Colonial schools trained African teachers as cheap agents of French rural influence.

Evidence

In order to establish a federal school system, it was imperative to train an African teaching corps as quickly as possible. African teachers would be both cheaper and better adapted to the countryside than their French counterparts. Properly trained, they could be the ideal agents of French influence in the rural areas. They were to be recruited from throughout the federation and would undergo a three-year course of study in Dakar. The curriculum, as established in I903 when the school was founded, was an ambitious one, combining a practical orientation with courses modeled on those offered in metropolitan schools. The point of such a combination, Dakar reaffirmed in I 9 I 2, was to “ensure that the graduates did not take themselves for mandarins once they had their piece of parchment.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 274

In order to establish a federal school system, it was imperative to train an African teaching corps as quickly as possible. African teachers would be both cheaper and better adapted to the countryside than their French counterparts. Properly trained, they could be the ideal agents of French influence in the rural areas. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 274

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader reading theme of how republicanism was imposed via education in French West Africa, and to the irony of training Africans yet fearing they’d become ‘mandarins’ — echoes colonial anxieties about creating educated elites found across empires.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 274