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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Education and "nation-building": Italians in Ethiopia during 1936-1941
| Panel |
18. Education and Social change in Eastern and Southern Africa
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| Paper ID | 523 |
| Author(s) |
Pes, Alessandro
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| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
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| Abstract | Prior the Italian occupation, Ethiopian educational system was informed on the principle of the modernization. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Ethiopian Orthodox church held the control of the traditional education. At the same time, a few students received their education by European missionaries. The Emperor Menelik II, to pursue his modernization’s plan, in 1908 founded in Addis Ababa the first modern school of the Empire. The plan to modernize the Empire through a new educational system, carried on with the Emperor Haile Sellassie. In 1931 he founded the first school for girls, the Empress Menen School. He set up several provincial schools; there was a school of art, a technical school, a teacher’s training school and a school for orphans [ R. Pankhurst; 1972]. The period 1908-1935 was marked by an educational system’s raising. Such a result of the modernization policies, in the 1935 Ethiopia held a new Establishment. The Ethiopian educational system drastically changed in 1936, after the Italian occupation. Ethiopia became a part of the Empire of the Africa Orientale Italiana. The Italian Governor established the new educational system, valid for Ethiopia, Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, with the ordinance issued on July 24, 1936. The ordinance divided the Educational system in two institutions: the first included the schools for Italian settlers and foreigners; another type of schools was dedicated to colonial subjects. The Italian ordinance provided for different course of studies for Italians and colonial subjects. By this way Italian governor precluded every opportunity to involve the Ethiopian people in the local government and in every position of the Establishment. The new educational system ratified the partition of the people in those who were of the dominant race and those who were of subiect races. The Italian educational system for colonial subjects was thought to made the “natives” more servile. They were indoctrinated by the Fascist education to allegiance and submission to the Fascist hierarchy. The education for natives came up to the fourth grade because, in the aim of the Fascist rulers, this grade was sufficient to guarantee the people their work position. Because of the courses of study for natives was centred on Fascist History, pratical trades, hygiene and discipline. This paper, based on the monthly relations that every Chief of the each province of Africa Orientale had to send to the General Governor. By this way I want to identify in which ways the Italian Education system modified the Ethiopia’s social structure. Building a school for natives the Italian government deleted, in the facts, every difference into the Ethiopian people. As a consequence, the Italian government deleted every difference to the access at the Educational system, relegating everyone into a generic class, the natives. In 1941, when Haile Sellassie came back, he found a nonexistent social structure.
Words: 478
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