Demythologising the educational past: an attempt to assess the “power of education” in the Congo (DRC) with a nod to the history of interwar pedagogy in Catholic Flanders

Abstract

This keynote consists of two parts. The first part offers some general observations from the past related to the power (and eventual powerlessness) of education. The aim is to create a framework with which the specific case, discussed in the second part, must be interpreted. Furthermore, it is emphasised that almost every pedagogical intervention which harboured the explicit aim of “forming” subjects had in itself a very normative and disciplinary nature. Yet these objectives, imposed from above, seldom functioned in the day-to-day reality as they were conceived by the opinion-makers and education agents. The educational activity’s political-ideological, fundamental principles do not allow us to directly deduce exactly what was retained by those subjected to the educational activity on the shop floor. The downside of the “power” of any education is indeed the “empowerment” of the individual. Whether one is happy for man to attain this quality or not, pedagogical interventions can give rise to emancipatory effects, even if they are intended to be primarily disciplinary. The Congo is naturally a prime case that would enable us to further explore this question. On the one hand, after independence, the pursuit of power over education was exposed in the continuity of colonial principles as well as in the struggle between the state and the church during the Mobutu regime. On the other hand, the dictatorial regime did not prevent the Congolese from becoming empowered through education; however, it appears as though a certain methodical utilitarianism was never far off.