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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | French Colonial Education in Chad |
Author: | Gardinier, David E. |
Year: | 1994 |
Periodical: | Africana Journal |
Volume: | 16 |
Pages: | 300-310 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Chad France |
Subjects: | colonialism education History and Exploration Education and Oral Traditions |
Abstract: | In the period of colonial rule in Chad, from 1900 to 1960, French colonial education aimed at producing auxiliaries who would assist the French colonial government, and in addition after 1945, at attaching Chad to France while emancipating the Chadians as individuals. The circumstances of French rule led to the greatest percentage of enrolments from the animist agriculturalists of the south and southwest and to the rejection of the colonial school by the bulk of the Muslim population. The educational system was geared to producing a tiny Gallicized elite who identified with France, its language and culture. The system did not educate either efficiently or effectively the bulk of the pupils for a productive life in the countryside. At the same time most children of school age were left to illiteracy or to Koranic schools which did little to prepare them for life in the modern world. Thus the system failed to prepare the numbers of educated individuals necessary for an independent State to function. At the same time it unintentionally contributed to worsening some of the regional imbalances and divisions productive of armed conflict in recent decades. Ref. |