicates two substantive points difference. 1 The first concerns our data demonstrating the heterogeneity the farming group which raise doubts the degree fluidity access to higher education and to this extent question the adequacy Foster's conclusions. His efforts to maintain his original position in the face these data are difficult to understand. He criticizes our interpretation the high rate literacy among the cocoa farming fathers our own sixth form sample (we pointed out that 55 percent were literate) by arguing that about 70 percent my total sample farmers are illiterate. Whatever Foster's data our findings remain, indicating that this group exhibited a literacy rate not only in excess the total farming population but of the Ghanaian population as a whole. Foster also continues to claim that the balanced view would be that cocoa farmers are small-scale cultivators. Now whatever the characteristics the cocoa-farming population as a whole, we did show that among the fathers sixth formers there was a significant number multiple-farm owners, and, perhaps even more significantly, one fifth the children cocoa-farmers were resident in towns.2 On the basis such evidence it seems that the presence farmers' children in the sixth forms is not an infallible indication fluidity access; that it does not necessarily demonstrate significantly high levels recruitment from the children poor, illiterate farmers. The evidence itself may be questioned but it is not to be brushed aside by restating the fact that most farmers in the population are not literate or wealthy.3 The

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