Les enfants africains de la Révolution nationale: la politique vichyssoise de l'enfance et de la jeunesse dans les colonies de l'AOF ( 1940-1943)

Since the establishment of the colonial education system, French administration in FWA confronted difficulties, the main one being how to expose African children to the values of French civilization while maintaining the gap between the colonizer and colonized. During the Vichy years in FWA the colonial administration paid special attention to the African children of the National Revolution. It implemented the reforms of general education in the colonies, just as it obtained in France. The new educational concepts, theirs contents and objectives had given a strong legitimate status to colonial ideas that existed well before Vichy but which could not be easily reconciled with Republican values. The motto: Work, Family, Motherland, was, for the colonial administration, easier to explain to African schoolchildren than the former: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, which sharply contrasted with the colonial realities in which they lived.