The Presentation of Indigenous Society in the Schools of French West Africa and Indochina, 1918 to 1938

Abstract

The historiography of French colonial educational policy and practice has advanced considerably over the past decade. Not long ago W. Bryant Mum-ford's allegation, “Africans learn to be French,” was taken literally, and most scholars presumed that France, either out of cultural arrogance or blind reflex, brought metropolitan schooling in undiluted form to her colonies. We know better now. Recent studies of education in French West Africa and Indochina have suggested that colonial schools were not only adapted to the colonial context, but taught the students a great deal about their own societies. This article focuses on the knowledge that the two basic school levels, the elementary and primary, distributed about indigenous society in two French colonial federations—French West Africa and Indochina—in the period 1918–38 and speculates as to why the content and distribution of that knowledge took the forms they did. The discussion is based on analysis of texts in use in the primary schools, government curriculum guides, and student school notebooks. It begins with a brief survey of the structure of the educational system and curriculum of the schools as a whole, then proceeds to an analysis of the presentation of indigenous society in the schools.