Adaptations of Adaptation: On How an Educational Concept Travels from the Heartlands to the Hinterlands

Abstract

Rockwell reports on the diverse understandings of adapting metropolitan education to local cultures, a prospect that played a central role in the transnational construction of nineteenth-century education, particularly in colonial and post-colonial contexts. Debates peaked at the International Conference on Education in the Colonies held in Paris, during the Exposition Coloniale Internationale of 1931. Rockwell analyzes the case of French colonial schooling, strongly influenced by European ethnological conceptions of the cultural evolution of “other races.” Contradictory interpretations and implementations of adapted education are evident in the reports from Morocco and the AOF, where France set up separate school systems for the indigènes, yet strongly promoted French language instruction and the mainland pedagogy, which, ironically, had also adopted the principle of “adaptation” in 1924.