October 2014
The education system in colonial Algeria (1833-1962)
Statistical and historiographical review
by Kamel Kateb
‘‘The means of dominating a people and assimilating it is to take possession of childhood and youth: this cannot be done by coercion, but the moral means are numerous and effective... The object of our efforts must be the extension of Arabic-French teaching: it is through this that we will take possession of the new generations almost from the cradle.’’ (Leroy-Beaulieu, 1887). (Leroy-Beaulieu, 1887). What is the record of French education in Algeria during the period of colonisation? After 132 years of French presence in Algeria (annexed to France in 1838), how many Algerians (French Muslims, indigenous French subjects) had a sufficient knowledge of the French language, and how many of them had learned to read and write in French? Was compulsory schooling for children aged 6 to 13, in accordance with the J. Ferry law of 1882, applied in Algeria? How many Algerian children attended state schools? How many went to lycée and university? What was the number of students at the time of the country's independence? How many doctors, engineers, primary and secondary school teachers did Algeria have at the time of its independence? What was the status of local languages (Arabic, dialectal Arabic, Berber) in the Algerian education system? As well as answering the questions listed above, this book attempts to analyse the objectives assigned to French schools in Algeria and to study the attitudes of the various populations to the objectives pursued. What role did education play in the various forms of colonial ‘confrontation’? What was the role of the elites produced by the colonial education system? And what role and place did they occupy in the struggle for Algerian independence? Were they the driving force behind the independence movement, as the Europeans in Algeria feared? Or did they mediate between colonisation and the mass of the colonised, as the enlightened ideologists of the colonial system hoped?
