ABSTRACT
It has been widely recognized that colonial school systems failed to educate more than a tiny fraction of the colonized populations, while colonial rule systematically or inadvertently undermined and devalued traditional education. At independence, most postcolonial states were faced with staggering challenges in education and literacy. Morocco was no exception: only 13 percent of primary school age and 2.25 percent of secondary school age children attended classes in 1956 (Baina 1981: 153). Not surprisingly, colonial rulers limited secondary and tertiary education for their subjects in order to deny them access to power and to the tools of resistance. Yet, the scarcity of primary education demands more explanation: if colonial pedagogy and education were forms of “symbolic violence” that helped buttress domination and control over the colonized population (une conquête morale), then why were they used so sparingly (Ha 2003: 111)?2 Given the interest of European colonizers in exerting cultural hegemony over the colonized while maximizing the economic output of their colonies, why did colonial education not reach the masses?
