Colonialism and Education

Colonialism led to new forms and systems of education, including new schools, curricula, examinations, certificates, and degrees, which often served the needs and interests of the colonial administration and economy.

As education scholar Sugata Mitra points out, some countries such as Britain and France not only needed clerical and administrative staff for new domestic institutions but also diplomats and civil servants with clerical skills to create and maintain their enormous colonial bureaucracies overseas.

What was required, says Mitra, were workers who were essentially identical to each other. “They must know three things: They must have good handwriting, because the data is handwritten; they must be able to read; and they must be able to do multiplication, division, addition and subtraction in their head. They must be so identical that you could pick one up from New Zealand and ship them to Canada and he would be instantly functional.” The Victorians, Mitra says, “created a computer of people, a bureaucratic machine and schools to prepare people to run that machine. This is still happening.”

The introduction of new education systems typically disrupted and marginalized existing education systems rooted in local culture which had largely been transmitted via oral traditions, apprenticeship, religious instruction, and indigenous schools. For example, the French Empire abolished madrasas in Algeria, and replaced them with French secular schools teaching French language and culture. Some colonized peoples resisted colonial education, boycotting it, sabotaging it, or using it as a tool for political and social mobilization. Others used it as a means of personal and professional advancement. For example, in South Africa the African National Congress used the colonial education system to train and educate its leaders and members, who later led the anti-apartheid struggle.