Patteson's goal was to take boys from local communities, educate them in western Christian culture at his mission school, and return them to their villages to help lead the next generation. He had difficulty persuading local people to allow their young men to depart, sometimes for years, for this purpose. Patteson never tried to make the Melanesians British but thought he was equipping them for the contemporary world. His most brilliant scholar, Edward Wogala, wrote of him: "He did not live apart, he was always friends with us and did not despise in the least a single one of us." Well liked by many, his name is still handed down from father to son, and in 1961, young Melanesians were still being named for him at baptism.