French colonial education prioritized forming an African worker and clerk class over abstract learning.

Evidence

The administration’s emphasis on practical training was also evident at the postprimary level. As the 1908 annual report on education insisted, “[We] are concerned above all else to ensure that the young natives who attend our schools acquire a means to earn their living honorably and to allow them to participate in the social development of the colony. After having formed the workers and the functionaries whom we may need … we have oriented our natives’ minds toward practical things, in keeping with the program traced in 1903.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 273