African children of the national revolution: the Vichy policy on children and youth in the colonies of FWA (1940-1943)

Since the establishment of the colonial education system, French administration in FWA confronted difficulties of which the principal was the way to expose African children to the values of French civilization without blurring the borderline between colonizers and colonized. During the Vichy years in FWA the colonial administration accorded special attention to the African children of the National revolution. It implemented in the colonies the reforms of the General Education put into practice in France. The new educational concepts, theirs contents and objectives had given a strong legitimization to colonial ideas that existed well before Vichy but were not easy to reconcile with the Republican values. The motto: Work, Family, Motherland was, for the colonial administration, easier to explain to African schoolchildren than its precedent: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity that totally contradicted the colonial realities in which they lived.