France exported its secular, object-based pedagogy wholesale to West African schools.

Evidence

The Government General likewise set its sights on inculcating in all Africans the same rational outlook that permeated metropolitan educational efforts. The guiding principles of universal primary instruction in France were that it be secular and, in the words of the educational expert, P. Lapie, “practical and educational” (utilitaire et educatif). These principles informed Guy’s and Roume’s approach to education overseas. The ecole franr-aise in West Africa was made lafque, Roume explained, because of the religious neutrality of the Third Republic; children, he added optimistically, would only come more willingly when they did not have to fear proselytization. Similarly, the centerpiece of the Republic’s new scientific pedagogy, the ler-on des chases, was at the core of Dakar’s approach to education. As in France, Africans were first to be presented with concrete objects and then, ideally, made to understand from them abstract principles. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 281

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader French republican civilizing-mission literature and to the theme of how republican ideals were forcibly transplanted overseas.