ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the educational policy shifts occurred because, while in colonial Vietnam there may have been some consensus that educational reform was desirable, nonetheless consensus broke down once specific reforms were enacted. Between 1918 and 1926 there were at least three major educational reforms in colonial Vietnam which drastically changed the organization, content and control of schooling. The colonial government felt a pressing need to bring about school reform in the first decade of the twentieth century, once Vietnam had been fully pacified. The Vietnamese monarchy in Hue began to share France’s dim view of traditional schools. The consensus that reform was needed extended beyond political authorities, both French and Vietnamese; it also had its roots in the French community, the colons residing in the colonial territory, and in newly formed Vietnamese elites. The Vietnamese urban elites greeted the Code of Public Instruction with mixed feelings.
