Japanese Colonial Education in Korea 1910-1945: An Oral History

By Russell A. Vacante, Ph.D.

This study investigates the impact of Japanese colonial education in Korea. It examines how formal
colonial education affected the attitudes and behavior of Korean students towards Japan's colonial
domination of Korea. The lived experience of Koreans who attended school during the colonial era,
beginning with primary school and ending with college graduation, forms the focus of this study.

The seven individuals presented in this oral history project tell of their colonial educational experience
and how they believe this experience affected their attitudes toward Japanese colonialism. Their
account of this experience provides us with insight into the sociopolitical tension, at the personal level,
created by Japanese colonial education. This study also provides fresh insight into the relationship that
educational achievement has to nationalism.

In order to gain a perspective on colonial education from the bottom up, questions such as the
following were posited: (1) what motivated Koreans to attend government schools, (2) what were the
socio-economic backgrounds of students who received a colonial education, and (3) what impact did
colonial formal education have on student political consciousness. To gather this and other information
that goes beyond that contained in established colonial literature the interviews were conducted within
the framework of the following three questions: (1) did students' attitudes change according to the
length of time they spent in school, (2) what influence did the family have on student political attitudes
and what affect did colonial schools have in changing those attitudes, and (3) did the type of education
a student received, i.e., academic or vocational, affect his perception of colonialism. These three
categories were established less to get answers to specific questions than to derive a dense biographical
discussion and narrative that then could be analyzed in depth.

This study does not make a general statement about Japanese colonialism or colonial education in
Korea. It does provide keen insight into the lived colonial educational experience of Koreans and the
effects that such an experience had on their attitudes and behavior.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667893402

Book preview

Title

SECOND EDITION

Copyright 2023

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

ISBN 979-8-35090-816-9

Vacante, Russell A.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be published without the express permission of the author except for brief quotes by researchers or reviewers.

Figure 1 - A crowd of Seoul Station Square and Namdaemunno cheering for the liberation of the country. August 15, 1945. Fmkorea

(source: https://historycollection.com/23-photographs-japanese-occupation-korea-liberation/2/)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF TABLES

TABLE OF FIGURES

PREFACE

ABSTRACT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

STUDIES OF COLONIAL EDUCATIONAL POLICY

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT OF COLONIALISM

METHODOLOGY

ORAL HISTORY

UNCONTROLLABLE FACTORS AFFECTING THE METHODOLOGY

SELECTION OF RESPONDENTS

QUESTIONS ASKED

RESEARCH LIMITS

EXPLANATION: WHAT LIES IMMEDIATELY AHEAD

CHAPTER I: JAPANESE INFLUENCE ON KOREAN EDUCATION

JAPANESE COLONIAL EDUCATION IN KOREA

JAPANESE ECONOMIC AND MILITARY POLICIES IN KOREA

INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

JAPANESE EDUCATIONAL POLICY

Government Schools (1910-1945)

Elementary Education

Secondary Education

Higher Education

Education of Japanese Students in Colonial Korea

Government Control Over Non-Government Schools

Curriculum Content

SCHOOL ENROLLMENTS: A SUMMARY

EXTENT OF EDUCATION BY LEVEL

CHAPTER II: INTRODUCTION TO ORAL HISTORIES

MR. YUN

FAMILY BACKGROUND

EDUCATIONAL MOTIVATION

SCHOOL CURRICULUM

PERCEPTIONS OF SCHOOL

SCHOOL ATTITUDES VIS-À-VIS POLITICS

POST HIGHER EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE

PRESENT ATTITUDE

Identity

Concerning Government

Regarding Formal Education

Analysis

MR. LEE

FAMILY BACKGROUND

EDUCATIONAL MOTIVATION

SCHOOL CURRICULUM

PERCEPTION OF SCHOOL

SCHOOL ATTITUDES VIS-A-VIS POLITICS

POST HIGHER EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND AND EXPERIENCE

PRESENT ATTITUDE

Identity

Concerning Government

Regarding Formal Education

Analysis

MR. CHO

FAMILY BACKGROUND

EDUCATIONAL MOTIVATION

SCHOOL CURRICULUM

PERCEPTION OF SCHOOL

SCHOOL ATTITUDE VIS-À-VIS POLITICS

POST HIGHER EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE

PRESENT ATTITUDE

Identity

Concerning Government

Regarding Formal Education

Analysis

MR. PAK

FAMILY BACKGROUND

EDUCATIONAL MOTIVATION

SCHOOL CURRICULUM

PERCEPTION OF SCHOOL

SCHOOL ATTITUDE VIS-À-VIS POLITICS

POST HIGHER EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE

PRESENT ATTITUDE

Identity

Concerning Government

Regarding Formal Education

Analysis

MR. LIM

FAMILY BACKGROUND

EDUCATIONAL MOTIVATION

SCHOOL CURRICULUM

PERCEPTION OF SCHOOL

SCHOOL ATTITUDE VIS-À-VIS POLITICS

POST HIGHER EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE

PRESENT ATTITUDE

Identity

Concerning Government

Regarding Formal Education

Analysis

MRS. KIM

FAMILY BACKGROUND

EDUCATIONAL MOTIVATION

SCHOOL CURRICULUM

PERCEPTION OF SCHOOL

SCHOOL ATTITUDE VIS-À-VIS POLITICS

POST HIGHER EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND AND EXPERIENCE

PRESENT ATTITUDE

Identity

Concerning Government

Regarding Formal Education

Analysis

MR. SIM

FAMILY BACKGROUND

EDUCATIONAL MOTIVATION

SCHOOL CURRICULUM

PERCEPTION OF SCHOOL

SCHOOL ATTITUDE VIS-À-VIS POLITICS

POST HIGHER EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE

PRESENT ATTITUDES

Identity

Concerning Government

Regarding Formal Education

Analysis

SUMMARY

FAMILY INFLUENCE

SCHOOL EXPERIENCE

CAREER ASPIRATIONS

KOREAN NATIONALISM

SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS STUDY IN TERMS OF ESTABLISHED LITERATURE

NEW RESEARCH AGENDAS

CONCLUSIONS: LOOKING BACK THIRTY-FIVE YEARS - MAY 1987-NOVEMBER 2022

THE MODERNIZATION OF JAPAN & COLONIAL CONQUEST

A REVISIT OF KEY RESPONDENTS’ QUOTATIONS

CONFUCIAN INFLUENCE

TENSION BETWEEN MODERNITY AND JAPANESE COLONIALISM

SURVIVAL INSTINCT VERSUS FEELING INFERIOR

THE ACADEMIC ROAD TO THE STUDY OF COLONIALISM

A FINAL WORD ON LOOKING BACK

BIBLIOGRAPHY

END NOTES – INTRODUCTION & METHODOLOGY

END NOTES: CHAPTER 1

BOOKS

ARTICLES, OCCASIONAL PAPERS, THESES AND DISSERTATIONS

JAPANESE GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS: CHOSEN (KOREA)

TAPED INTERVIEWS: SEOUL, 1974-75.

TABLE OF TABLES

TABLE 1. COMPARISON OF JAPANESE AND KOREAN WAGES ACCORDING TO NATIONALITY AND GENDER. (UNITS ARE IN YEN.)

TABLE 2: CONDITION OF SPECIAL SCHOOLS (EXISTING AT THE END OF MAY 1918)¹

TABLE 3. NUMBER OF KOREANS STUDYING IN JAPAN AT GOVERNMENT OR PRIVATE EXPENSE, AND SUBJECT STUDIED

TABLE 4. EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS OF SOHTANG (SODANG) (EXISTING AT THE END OF MARCH, 1918).

TABLE 5. CONDITIONS OF VARIOUS PRIVATE SCHOOLS FOR KOREANS

TABLE 6: TABLE CURRICULUM FOR A COMMON SCHOOL

TABLE 7 CURRICULUM FOR A COMMON SCHOOL

TABLE 8: TABLE CURRICULUM FOR A COMMERCIAL SCHOOL

TABLE 9 DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE AND EDUCATION

TABLE 10 NUMBER OF PRIVATE NON DENOMINATIONAL & DENOMINATIONAL SCHOOLS IN KOREA BETWEEN 1910 - 1922.

TABLE 11 POPULATION AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS FOR JAPANESE & KOREANS

TABLE 12 RATIO OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS TO 100,000 COMMON AND PRIMARY SCHOOL ENROLLMENT, JAPANESE AND KOREAN, BOYS, AND GIRLS, 1910 1918, 1922, 1923

TABLE 13 VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS (JUNIOR COLLEGE LEVEL)

TABLE 14 JAPANESE AND KOREAN STUDENTS IN SPECIAL SCHOOLS IN 1923.

TABLE 15 SIZE OF KOREAN AND JAPANESE STUDENT POPULATION AT KEIJO IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY

TABLE 16 TYPE OF SCHOOLS AND NUMBER OF STUDENTS PRESENT IN THE COLONIAL GOVERNMENT’S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

TABLE 17 NUMBER OF STUDENTS IN ALL TYPES OF SCHOOLS PER THOUSAND OF POPULATION IN KOREA AND JAPAN

TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1 - A crowd of Seoul Station Square and Namdaemunno cheering for the liberation of the country. August 15, 1945. Fmkorea

Figure 2 - First school building (April 1905-June 1914). The building of a Russian language school in Susong-dong was lent as the first classroom of Bosung college. Official opening was set for April 3, 1905

Figure 3 - This building was completed in Susong-dong on Nov.30, 1914. The new building freed the school from the cumbersome separation of middle school and college between daytime and nighttime and enabled a better learning environment.

Figure 4 - In September of 1918, the Professional Department moves to Osung School located in Nakwon-dong. Thirteen years after its foundation, the school is split into two locations and until its relocation again to Songhyun-dong, the school faced tough times as it tried to strengthen the nation’s education.

Figure 5 - The Chundogyo building in Songhyun-dong became a part of Bosung in 1922. The foundation overcame financial difficulties with funding and material contribution. At the time Chundogyo donated its land and head office building in Songhyun-dong. Bosung College moved to the new building in the summer of the same year.

Figure 6 - On March 1, 1919, Koreans gather at Tapgol Gong-won (current day Pagoda Park in Seoul) to protest Japanese rule and fight for independence.

Figure 7 - Keijo Imperial University during Japanese Colonial Period.

Figure 8 - Seonggyungwan, also known as Taehak, established in 992 as Gukjagam was the foremost education institution in Korea during the late Goryeo and Joseon Dynasties. During the colonial era between 1910-1945, royal Seonggyungwan was a demoted to private institution and renamed to Gyunghakwon, and Korean education was prohibited and Japanese education was forced nationwide.

FIGURE 9 - SHOWING COLONIAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Figure 10 - Ewha College 1925, College courses open doors to women's higher education 1910-1925

Figure 11 - The Bank of Chōsen (Korea) 1930.

PREFACE

I am Lloyd Muller, a long-time colleague and friend of Russell Vacante, the author of this dissertation. He and I share a common experience in government service, academic study, and living in other countries. We have been fortunate to witness, firsthand, the remarkable beauty of many different cultures and people. Some of these experiences have been positive, some comical, and others tragic. Thus, we understand the same language, so to speak.

When Dr. Vacante decided to publish his dissertation in the public market, he asked me to review it. I was deeply honored by his request. From this reading, I was astonished to learn of the many long-term and negative generational consequences imperialism imposes on the people of colonized nations.

Dr. Vacante’s seminal work pertains to Japan’s colonization of Korea (1910-1945) and, more specifically, to the role education played as a tool of subjection and assimilation of the Korean people. In much broader terms, Dr. Vacante’s dissertation provides historical content and insight into the general subject of colonialism regardless of which countries were the colonizers and which were the colonized during the 20th century. A broader lesson to be learned is how the Japanese exploitation of people or expropriation of property, services, and goods can be used to explain many of the social, cultural, and racial inequities that are occurring in contemporary America. Essentially, the dissertation outlines how one group of people is affected when they are exploited for the benefit of another group. This exploitation is made possible by a vast inequity of socio-economic, political and police/military power.

Throughout American history, diverse groups of people have jostled society in effort to become American. The ease by which this process occurred depended on how different the new group was from the stereotypical White Anglo-Saxon Protestant model. First came the English, who displaced the indigenous population. Then, came the Germans who integrated fairly easily. Jews, Italians, Serbs, Chinese, Japanese had increasing difficulty with integration and were more extensively exploited. Today, Latin Americans are being politically maligned as scapegoats for various social and economic problems besetting our nation. Malignment means exploitation and barriers to integration into the greater American society.

Implicit in this unequal distribution of power is a theme of social superiority. The early English thought they were superior to the existing indigenous population. Consequently, the Indians were decimated. Among ante-bellum slave owners, there arose a theme of the White Man’s Burden. It arose as a response to abolition movements that threatened the economic livelihood of plantation owners. Their justification of profitable slavery was that only white paternalistic men could properly govern the lives of wives and slaves. Eventually, it became a southern religious dogma that claimed, not only did God sanction slavery, but slavery’s supporters were better Christians and more faithful interpreters of Biblical text than were their opponents.¹ Essentially, profit was masked by piety.

This phrase White Man’s Burden was formally coined in 1899 by Rudyard Kipling to encourage the United States’ annexation of the Philippines. This imperialistic interpretation of social organization meant, as David Cody wrote in his book, The Growth of the British Empire:

The implication, of course, was that the Empire existed not for the benefit—economic or strategic or otherwise—of Britain, itself, but in order that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government, could, with British guidance, eventually become civilized (and Christianized).²

This attitude of White superiority can be seen in American history. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and an eternal proponent of freedom, owned slaves his entire life. As an owner, he opined that they were of a separate nation, and could not live peacefully within their surrounding white society. Consequently, upon emancipation, all slaves should be relocated elsewhere.³

Other attitudes suggested a child-like mentality about African Americans. Shown in minstrel revues as fat, jolly, lazy, shufflers, Lil Black Sambos amused white audiences for decades. This meant that white direction was needed to protect these children from harm. Another more sinister fear was also prevalent - violence. While Black people could indeed be jolly, they also had immature tempers that needed control. This was projected in many movies such as Birth of a Nation. The Ku Klux Klan was portrayed as a force for social safety and tranquility.⁴

Not surprisingly, Black society saw things differently. Nat Turner rebelled against his Virginia owners in 1831. Lasting only several months, Nat Turner was captured and hanged. His insurrection, however, resulted in the deaths of 55 to 65 people, the vast majority of whom were white.⁵ Since then, protests against inequality have erupted in cities throughout the 20th century and into current times. For example, nationwide protests outcrying the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. Some of the protesters are calling for the abolition of bad acting police departments that are seen as oppressors. The political ramifications of these demands are being felt nation-wide. Increasing demands are being made upon our political leaders to include Critical Race Theory in the curricula of our schools as a means of highlighting the effects of this class distinction. Beyond the obvious Black/White issues that demand the bulk of daily newsprint, Critical Race Theory can be extended to help us further understand colonial and neo-colonialism, as well as the history of imperialism outside the colonial context.

The tragedy of this lament is its universality. Since the dawn of history, starting when the Egyptians enslaved its Hebrew population, one group or another has exploited another group. The American indigenous tribes raided one another in search of slaves. African Horn nations are engaged in incessant wars of attrition. The European nations engaged in two world wars searching for hegemony. Of particular horror was the German ferocity in exploiting the Jewish population. Sadly, this paradigm can be foreseen far into the future. The words may differ, but the song will be the same.

The only real alternative to this glum forecast is to study exploitation and bring it to the world’s attention. This effort will be snail-like in its slowness to take effect, but it must be started. A first step in this direction was taken by Dr. Russell Vacante. His dissertation accumulated many years of living in Korea and interviewing the attitudes and actions of the Koreans who lived through the 45-year reign of Japanese colonization of their land through World War II. His story must not only be read for itself, but also to see how its sad events can be seen here in our nation through the words of the people whom Dr. Vacante interviewed. Such is the value of his seminal work: its universality.

Lloyd H. Muller, Ed.D.

Assoc. Professor, Emeritus

Florida Institute of Technology

¹ How Antebellum Christians Justified Slavery. JASTOR: Education and Society. https://daily.jstor.org/howantebellum-christians-justified-slavery. 11/2/21.

² The White Man’s Burden. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WhiteB_Man%27s_Burden. 11/2/21.

³ Jefferson’s Attitudes Toward Slavery. The Jefferson Monticello. https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/jefferson-s-attitudes-toward-slavery/. 11/2/21.

⁴ Negative Racial Stereotypes and Their Effects on Attitudes Toward African Americans. Ferris State University: Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia." https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/links/essays/vcu.htm. 11/2/21.

⁵ Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner%27s_slave_rebellion. 11/2/21.

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the impact of Japanese colonial education in Korea. It examines how formal colonial education affected the attitudes and behavior of Korean students towards Japan's colonial domination of Korea. The lived experience of Koreans who attended school during the colonial era, beginning with primary school and ending with college graduation, forms the focus of this study.

The seven individuals presented in this oral history project tell of their colonial educational experience and how they believe this experience affected their attitudes toward Japanese colonialism. Their account of this experience provides us with insight into the sociopolitical tension, at the personal level, created by Japanese colonial education. This study also provides fresh insight into the relationship that educational achievement has to nationalism.

In order to gain a perspective on colonial education from the bottom up, questions such as the following were posited: (1) what motivated Koreans to attend government schools, (2) what were the socio-economic backgrounds of students who received a colonial education, and (3) what impact did colonial formal education have on student political consciousness. To gather this and other information that goes beyond that contained in established colonial literature the interviews were conducted within the framework of the following three questions: (1) did students' attitudes change according to the length of time they spent in school, (2) what influence did the family have on student political attitudes and what affect did colonial schools have in changing those attitudes, and (3) did the type of education a student received, i.e., academic or vocational, affect his perception of colonialism. These three categories were established less to get answers to specific questions than to derive a dense biographical discussion and narrative that then could be analyzed in depth.

This study does not make a general statement about Japanese colonialism or colonial education in Korea. It does provide keen insight into the lived colonial educational experience of Koreans and the effects that such an experience had on their attitudes and behavior.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study culminates years of guidance, effort, patience, and understanding on the part of numerous individuals to whom I shall be forever grateful.

To the chairperson of the dissertation committee, Professor Gail P. Kelly, I am especially indebted. Her depth of knowledge, consistent encouragement, and profound guidance has made the successful completion of this study possible. The support of the other committee members, Professors Philip G. Altbach and Michael H. Frisch, is sincerely appreciated. Their intellectual stimulation and academic guidance have proven to be an enormous asset to me. To Professor Lawrence W. Chisolm, I express my gratitude for his constructive criticism that has contributed to my intellectual growth throughout much of my academic career.

To Professor Uchang Kim of Korea University, Seoul, Korea, I extend my undying gratitude and appreciation. Without his patience, understanding, and guidance my research project as well as my stay in Korea would have been much more difficult and far less enlightening. Thanks is extended to Professor Jong Ho Yu of Ewha Women's University, Seoul, Korea, for friendship and assistance with library resources. Grateful recognition is extended to them, to the faculty and students of Chungang University and to the many people of Korea who unselfishly shared their lives with me despite my many socio-cultural shortcomings.

To the individuals who shared their colonial educational experience with me I will remain forever and especially grateful. The understanding they showed me and the confidence they displayed for this study have made it possible to remind the people of the world community that colonialism is an intolerable relic of world history that should forever remain buried in the past. I hope this study is worthy of the respondents’ trust.

I am grateful to Professor Donald F. Caccamise of Rutgers University for his technical assistance. His assistance in computer programming has saved me much time, energy, and money in preparing this study for publication.

My sincere appreciation is extended to the Program in American Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo for the financial support of my research efforts in Korea.

Most of all my love and appreciation go to my wife Joyce and my daughter Roselyn for the enduring sacrifice and hardship imposed upon our family by this study. It is to them that I dedicate this project and it is to them I shall be eternally grateful.

INTRODUCTION

This study investigates how Japanese control of Korean formal education, during a 35-year period of colonial rule (1910-1945), affected Korea, through the eyes of individuals who attended school during the colonial period.

Rarely does colonial literature touch upon the colonization of a non-Western country by a non-Western imperial power. Colonial literature mostly addresses itself to issues that revolve around the domination and exploitation of non-industrial societies by industrial and expansionist Western European powers. There is little scholarship on the effects of colonial schools upon individual attitudes and consciousness, nor have there been studies designed to examine the attitudes of Asians who have been colonized by other Asians. The effect Japanese colonial education had upon Korean students or the nature of the schooling as experienced by Korean students during colonial occupation has yet to be investigated.

Most material written about Japanese colonial education in Korea is of historical nature. Historical writings are valuable because they provide an overall understanding of the structural, academic, and administrative development of colonial education in Korea. What is missing, however, from the historical analysis of education in Korea done thus far, is how students experienced Japanese colonial education and believed that education influenced their thinking and behavior. This study can contribute to an understanding of student experiences.

To study Japanese colonial education as experienced by Koreans I will be using both primary and secondary research resources. My primary source of information is provided in taped interviews with college-educated Korean respondents who were schooled during the colonial period. I conducted in-depth interviews that probed their experiences in the schools. In this study I will report these experiences.

Most secondary information used in this study is derived from journals, books, and unpublished dissertations that were either written originally in English or translated into English from Korean or Japanese. The historical-political nature of this material will allow the reader of this study to: (1) get an overall picture of Japanese colonial educational policy in Korea; (2) relate changes in educational policy to changes in national and international affairs; and (3) serve as a guide in helping the reader follow the respondents through various stages of their educational careers.

The original nature of the research contained in this study should lead to a better understanding of the effects of colonialism upon Koreans. By focusing our attention on the educational experience as told by Koreans who were educated during the colonial period we will be able to learn more about the lived experiences of the colonial school. I will relate these individual experiences to the more general literature that addresses itself to colonialism per se and the role of education in colonial societies.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

STUDIES OF COLONIAL EDUCATIONAL POLICY

The subject of colonial education is rich in literature that does a fine job in explaining colonial schools and their bureaucracy. A survey of this literature will reveal that certain characteristics of colonial education emerge as a consistent feature of the colonial educational process regardless of who is the formulator of colonial educational policy or the recipient. Colonial literature consistently documents that: (1) formal education has never been a top priority in a colonial situation; (2) the shape of colonial education is, to some degree, dependent upon the political circumstances transpiring within the colony itself; (3) formal education, while in some respects similar to the educational process of the mother country, diverges in significant ways; (4) colonial education has historically always been an efficient way for the government to certify the colonized for employment in the colonial bureaucracy; and (5) colonial formal education, like colonialism itself, cultivates dependency by inhibiting the evolution of alternative educational processes. Numerous studies within the discipline of traditional colonialism have been done. What follows is a review of some of that literature.

The wealth of literature pertaining to traditional colonialism concerns the colonial empires of England and France. The colonial educational policy of these two countries differed in some ways. The British took a bureaucratic approach to colonial schooling that was different from the French. The British usually preferred a laissez faire approach to colonial formal education and to colonialism itself while the French vigorously engaged in a policy of assimilation. The British were mostly content to administer their colonies by means of indirect rule; the French, on the other hand, sought to acquire and maintain direct control of formal education and the colonial government itself.

A comparison of British and French colonial educational policy is provided in Education as Cultural Imperialism by Martin Carnoy.¹ Formal schooling developed a new elite in Africa, drawn in the British areas largely from previously non-elite and in French areas from the old elite. The new elite has learned European ways, and often adopted them for the rewards they offered.² In the French colonial areas of Africa we find that colonial education was seldom responsive to local demands and for much of the colonial era restricted enrollment to the former elite.

Carnoy maintains that The imperial powers attempt, through schooling, to train the colonized for roles that suit the colonizer.³ Colonial schools, according to Carnoy, help improve the market worth⁴ of the colonized as well as transfer culture and values⁵ that help maintain order. These things had to be achieved if the English or the French hoped to succeed in forming a working class for industrial growth.⁶

Generally speaking, Carnoy believes that the British were not interested in changing the indigenous population of their African or Indian colonies into minor images of themselves, they just wanted to exert enough control for British venture capitalism to succeed. The French, on the other hand, maintained greater control of colonial schools to achieve much the same end. Carnoy argues that the goal of colonial education for both England and France was the same while the system of implementation reflected the priority given to formal education in the mother country. The indirect manner in which the English administered colonial formal education, says Carnoy, is indicative of the level of British government involvement in the educational processes of England. Formal education in England, especially higher education, was mostly in the hands of private institutions. The strict control of colonial formal education in French areas of influence in Africa reflected initial desire on the part of the government to limit access of formal schooling to a selected few in much the same way it did in France. The French government at home and abroad tied formal education to the number of jobs the economy could support.

The article Assimilation and Association in French Education Policy and Practices: Senegal, 1903-1939 by Priscilla Blakemore does a fine job in explaining the French approach to colonial education in West Africa.⁷ French educational policy in Africa could be characterized as restrictive and controlled. Within the guidelines of French colonial educational policy, the government conducted two educational experiments in colonial Africa.

French colonial educational policy in Africa was one of assimilation until the end of the nineteenth century.⁸ The underlying notion of this policy was that French culture was superior to the cultures of Africa, therefore educational policy should be designed to make colonial students French. Assimilationists maintained that the teaching of European social, economic, and cultural values to colonial people would eventually result in their total subjugation to French government authority.

The policy of association adopted towards the Federation of West Africa in 1899 was more flexible than that of assimilation. According to Blakemore the policy of association...sought the cooperation of the people in the colonies for the economic and social development of their regions. At the same time, it forced French authorities to respect native institutions.⁹ Because the policy of association was aimed at educating the masses, it required greater government control than did the education of a selected elite under the policy of assimilation. Colonial formal education at the turn of the twentieth century became the primary means by which the government of France chose to implement its colonial policy in Africa.

The position that British control of formal education was one of adaptation rather than assimilation is supported in a publication titled Universities: British, Indian, African written by Eric Ashby.¹⁰ Although in all fairness to Carnoy, it must be pointed out prior to continuing our discussion on colonial education, that British colonial policy in India was somewhat more elitist than in Africa in keeping with the class nature of Indian society. Nevertheless, Ashby suggests that the university in India in 1857 was a product of England's indirect control of colonial formal education. The academic character of the university, to paraphrase the author, was nothing like that of the University of London from which it was modeled. Some similarity in form existed but the academic content of the colonial university was far inferior.¹¹

Ashby also informs us that England's policy of indirect colonial rule helped foster a great deal of independent colonial government control over Indian education. One particular event especially demonstrates England's loose control over formal education in India as well as Indian influence in educational matters:

The proposal for a Hindu university was initially entangled with a scheme of Mrs. Besant's for a University of India. In July 1910 she and a number of prominent Indians petition for a new university on national lines and under national control.¹²

Colonial education by 1919 provided Indians with the opportunity to have increased administrative responsibilities in colonial government affairs while at the same time increasing the socioeconomic dependency of Indians upon Western type values and institutions.

Ralph H. Bunche in his article French Educational Policy in Togo and Dahomey argued that French colonial education succeeded in making many of the educated colonial subjects’ obedient second-class citizens.¹³ He showed that no European government, French or otherwise, ever had intentions of having Africans shape their own destiny, the economic stakes were too high. Bunche helps