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    Plan détaillé Texte intégral 1. School education before the Italian occupation of 1936 2. The establishment of the national school system from 1941 3. Bogale Wallelu in Wolaita: assimilation against oppression Conclusion Notes de bas de page

    Educating the Nation in Ethiopia

    Ce livre est recensé par

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    Table des matières

    Chapter 1

    Thinking about the Purposes of the National School System: The Ethiopian State, the USA and Wolaita

    p. 45-74

    Texte intégral 1. School education before the Italian occupation of 1936 1.1 Schools of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church 1.2 Strengthening the state and avoiding colonisation 1.3 Missionary schools 1.4 Secular power invests in education at the beginning of the 20th century 2. The establishment of the national school system from 1941 2.1 Education, nation and progress in the service of autocracy 2.2 The United States: modernisation against communism 3. Bogale Wallelu in Wolaita: assimilation against oppression 3.1 School education in Wolaita before the Italian occupation 3.2 National unity and Haile Selassie cult 3.3 Education for emancipation 3.4 Uniting against opposition from the local aristocracy 3.5 Guiding the people towards unity and progress Conclusion Notes de bas de page

    Texte intégral

    1Following a timid investment in education at the beginning of the 20th century, the Ethiopian government established a national school system in the 1940s and 1950s, following the Italian occupation (1936–41). Understanding the objectives of school education involves looking at the reformist logic at work. At the end of the 19th century, an intensification of colonial pressure accelerated the movement towards the centralisation of power that had been initiated a few decades earlier by Emperor Tewodros II (1855–68). First Menilek II (1889–1913) and then Regent Tefari (1917–30), who became Emperor Haile Selassie in 1930, decided to reform the government by importing European administrative, fiscal and repressive techniques. The centralisation process was temporarily interrupted by the Italian occupation, but experienced an unprecedented acceleration after the liberation, and required the construction of a national school system. The role of the United States was central to this process: the US wanted a reliable ally in the Horn of Africa as part of its policy of containing communism, and was Haile Selassie’s main supporter.

    2Government schools did not emerge in an educational vacuum. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church had a large school network that had trained the kingdom’s scholars for centuries. Catholic and Protestant missionaries had also begun to open schools at the end of the 19th century, but in the 20th century, the state was in increasing need of education as a response to its new political projects. School education was embedded in national, international and local issues. The aim of this first chapter is to understand how the actors at the various levels of the school system thought about its aims. I analyse the objectives assigned to schools by the state and its American advisers based on official documents (including reports, school programmes, brochures published by the government and speeches) and press articles. The educational thinking of the local school administrator, Bogale Wallelu, is approached through official letters, his literary work, the press and oral sources.

    1. School education before the Italian occupation of 1936

    3Until secular power became involved in education, literacy training was provided by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (Haile Gabriel 1994, 617). There were also Muslim schools in Ethiopia, notably in Harar and Wello (Hussein 1986), but they were left on the margins because of their lack of ties to the central power of the Christian kingdom.

    1.1 Schools of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church

    4The origin of literacy education provided by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church can be traced back to the introduction of Christianity in Aksum in the 4th century, but it was particularly developed and codified between the 13th and 15th centuries, when the Christian kingdom was strengthened after the so-called Solomonic Dynasty came to power (Teshome 1979, 10). The monasteries that had the largest libraries and the most prestigious teachers gradually became points of reference that gave a sense of homogeneity to the education on offer. The fact that there was a multi-level curriculum and a hierarchy of education centres also makes it possible to speak of a real system. Its political function was threefold. Firstly, it trained priests and clerics in the service of secular power. Secondly, because of how religious and political power were interwoven, Christianity and the network of religious institutions were used by the emperors to ensure the cohesion of the kingdom by having them communicate imperial directives and by using preaching and teaching as an ideological cement (Derat 2002). Finally, the advance of the frontiers of the Christian kingdom was accompanied by the building of churches to maintain and strengthen the links between the centre and the newly-conquered peripheries (Deresse 2011).

    5Pupils, most exclusively male, began their education in the village church, where they learned to read and write in the liturgical language, Geez, before memorising passages from the Epistle of John and the Symbols of the Apostles (the “creed”). The end of this first stage, which lasted between two and four years and made it possible to pursue a career in the lower clergy, was marked by memorisation of the Psalms of David. This was the point at which the vast majority of students ended their studies (Teshome 1979, 13). Those who wished to continue entered monasteries, where zema, music and liturgical dances, were taught, as well as an even higher level, qené, a poetic art that cultivated the art of double meaning and mystical mystery. The highest level of study was called Metseaft Bet (House of Books), and students, who were considered by society as scholars and by their masters as peers, specialised in interpreting the Old or New Testaments, dogma, law and philosophy. The reference works they used were the Metsahafe-Felsafe Tabiban (Book of the Wise Philosophers), which consisted of excerpts from figures such as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero (Paulos 1976, 81); Tarike Negest (History of the Kings), which included royal chronicles; Kebre Negest (Glory of the Kings), the Ethiopian national epic; and Fetha Negest (Law of the Kings), the legal code that was in force from the 13th century to the middle of the 20th century.

    6The study of philosophical, historical and legal works at a higher level testifies to a concern for training men whose areas of ability stretched beyond the religious framework. Those who had completed advanced studies were in demand from kings, princes and the great aristocracy (Paulos 1976, 85). The written word had various functions in the practice of power: literate men were responsible for producing and distributing historical and ideological texts such as royal chronicles; the exercise of justice was partly based on texts; transfers of property were recorded in charters and donations; the incomes of the large royal and feudal estates were reported in writing; and the transmission of royal directives was ensured by exchanges of letters, as were diplomatic communications with foreign powers. This varied set of writing practices exercised by a learned elite does not, however, make it possible to think in terms of a bureaucracy: those who made their skills available to the political powers were neither organised into a constituted body nor “inscribed in a solidly established hierarchy of function” (Weber 1971, 294) as, for example, Chinese mandarins might be.

    7The aim of the socialisation process at work in these schools was to inculcate devotion to the church, the emperor and the country (Messay 2010, 27), and the teaching of Kebre Negest was a characteristic example of this. This text, which was produced by the church to give legitimacy to the Solomonian Dynasty, and is commonly thought to date from the 15th century, supported the two founding myths of Ethiopia’s Christian national imagination and political power. It referred to Ethiopian Christians as the chosen people because Menilek I, son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, brought the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia by an order of God. It also claimed that the same Menilek I founded the dynasty of Ethiopian emperors that descended from King Solomon in a direct line. In addition to spreading these nationalist myths, religious education instilled respect for social norms and hierarchies. The pedagogical relationship and school and religious rituals were intended to incorporate the deference, obedience and reserve that was expected by the authorities (Paulos 1976, 80).

    8Marie-Laure Derat has clearly highlighted the unifying role of the church by showing how in the 15th century, King Zara Ya’eqob used the network of religious establishments to disseminate his political theology for the purposes of doctrinal, religious and political unity, while also legitimising his own power, in order to unify his kingdom (Derat 2002, 45). Deresse Ayenachew showed how, again in the 15th century, the army and the church were the two key institutions responsible for establishing the power of Ethiopian kings in the southern peripheries. As outposts of faith in a “pagan” territory, religious institutions were to promote Christianity while strengthening the links between the centre and the conquered region (Deresse 2011, 54). This practice was taken up again by Emperor Menilek II during the conquests of the late 19th century.

    9Government schools gradually supplanted the Church as the national educational institution. From the end of the 19th century, the state allowed European and American missionaries to establish schools before it invested in education itself. This process was linked to a desire to reform the country’s government in the colonial context.

    1.2 Strengthening the state and avoiding colonisation

    10The state’s investment in education from the beginning of the 20th century was the result of the emperors’ policy of centralisation, an endogenous dynamic that was accelerated by colonial pressures. The Ethiopian government undertook reforms of a kind commonly labelled with the polysemic term “modernisation” to protect the country’s independence. To this end, from the beginning of the 20th century, and more particularly from the 1920s onwards, a section of the Ethiopian political and intellectual elites militated for the state to become an agent of social transformation.

    11The victory of Menilek II’s armies over the Italian colonial troops at Adwa in 1896 had prevented the colonisation of Ethiopia, but the country was still surrounded by European possessions. From the reign of Menilek II, and even more during the regency period (1917–30), the aristocratic elites were divided on the position to be adopted towards Europe. In the 1920s, a first group, gathered around Empress Zeweditu, who exercised little power but was surrounded by powerful figures such as the fitwerari1 Habte Giyorgis, advocated for an isolationist foreign policy and opposed European-inspired reforms: it was only by maintaining its identity intact—a guarantee of its strength—that Ethiopia would be able to resist foreign threats as it had in the past. The second group, gathered around Regent Tefari, was open to reforms and the establishment of relations with the European powers (Addis 1975, 62).

    12To these two forces must be added a third group, which was allied to the second, and whose early representatives appeared at the turn of the 20th century: the reformist intellectuals (Bahru 2002). Prolific and influential in the 1920s and early 1930s, they defended their ideas in the columns of the weekly newspaper sponsored by Regent Teferi, Berhanenna Selam (Light and Peace). They had received their school educations in missions, neighbouring colonies, Europe or the first schools opened by the Ethiopian government, and were strongly advocates of the establishment of state-run schools; for them, education and independence went hand in hand. In order to be able to resist the colonial threat, they believed, the state needed to reform its administration and therefore pay attention to education. In this respect, they saw Europe as both a threat and a model, but given the urgency of the situation, it was vital to draw on it, as Gebre-Hiwot Baykedagn argued in his 1924 treatise Mengestenna YeHezb Astedadder (The Administration of the State and the People) (Bahru 2007, 243).

    13Like Japan, Ethiopia needed to borrow know-how and techniques from Europe if it was to be able to stand up to it. Although it has been shown that the intellectuals of the 1920s had only a rudimentary knowledge of Japan (Bahru 1990), the country was nonetheless considered to be a source of inspiration. In the international context of the race between nations, where the most learned was also the strongest, acquiring the knowledge of the dominant seemed to be a matter of survival. On the opening day of the Tefari Mekonnen School in 1925, Hakim Workneh Eshete2, the school bursar and a regular contributor to Berhanenna Selam, summed this idea up very clearly before an audience of pupils, parents, teachers, high-ranking dignitaries and foreign diplomats:

    የፍጥረት ሕግ ነውና ማናቸውም ሰው ወይም ሕዝብ ባለው አኳኋን ብዙ ጊዜ ሊቆይ አይችልም ወይ ወደፊት ይገፋል ወይም ወደኋላ ይቀራል። ወደኋላ የቀረ እንደሆነ ግን ከርሱ የበለጠ ሥልጣን ባለባቸው ሰዎች ይሰጥማል። […] የጃፓንን ሰዎች የሕዝባቸውን ሕይውትና ነፃነት ከጥፋት ያዳን ይህንን ዋና የሚያሻቸውን ነገር በጊዜ ስላወቁት ነው። ስለኑሮአቸውም ታግለው ድል ለማድረግ ቢፈለጉ የኤሮጶችን እውቀት ማወቅ እሱም በቶሎ ማወቁ ግጽ እንደሆነ ተረጅተው በተጋት መሥራት ጀመሩና በዓለም ታሪክ ሌሎች ሕዝብ ለመድረሱ ብዙ ዘመን ወዳስፈለጋቸው ደረጃ እርሳቸው በ፷ ዓመት ደርሱበት ዛሬ ጃፓኖች እንደማናቸው የአውሮፓ ሕዝብ ያህል ወደፊት ያሉ ኃይለኞች የሠለጠኑ ናቸው ።

    It is a natural law: neither an individual nor a people can remain passive for long; they must either go forward or stay back. But if they stay behind, someone more powerful than them will bring them down […]. The men of Japan have saved the lives and freedom of their people by understanding this imperative necessity in time. In order to emerge victorious from this fight for their survival, they had to assimilate European knowledge quickly. They set to work with effort and, where other people took centuries to reach the level they wanted, it took them sixty years. Today, the Japanese are as powerful as the most advanced of the European peoples.

    14In terms of European learning, the intellectuals of the 1920s referred to the knowledge and know-how that made it possible to build and maintain a strong economy and state. Logically, the school lay at the heart of the project, and through it, it was possible to give Ethiopians the skills needed to run a centralised administrative apparatus, a professional army and a capitalist economy. Gebre-Hiwot Baykedagn warned his contemporaries that if Ethiopia decided to transform its economy into a market economy without qualified people, it would fall prey to imperialism. If the Ethiopians themselves were not able to hold the reins of the national economy, Europeans would do so, and they would undoubtedly bring the country under their control. This was why the education of young Ethiopians had to form the “basis of government.”3

    15Finally, these reforms had to be undertaken from the top down. Reformist intellectuals believed that only an authoritarian state could lead the country along the path of progress. The right emperor for Ethiopia therefore had to be “a friend of progress and absolutism” (Caulk 1978, 572–73). Seeing Tefari as an enlightened monarch who would be able to implement their reform programmes, they allied themselves with him. Thanks to them, Teferi, who was already shaping his progressive image and presenting himself as the future of Ethiopia in the face of a dangerously conservative aristocracy, had the intellectual support necessary for his march towards absolute power. In concrete terms, the establishment of schools directly administered by the government would make it possible to train new elites who would be more loyal than the aristocratic elite and have fewer ties to regional powers than clerics trained under the less centralised religious system. In the shorter term, it was essential to train Ethiopians in European languages in order to maintain diplomatic relations with the colonial powers that encircled the country, thereby protecting its independence (Tekeste 1990, 1). Indeed, it even seemed essential not to have to depend on foreign translators, because on the one hand, they were often suspected of being not only translators but also spies, while on the other, no one had forgotten how Italy had made a biased use of the translation of the Treaty of Wechale to justify its attempted invasion in 1896 (Bahru 2002, 75).

    16In this context, Regent Tefari and reformist intellectuals saw the education provided by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church as anachronistic and unsuited to the challenges posed by European expansion. It was not, however, a question of abolishing the teachings and precepts of religious education: advocates for the establishment of government-run schools were thinking of a mixed education, both Ethiopian and European, that would allow Ethiopia to reform without losing its identity. European tropism was obvious, but the “European spirit” that Gebre-Hiwot Baykedagn called for was aimed at regeneration, not elimination. Ethiopia’s future had to build on its past, and these intellectuals emphasised the ancient greatness of Ethiopia, a once powerful nation that needed to revitalise itself (Tekeste 1990, 2).

    1.3 Missionary schools

    17Although the role of Catholic and Protestant missionaries was less important in Ethiopia than in other African countries, it should not be underestimated. Catholic Lazarist and Capuchin missionaries established schools from the second half of the 19th century (Teshome 1979, 27–28). Protestant missionaries from the Swedish Evangelical Mission (SEM) moved to Addis Ababa in 1904 (from Eritrea, where they had been active since 1866) and opened a school there in 1905 (Norberg 1977, 69). By 1935, 119 missions of all faiths were operating in the country, with 6,717 students attending missionary schools (Teshome 1979, 82). During the 1920s, the missionaries expanded their activities, and were able to enjoy the support of Regent Teferi, who was occupying the role to ensure continuity after Emperor Menilek II. The relations of the two monarchs with the missionaries were similar to those they had with Europeans in general: they were welcome if their intentions were to serve Ethiopia and not to subjugate it (Teshome 1979, 81–82). Missionaries were allowed to establish schools to impart academic knowledge and teach European languages. Teaching was carried out separately from evangelisation, which was subject to serious restrictions. Missionaries were only allowed to convert non-Christians, so that they would avoid competing with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and did not undermine the official religion, which was considered a pillar of national identity. Schools provided primary education centred around reading, writing and arithmetic (Norberg 1977, 68). The teaching of English and French also had an important place, reflecting a desire to have government staff trained in the languages of the colonial powers. Finally, the missionaries instilled respect for the king, the country and religion, values that were appropriate for training those who would carry out the work of a monarchy along the road to absolutism (Tekeste 2006, 13). In short, the missionaries were involved in the creation of the new elites the Ethiopian government needed.

    1.4 Secular power invests in education at the beginning of the 20th century

    18The first school to be directly controlled by the government was founded by Emperor Menilek II in 1908 and named after him. In 1925, Regent Teferi also established a school named after him: the Tefari Mekonnen School. In 1936, on the eve of the Italian invasion, there were twenty schools across the country, most of which had been opened in the 1930s (Ethiopia Observer 1958, 130). Between 1908 and 1936, the Menilek II School alone is estimated to have taught about 3,000 pupils (Tekeste 1990, 1). In a speech given on 8 July 1933 at the end-of-school-year ceremony, the headmaster of the Menilek II School recalled that many of the ministers in office at the time had sat on the benches of his school.4 At the opening ceremony of the Tefari Mekonnen School at the beginning of May 1925, Regent Teferi recalled its purpose:

    ለኢትዮጵያ ነጻነትና ጽናት ወሰንዋን ጠብቆ አሳፍሮ አስከብሮ ለማኩራትና የሕዝቧ ልብ የታመነ ኃይል እንዲኖረው ለማድረግ መሣሪያው ትምሀርት መማር ነው። […] በዚች ተማሪ ቤት ያቆምሁት የውጭ ቋንቋና ጥበብ ብቻ አይደለም፣ የሀገራችንም ቅዱሳት መጻሕፍት ወልድ ዋህድ ሃይማኖት የሚነገርበት ናት። የሀገሩንም ትምህርት ጽሕፈት ቋንቋ እንድሚገባው የማያውቅ የውጭውን እማራልሁ የሚል ምሳሌው ቀዛፊ እንደሌለው ታንኳ ነው።

    Education is essential to safeguard Ethiopia’s independence, to ensure that its borders are respected and made inviolable, to make it proud and to make the people aware of its strength. […] It is not only to teach foreign languages and sciences that I founded this school but also to teach the holy books of our country and faith in the only son of God. Anyone who wants to learn foreign education before learning enough of the literature and language of his country is like a boat without oars.5

    19The pedagogical teams and curricula of the Menilek II and Tefari Mekonnen schools reflected this desire to impart knowledge without a loss of identity and without being educationally dependent on a particular colonial power. The headmaster and teachers at the Menilek II School were Copts who had been educated in Egypt under British rule. The fact that the Egyptian and Ethiopian churches were theologically close and institutionally linked—the Patriarch of Ethiopia was appointed by the Patriarchate of Alexandria—reduced the fear that foreign teachers might engage in religious propaganda (Teshome 1979, 31). The subjects taught were French, English, Italian, Arabic, Amharic, history, geography, mathematics, drawing and physical education (Bahru 2002, 4). The team at Tefari Mekonnen School was highly cosmopolitan. From 1925 to 1936, it was administered by French headmasters and Ethiopian stewards, while the teachers were of various nationalities: Ethiopians, Armenians, Indians, Egyptians, Syrians, Russians, English and French,6 a diversity that reflected both the effects of opportunity and a desire to counterbalance different foreign influences.

    20In the first year, the subjects taught were French, English, Amharic, Geez, drawing and music. Between 1925 and 1930, arithmetic, science and history were gradually added.7 However, it was the learning of European languages that received the most attention. At Tefari Mekonnen School, pupils chose between the “French” and “English” curricula (Seid 1983, 15–16). In general, the teaching provided in these schools reflected a desire for a more outward-looking approach than Ethiopian religious education, so that government officials would be adapted to the new international environment in which Ethiopia found itself. After learning to read, write and acquire skills in English or French, former students moved on to the widely-available jobs as interpreters, clerks or civil servants (Bahru 2002, 33).

    21Children from aristocratic families attended these schools alongside young people of more humble origins. In his memoirs, Emmanuel Abraham, the Director-General of the Ministry of Education from 1950 to 1955, recalls the competitions that made him, a peasant child from Wellega, a pupil at Tefari Mekonnen School.8 The opening of the school to children from modest backgrounds corresponded to the idea of training new kinds of men. Some were sponsored by local dignitaries or directly by Regent Teferi, while others were left to their own devices. Emmanuel Abraham experienced all three situations in succession. Many of these figures thus occupied important posts for which birth had not predestined them. Before the Italian occupation, the embryonic school system was beginning to transform the means of access to power, initiating a process at the heart of the politics of centralisation: the replacement of aristocratic elites who owed their power to their ability to levy taxes and raise an army by civil servants who had gone through schooling.

    Figure 3: Students before the Italian occupation, probably in the 1920s

    Source: Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University.

    22Creating new elites meant an intensive process of political socialisation in order to instil loyalty and dedication. In this respect, the pre-Italian occupation schools were laboratories for the official propaganda that marked Haile Selassie’s entire reign. While he was not yet emperor, Regent Teferi had speeches and practices ready that combined the ancient Ethiopian imperial ideology—the chosen emperor of God and the incarnation of an invincible and eternal Ethiopia—with the themes and techniques of 20th century authoritarian regimes: a personality cult, patriotism, the myth of progress and disciplinary training within a state institution. The transmission of ideology was ensured by daily, annual or more occasional school rituals that marked the life of the school: flag-raising, national holidays (such as the Feast of the Cross, Epiphany, Easter, the celebration of the victory at Adwa and the birthdays of the emperor and empress) and visits by foreign dignitaries. Each of these occasions involved military parades and song, which instilled a sense of sacrifice and helped create an esprit de corps. Song was a favoured didactic tool for at least two reasons. The first was its social significance: songs occupy an important place in oral cultures, and this is very much the case in Ethiopia. The second was “its triple characteristic of brevity, density and coherence,” which facilitated memorisation (Kita K. Masandi 2003, 200).

    23Every morning, at the flag ceremony, the children sang the national anthem, which had been written in the mid-1920s on the orders of Regent Teferi. These pupils were the first Ethiopians to sing it.9 The king, aided by divine power and enjoying the unconditional support of his united and heroic people, was the protector and guarantor of the country’s freedom:

    ኢትዮጵያ ሆይ ደስ ይብለሽ ፡ በአምላክሽ ኃይል በንጉሥሽ
    ተባብረዋል አርበኞችሽ ፡ አይነካም ከቶ ነፃነትሽ
    ብርቱ ናቸው ተራሮችሽ ፡ አትደፈሪም በጠላቶችሽ
    ድል አድራጊው ንጉሣችን ፡ ይኑርልን ለክብራችን

    O Ethiopia, Rejoice! By the might of your God, by the sovereignty of your king,
    Your heroes stand united, your freedom enduring, beyond reach.
    Unyielding are your mountains, fear not the encroaching foes.
    Our King shall lead you to triumph, may He thrive for our honor!10

    24On 20 May 1927, the pupils of the Menilek II School welcomed the Duke of Abruzzo (at a time when Italy’s aggressive intentions towards Ethiopia were well-known) with a song that ended with a call to sacrifice oneself for the freedom of the country. The visit continued at the Tefari Mekonnen School with a song that condensed the nationalist emperor-motherland-progress triptych, the sense of sacrifice and the fundamental role of education:

    ዘላለም ያኑርልን
    የነጻነት አምባችንን አምላክ ያጠብቅልን
    ለሶስቱ ቀለሞች ፅናት ላገር ለሕዝባችን ልማት
    እውቀት እውነት ሊነግሡብን ተፋሪን ያኑርልን
    የተፋሪ መኮንን ትምህርት ቤት ተማሮች
    ለኩራታችን ሶስት ቀለሞች
    ለነጻነት ብሎ መሞት ይህ ነው የኛ ምኞት

    May God preserve our King for eternity.
    God protects the high plateau of our freedom.
    For the strength of our three colours, for the progress of our country and people,
    For the reign of wisdom and truth, may He keep Teferi alive for us!
    We, pupils of the Tefari Mekonnen School
    Dying for the dignity of our three colours and for freedom
    Is our greatest aspiration.11

    25Freedom, knowledge and progress converged in the person of Tefari, who was the cornerstone of the whole ideological edifice. The cult of personality was transmitted both through sacredness and proximity: the protector, saviour and bearer of the national future, Tefari Mekonnen was also a benevolent father. Indeed, he endeavoured to create a filial bond between himself and his future elites through the practice of paternalism. Pupils’ food was prepared in the palace kitchens and he regularly visited the schools at mealtimes, sitting at the end of the table to give advice to the pupils.

    26There are a number of elements that postulate the effectiveness of this political socialisation. School ideology has been based on endogenous traits that are open to restructuring, and which it has reactivated and inflected. The first is the political imagination of Christian Ethiopia. The Christian kingdom’s society was politically integrated, with a common sense of belonging based on religion, a myth establishing a common origin and the idea of a shared historical continuity of which the emperor was the symbol. The young pupils from the aristocratic families of the Shewa and from the north in general had already incorporated national myths and imperial mysticism, which were transmitted through their family upbringing, as a shared sense. The nationalism deployed in schools had therefore not been imported: it was a reapplication of the discourses and content of a sedimented national ideology with considerable historical depth. The time was also ripe for nationalism to be intensified: colonial encirclement had reactivated patriotic fervour and an urgency for unity, tightening the bonds around the person of the emperor.

    27The idea of progress could be based on the hierarchy of peoples as developed by Christian Ethiopia. As Emperor Menilek II’s letter of 1891 to Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia revealed, Ethiopia saw itself as a Christian, “civilised” island surrounded by “pagans.” It was therefore unnecessary to create a neologism to express the idea of progress as a race among nations, as Amharic already had similar concepts that could be mobilised. ሥልጣኔ(seltané), from the verb ሠለጠነ (sälätänä), which means “to be civilised” or “to police oneself,” but also “to take power” or “to gain power,” can be translated as “civilisation” and “progress,” while its derived form ሥልጣን (seltan) means “power” or “authority.” By being extended to society, the term ልማት (lemmat) from the verb ለማ (lemma), “to be fertile,” which applies to the growth of plants, made it possible to convey the idea of social progress and then “development” from the 1940s. The notion of እድገት (edgät), from the verb አደገ (adägä), “to grow,” and also “to rise up the hierarchy” (Kane 1990), applied to both humans and nations. Finally, the metaphor of knowledge dispensing a light that dispels darkness, that awakens and invigorates, circulated from religious knowledge to school knowledge. The Amharic language has a rich and precise vocabulary concerning the acquisition and use of knowledge: መማር (memmar) symbolises the learning process; ትምህርት (temhert) means education and its content; እውቀት (ewqät) means knowledge, the knowledge of እውነት (ewnät), truth or world order; and መርመራ (mermera) means curiosity, questioning and investigation (Maimire 2010, 80).

    28While school was perceived as foreign, the ideology of schools was not entirely new to Ethiopian students. It brought new knowledge such as foreign languages or history and geography lessons that were not confined to Ethiopia, but the school also provided a form of socialisation that was close to family, community and religious socialisation.

    2. The establishment of the national school system from 1941

    29The educational objectives of the 1920s and 1930s were taken over by the central government in the new national and international post-war context. The emperor-unity-progress trinity remained the ideological foundation of the school system that was constructed in the 1940s and 1950s. Returning to the imperial throne in 1941 after five years of exile in England, Haile Selassie immediately resumed his autocratic project, which reached its apex in the mid-1950s. The school system was to serve a political purpose by supporting the training of a controlled administrative staff and homogenising the various populations of the empire by disseminating the Amharic language, the political model and “Amhara values” (Girma 1984, 65). English remained the central language, however—although officially it was in second place after Amharic—as it was believed that knowledge of English gave access to most of the world’s literature.12 Implementation of the autocratic centralisation project was carried out in close cooperation with the United States, which provided Haile Selassie with resources for his policy. In the context of the Cold War, this provided the US government with a strategically positioned and stable client state. The strengthening of an Ethiopian nation-state and the mobilisation of modernisation and development concepts to this end were in the interests of both sides.

    2.1 Education, nation and progress in the service of autocracy

    30The first emergency to be dealt with was reconstruction. As the Ethiopian pedagogue Maaza Bekele wrote in 1966, competent people had to be trained as quickly as possible for the administration, industry, transport, commerce, the army, the police, etc. (Teshome 1979, 56.) The first step was to rebuild the country. The central government’s earliest aim was to reaffirm its authority, and the army was reorganised as early as 1941 (Bahru 2002, 207). In 1942, a decree was issued that set out the powers of the regional governors, who were no longer lords of their domains but representatives appointed by the emperor. They lost the right to levy taxes other than those ordered by the central government, could no longer appoint, move or dismiss an official and could not form their own police or armed forces. Finally, they had to submit a monthly report to the Ministry of the Interior, under whose authority the provincial administration was thereafter placed (Markakis 1974, 290–91). In 1943, two imperial orders announced the creation of eleven ministries (Bahru 2002, 203). As a sign of the crucial role of the establishment of the school system in this process of institutional strengthening, the Ministry of Education was established as soon as the emperor returned to Addis Ababa in 1941.13

    31Haile Selassie attempted to transform the multilingual and multi-denominational empire under his care into a homogeneous national state (Abebe 1992, 98–99). The construction of a national school system enabled him to envisage this homogenisation in concrete terms, including in the long term. Amharic was the preferred language vehicle for uniformity. As the first school curriculum developed in 1947 stated: “The Ministry of Education wishes to help unify the Empire by means of the one language accepted by the Imperial Ethiopian Government as the authoritative and official language of the country. Emphasis must first be placed on Amharic, which, it is hoped, will eventually be the language of the whole of Ethiopia.”14 Seven years later, in 1954, the authors of the Basic Recommendations for the Reorganization and Development of Education in Ethiopia recalled that universal basic education was a necessity to consolidate the social and political unity of the empire through the mass spread of Amharic.15 Moral education had the task of transmitting the religious values of the Christian North. The 1947 curriculum specified:

    Bible and Morals has been given a prominent place in the curriculum because of its importance for building up the fundamentals of a good national life, and its need in the life of the individual for true happiness and real prosperity. This curriculum in Bible and Morals is taught on the authority of a special committee appointed by His Imperial Majesty. It is a responsibility of the committee to see that the Bible is taught without partiality towards any particular group or sect, and that a child makes his own interpretations in accordance with his own conscience and will.16

    32This excluded Ethiopian Muslims, however, as it meant that the school system was that of a Christian nation. Furthermore, the insistence that a child should be able to interpret the Bible according to her or his own beliefs, which on the surface appeared to defend an ecumenical view of religion, was in reality deceptive: it was the moral and political precepts of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church that were being taught (Yallew 1970, 1). Abebe Fisseha made it clear how the regime’s universalist discourse obscured its particularist conception of citizenship, as was evident from the Education Council, which was established in 1947. During its thirty-seven years of existence until 1974, its main activities were the battle against Muslim schools and the role played by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the regime’s homogenisation project. Its members were exclusively followers of the church (with the exception of the Protestant Emmanuel Abraham, who only served for six months), despite the fact that about 40 percent of Ethiopians were Muslims (Abebe 1998, 168–74).

    33In common with the school histories produced by all nation-states, the history of Ethiopia as taught in its schools sought to disseminate the great national myths, to inscribe the present within a glorious past and to embody the continuity (and the eternality) of Ethiopia. In the 1947 programmes, history began with Haile Selassie and moved back into the past.17 The 1958 programmes also presented a history of Ethiopia dating back from the reign of Haile Selassie to the founding myth of Emperor Menilek I, son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, who is said to have founded the dynasty of Ethiopian emperors in the 10th century BC.18 In line with the aim of inculcating loyalty to the emperor, the story proposed a mythical, linear evolution of the political community that culminated with the reign of Haile Selassie.

    34Those who received their education in this school system had to be able to perform the typical functions of a “progressive,” “developing” nation.19 In line with the pre-war period, the emperor’s entire political project was placed under the banner of progress, the ideological driving force of centralisation and homogenisation. As he recalled in a speech in 1963: “More and more of the young men and women to whom the task of directing their nation along the path of progress and enlightenment will one day pass are today receiving formal education.”20 Ethiopia was no exception to the rule that the idea of progress lay at the heart of the teleologies of nation-states, and centralisation and homogenisation were seen as appropriate steps in this direction. Heterogeneity, on the other hand, which was synonymous with disunity and dispersion, was seen as detrimental. Hence, we see on the one hand the normalising function of national school systems and on the other the fact that they were rooted in the myth of continuous progress. This was the theme of a booklet on education published by the Ethiopian Ministry of Information in 1964:

    This booklet is intended to give a brief picture of the progressive unfolding of this revived post-liberation reform, which has done more than any other single factor to change Ethiopia. […] Through the Emperor’s initiative and unflagging support, education has been accepted by everyone as the key to development.21

    35Education was presented as a gift from the emperor to his subjects, as another brochure produced by the Ministry of Information in 1973 shows:

    Ethiopia owes a great debt to Emperor Haile Selassie I […] Throughout the pre-war and post-war development of a modern education system in Ethiopia, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I has played a key role. He has promoted the development of some of the first of these new institutions and paid their expenses from his own purse. He has himself retained the Education portfolio […] for many years, which is testimony to the importance he attaches to the question.22

    36It appeared that Haile Selassie was the sole craftsman of education. Christopher Clapham was correct, however, when he interpreted the fact that the emperor had reserved the post of Minister of Education for himself between 1947 and 1966 as an act aimed at perfecting his image as a moderniser and nurturing his cult of personality. In fact, he showed no particular interest in the post (Clapham 1969, 56). Education was thus used in at least two utilitarian ways: on the one hand, to provide the human means of centralisation, and on the other to create Haile Selassie’s public image as a progressive, selfless benefactor.

    2.2 The United States: modernisation against communism

    37The United States provided material and technical resources, advisors and unwavering political support. The school system was established, developed and consolidated under the auspices of first British and then American advisers in an international context that was marked by declining colonisation and the Cold War. Ethiopia had been liberated from Italian occupation with the help of the British army, and two treaties signed in 1942 and 1944 had made Ethiopia heavily dependent on Britain. The rapprochement with the United States was initiated by Ethiopia because the emperor wanted to break free of Britain’s grip, and he considered the United States a more appropriate ally in the construction of his autocracy (Bahru 2002, 179–84). The transition of education from British to American supervision began in 1945 when two American educationists, Messrs Hambrook and Rucknick, were appointed school superintendents at the Ministry of Education (Paulos 2006, 80). From the early 1950s, US influence on Ethiopian government education through funding, curriculum design and administrative and teaching staff had no rivals. In 1952, Ethiopia and the United States signed the Point IV Program, a broad technical and economic assistance programme that included educational cooperation. Its objective was to solve economic problems through assistance with a long-term development project.23

    38It is important to understand the ideology and geopolitical strategy on which this programme was based. It took its name from the fourth point of President Truman’s inauguration speech on 20 January 1949, which marked the beginning of the United States’ involvement in international development. The president justified assistance for development by explaining that “half the people of the world [were] living in conditions approaching misery” and that “poverty [was] a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.”24 Aid was part of the US’s policy to contain communism. Helping a country by proposing a capitalist model of development meant placing it in the bosom of the “free world.” This is why the White House envisaged “orderly political, economic and social evolution” in Ethiopia that would contain the revolutionary push in the Horn: Addis Ababa was a strategic location not only in Africa, but also for the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean (Marcus 1995, 1). This explains the substantial military aid the United States gave Ethiopia, which was separate from the Point Four Program, which instead emphasised humanist values. Education was part of the cultural component of this containment policy. Washington became intensively involved in Ethiopian education with a view to training future elites who would be oriented towards the United States and defend its interests. Like the American Universities in Cairo and Beirut in their respective regions, Addis Ababa University was to be a centre from which the culture and political ideology of the United States would spread (Paulos 2006, 89).25

    39The team of educational advisers in the Point IV Program arrived in Addis Ababa in 1953 (Teshome 1979, 105). In November of the same year, the Long Term Planning Committee for Ethiopian Education (LTPCEE) was established within the Ministry of Education. Its duties were to analyse and make proposals on curricula and materials, teacher training, school organisation and educational objectives. In short, it was the body that decided on the direction of the entire school system. It comprised personnel from the Ministry of Education, Point IV Program advisers and school headmasters. In 1954, out of its nine members, four were Ethiopians, four were Americans and one was Canadian (Lucien Matte, the leader of the team of Jesuits that was running the University College at the time).26 In June 1955, the committee issued the “First Ten-Year Plan for the Controlled Expansion of Education in Ethiopia.” This document was drawn up by fourteen people, only four of whom were Ethiopians: the Deputy Minister of Education, the Director General of the Ministry of Education, the headmaster of the Amha Desta school and an Ethiopian member of the Point IV Program. The remainder, who were all Americans, were school headmasters and experts from the Point IV Program team and the Ministry of Education. In addition, fourteen “helpers and advisers” collaborated in the development of the plan, including only one Ethiopian.27 Through the LTPCEE, American expatriates exerted considerable power over the direction of the national school system. How did they see the role of education?

    40In the preface to the official curriculum of 1947, the American Robert W. Hambrook, who was an “Educational Adviser to the Imperial Government of Ethiopia,” wrote that the school system should provide an education that was adapted to the needs of the modern world, arguing that no nation could now live in isolation.28 The uniqueness of the world lay in “modernity,” as represented by the industrial society, and regions outside this sphere had to adapt to it, as difference was seen as backwardness and inadequacy. Similarly, the authors of the first report for the LTPCEE published in 1954 recalled that the time when Ethiopia could live in isolation was over and that its survival as an independent nation required increasing international integration, knowledge of the “outside world” and technical skills.29 This view mirrored the theory of modernisation that was in vogue in the 1950s, which “seemed to spontaneously accept that American society […] was the telos towards which the whole world was converging” (Cooper 2010, 158–59).

    41Modernisation theory postulated that well-articulated cultural, political, social and economic transformations would bring progress by ensuring a transition from “tradition” to “modernity“ (Cooper 2010, 162). Official documents of the Ministry of Education and scholarly articles by intellectuals at Addis Ababa University show that the goal of the education system was to make this transition: “The MOE envisages […] helping the students to adapt to the changing socio-economic pattern, from an agricultural to an industrial way of life, from the traditional to the more modern.”30 A 1974 text by Ethiopian pedagogues testified to the spirit that prevailed at the time: “The most important service that an educational system can render is to change those basic attitudes prevalent in our traditional society that are inconsistent with the modern society that we are aspiring toward.” A few lines later, the same authors explained that there were two types of attitude that corresponded to two types of men: the “traditional” man, who was resigned and superstitious, and the rational and scientific “modern” man (Girma, Abraham & Abba Samuel 1974, 3).

    42A text from the Point IV Program published in the journal Ethiopia Observer in 1959 also testifies to the adherence of American advisers to human capital theory. The authors wrote that education was an investment in people.31 Human capital theory is, as its name suggests, an economic conception of education as a present investment that should bring future gains. It was developed in the United States after the Second World War, in particular by the economist Theodore W. Shultz, and postulated an organic link between education and increased wealth (Shultz 1961, 1–17). The theory was exported internationally by agencies such as UNESCO. Finally, the article by the economist Assefa Bequele, “The Educational Framework of Economic Development in Ethiopia,” published in 1967 in the journal Ethiopia Observer, testifies to the adoption of the human capital theory by Ethiopian academics. After recalling “the pivotal role that investment in human capital plays in the development process,” he explained:

    For those underdeveloped countries which have committed to […] “industrialism,” it becomes incumbent upon them to consider the educational framework, which has certainly a great deal to do with the mental and intellectual transformations and economic ethos that underly the dynamics of development. (Assefa 1967, 49)

    43In short, the conditions under which the national school system was set up and the different purposes attributed to it by the Ethiopian and American actors from the central government serve to explain its hybrid nature. On the one hand, the plan to centralise power through the administrative and repressive techniques practised in Western countries, the dependence on American aid and the idea that progress should follow the example of the capitalist industrialised countries led to the education provided being modelled on the American system. On the other hand, centralisation and homogenisation through Amharisation, which were the nationalist goals of the school system, gave it its “Ethiopian” character.

    3. Bogale Wallelu in Wolaita: assimilation against oppression

    44While at the national level the school system was designed and built in accordance with the Ethiopian state’s major projects and the geopolitical interests of the United States, understanding educational dynamics from the periphery involves looking at the perspective of local school actors. Compared to Addis Ababa and the central regions, the south was a latecomer to schooling. However, Wolaita was an exception to this rule. A school was opened in Soddo as early as October 1941, after the liberation, on the initiative of Bogale Wallelu, a native of Wolaita who had developed close links with the centre through his educational career. Born in the village of Shanto in 1909, son of a priest from the “indigenous” Wolaita religion, he received his early education at a local Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church school.32 In 1925, he left for Addis Ababa, where his uncle lived (he had been taken as a slave by Menilek II’s soldiers), to continue his education. From there, he went to the Debre Libanos Monastery, a very well-renowned centre of religious education, before finishing his schooling at the Menilek II School on the eve of the Italian occupation.33 Having been educated and socialised in two of the country’s most prestigious religious and governmental institutions, Bogale Wallelu was both a product and bearer of their educational traditions in a peripheral region.

    Figure 4: Bogale Wallelu

    Source: Addis Zemen, Genbot 22, 1977 EC (31 mai 1985).

    45His thinking provides an illuminating entry point for articulating the local and national dimensions of education. It can be reconstructed from official letters written in his own hand in the early 1940s, extracts of which were published in two newspaper articles in the 1980s, from his history of Wolaita published in 1964 (Bogale 1964) and from statements attributed to him by former colleagues and pupils. As an education activist, he often spoke in public, at school ceremonies and at public gatherings such as weddings and religious festivals, where he used to convince families to send their children to school. Bogale Wallelu is an absolutely central figure: as a school builder, school administrator and teacher, he was a mentor to the school generations of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

    3.1 School education in Wolaita before the Italian occupation

    46The first schools in Wolaita belonged to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Churches and monasteries had been established since the conquest in 1894, and they numbered about forty at the time of the Italian invasion in 1936.34 The church had two particular political roles. The first was to convert the aristocratic families of Wolaita in order to assimilate them into the new power, and the second was to legitimise the conquest. To this end, priests spread the story that appeared in the hagiography of Saint Tekle Haymanot, which had been produced in the monastery of Debre Libanos in the 16th century. According to this text, in the 13th century, the saint evangelised the people in the south of the Christian kingdom, in particular in a kingdom called Damot. By resuscitating this myth and equating Wolaita with Damot, Emperor Menilek II justified the conquest by claiming to restore Christianity to a region that had been lost to paganism for six centuries (Balisky 2009, 33–35).35 However, the priests who travelled down from the north did not seek a mass evangelisation of the population of Wolaita: the religious services they held were for the families of settlers and converted Wolaita families. They did, however, implant the educational tradition of the Tewahedo Church.

    47The first Catholic and Protestant missionaries arrived in Wolaita in the late 1920s. The French Capuchin Father Pascal de Luchon opened a school in 1929 that was teaching about 20 students by the early 1930s. This teaching consisted of literacy in Amharic and French for evangelisation purposes. The American Protestant missionaries from the Sudan Interior Mission arrived in 1930 and opened a school where they taught literacy in Amharic and Wolaita in order to teach the Bible to the first converts. Both schools were closed in 1937 during the Italian occupation (Demeke 1985, 1). In the decades after liberation, Catholic and Protestant missionaries played important but distinct educational roles, which will be discussed in the following chapters.

    3.2 National unity and Haile Selassie cult

    48In his book YeWollamo Hezb Tarik (The History of the Wolaita People) published in 1965, Bogale Wallelu took up the official discourse of legitimisation of the conquest, according to which the churches established up to Gamo—“the southernmost limit of evangelization in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,” according to Jacques Burreau (Bureau 1976, 295)—attested to the ancient Ethiopianness of Wolaita, Gamo-Goffa and Sidamo:

    በአቡነ ተክለ ሃይማኖት ዘመን ከቡሌጋ ከመንዝ ከተጕለት ከጐንደር ከጐጃም ፥ ከትግሬ ከወሎ ፥ ከሌሎቹም ከኢትዮጵያ አውራጃዎች ወደ ወላሞና ወደገሙ ጐፋ ወደ ሲዳሞም የገቡት በመምህርነትና በሰባኪነትም አገሪቱን ያሳመኑ የነበሩት በብዙ ወራሪዎች በመቈረት መገናኛ በማጣት አስተማሪዎችና ካህናት በጠላት ስለተገደሉባቸው የሚያስተምራቸው አጥተው በቋንቋ መለወጥና በባህልም ተረሳስተው ነበር። ዳሩ ግን ቀደም ብሎ እንደተነገረው ፤ ቤተ ክርስቲያኑና ንዋየ ቅድሳቱ እንደ ነበረ ስለ ተገኘ ፤ በአጼ ምኒልክ ዘመነ ምንግስት እንደገና ተቋቋመ። 

    Those who in the time of Abune Tekle Haymanot came from Bulga, Menz, Tegulet, Gondar, Godjam, Tegre, Wello and other regions of Ethiopia to Wollamo, Gamo-Goffa and Sidamo, and who were converting the locals through teaching and preaching, were separated and deprived of communication [with Ethiopia] by many invaders. The teachers and priests having been killed by the enemy, [the inhabitants of the converted areas] lost what they had learned, changed their languages and forgot their culture. Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, remnants of churches and artefacts endured, and governance was reinstated during the reign of Emperor Menilek. (Bogale 1964, 21).

    49Although the presence of churches does not necessarily indicate any significant Christianisation of the area (Deresse 2011), Bogale Wallelu presented these regions as formerly Christian, and hence Ethiopian. The territorial expansion carried out by Menilek II was not a series of conquests, but a reunification. He also wrote that the centuries spent outside the bosom of Ethiopia had been a dark period. The conquest of Menilek II had ushered a return to civilisation after centuries of oblivion. This was the framework within which he defended the unifying role of education, which was responsible for restoring the unity of the empire’s peoples under the enlightened, sacred leadership of Emperor Haile Selassie:

    እኛም ልጆቻቸው እንደሳቸው እንድንሆን ያስፈልገናልና ለአገራችን ለምንግሥታችን በግርማዊ ቀዳማዊ ኃይለ ሥላሴ መሪነትና ሐዋሪያነት ትምህርት በመላ ኢትዮጽያ እንዲዳረስና እንድናስተዋውቅ አንድነታችንንም በፍቅርና በመረዳዳት እንድንገልጽ እኛ እኛን እንድንሆን እኛነታችን ያስድደናል ።

    And we, the children of [Tekle Haymanot], must act like him for our country and our government. We must, under the guidance and apostolate of His Majesty Haile Selassie I, spread and publicize education throughout Ethiopia, and remind people of the proof of our unity, in love and mutual aid, to restore our true selves. (Bogale 1964, 21)

    50The purpose of education was to enable Wolaita to regain her lost Ethiopian identity. The affiliation with Saint Tekle Haymanot bestowed a sacred character on this goal of assimilative education. Teachers and administrators were to unconditionally support Haile Selassie in his effort to establish schools and continue Tekle Haymanot’s temporarily interrupted work. As a journalist from the official weekly Berhannenna Selam wrote in 1941: “The teaching troops [were] bearers of the apostolic spirit” (የሐዋሪያነት መንፈስ ያደረገበት የአስተማሪ ሠራዊቱ).36 But the messiah to whom these new apostles were to speak was Haile Selassie, and schools were the new churches. Based on the story of Tekle Haymanot, Bogale Wallelu translated the objectives of centralisation, assimilation and progress assigned to the national school system for local use. In addition, not content with merely developing a discourse, he located his educational work in the wake of Tekle Haymanot. After working in Wolaita, he was school administrator for the Sidamo region from 1944 to 1954 and then for the Gamo-Goffa region until 1961.37 He built schools in all the areas where, according to his hagiography, the medieval saint had erected churches. The story that legitimised the incorporation of the south was the inspiration and the driving force behind his educational action.

    3.3 Education for emancipation

    51For the central government, the story of Tekle Haymanot’s ancient evangelisation of the south served to justify the domination it exercised over the conquered peoples. For his part, Bogale Wallelu used it for the emancipation of people who had been marginalised and exploited. To defend this idea, he put forward his own example of a submissive Wolaita who became free through education:

    እኔ ባሪያ ነበርሁ ። እራሴ የተመለጠው ለመልከኛ እህሉን፤ ማሩንና ፤ እና ቅቤውን ስሸከም ነው ። አሁን ግን ስለተማርሁ ከባርነት ወጥቼ በደመውዝ ተቀጥሬ በደስታ እኖራለሁ ። እናንተም ብትማሩና ብትሠለጥኑ እንደኔ እንደኔ ትሆናላችሁ። ነፃነት ታገኛላችሁ።

    I was a slave. I am bald because I have carried cereals, honey, and butter from the melkegna on my head. But now I am educated. I am out of slavery, I am paid a salary and I live happily. You too will become like me if you go to school, if you become more learned and skilled. You will attain freedom.38

    52Bogale Wallelu did not merely design the school according to its official objectives of centralisation and unification. He saw its role in the context of the power relations that were at work in the local society. Following the capture of Wolaita, the soldiers of the Ethiopian army were given the conquered land in the form of the right of gult. The melkegna was the grantee of this right, which gave the power to collect a tribute that was paid in kind and through menial labour by the peasants who lived on the land (Donham 2002, 9), the vast majority of whom had been reduced to the status of gebbar, people who paid tributes and were obliged to do drudge work. The conditions experienced of a gebbar and a slave, both of which were characterised by extreme political and economic dependence, were objectively very similar. In fact, the victors viewed the Wolaita as slaves. For Bogale Wallelu, the access to paid work made possible by schooling meant breaking the gebbars’ dependency on the conquerors. For their part, by virtue of their own representations of the status of individuals and the slave-like nature of their society before the conquest, the Wolaita who had been subjected by force considered themselves slaves (Planel 2008, 162). Defeat and dependence were accompanied by a strong sense of collective decay (Baliski 2009, 101). In this context, Bogale Wallelu believed that the power of education enabled not only material emancipation but also psychological reconstruction. When he said “If you want to become somebody or a human being (sew), learn at school!”39, he was not only talking about social uplift. In 1980, a Wolaita confided to the researcher Jacques Bureau that “for the ‘Amharas’ of Shewa,” the Wolaita were “not men; they were cattle at best” (Bureau 1987, 94). Remembering the first third of the 20th century, a 94-year-old peasant testified in 2010 that “30 to 40 families worked for a single melkegna” and that they were “forced to obey, like a herd.”40 Consequently, when he said that education made it possible to become a sew, a human, Bogale Wallelu was talking about regaining dignity and lost humanity.

    53Social uplift, psychological reconstruction and regaining control of one’s own existence: Bogale Wallelu expressed the means available to a school to move an individual away from slavery (ባርነት, barnet) to freedom (ነጻነት, netsanet) through the verb ሠለጠነ (seletene). On both sides of the Italian occupation, Ethiopian intellectuals used this term and its derivatives to signify the idea of achieving a higher level of civilisation through political, social, economic and cultural reforms.41 However, if it is simply translated as “civilising” or “modernising,” it loses its semantic richness. ሠለጠነ (Seletene) which can be applied to an individual or a society, means “to be or become competent, capable, efficient; to become famous, known; to become powerful, to prevail; to be empowered, to be invested with the authority to govern or lead; to know how to learn or do something quickly; to be acculturated, to be refined in clothing and/or eloquence” (Kane 1990). All these attributes are considered those of a ruler and an honourable man. By transmitting these technical, cognitive, political, social and cultural skills and characteristics, schools could enable the Wolaita to revitalise themselves and take their place in the nation’s space.

    54Improving material lives and restoring dignity was achieved by integrating into the society of masters, victors and free people. Although Bogale Wallelu did not share the northerners contempt for the Wolaita, he was nevertheless a fervent nationalist who believed in the superiority of the Christian North, and therefore in the virtues of national unification and assimilation. It was not by rebuilding its own identity but by returning to the cultural melting pot of Christian Ethiopia that Wolaita society would be regenerated. The Wolaita had to go to school in order to become the equals of the “Amhara.”

    3.4 Uniting against opposition from the local aristocracy

    55This political potential of education was very quickly perceived by the “settlers” and Wolaita state employees. In a letter to the Ministry of Education dated 10 November 1942, Bogale Wallelu wrote of their opposition, just one year after he opened the first government school:

    የሕዝቡን መሬት ቀምተው የሕዝቡን ጉልበት ግጠው ያልጠገቡ ባላባቶች መሳፍንትና መኳንንት ሕዝቡ እንዲማር አልፈለጉም። በአገራችን አንዱ ለሌላው ባሪያ ሆኖ እንዲያገለግል ሕዝቡን በጭቁና ለመግዛት ለመንዳት የሚያስቡ ባላባት ሞልተዋል ። […] ይህም ይታወቅ ዘንድ ፉጋም ፤ ባሪያም ፤ ቀጥቃጭም ፤ ሸማኔም የመሳሰሉት ሁሉ ልጆቻቸውን ተማሪ ቤት እያስገባን በማስተማራችን ባሮቻችንን ነፃ አወጡብን ከድንቁርና ወደ ብርሃን መሩብን እያሉ ረቂቅ በሆነ ነገር በአንድነት ያብራሉ። ገባር ሁሉ ከተማረ ደንቆሮ የት ይገኛል ፤ ጥቅማችን መቅረቱ ነው እያሉ በጥብቅ ይቃወሙኛል ።

    After having ravaged their land and ruthlessly exploited their workforce, the ballabat, princes, and aristocrats now resist the idea of educating the people. Our country is replete with ballabat who believe in maintaining a hierarchical structure where one is subservient to the other, and they advocate for governing the people through oppression. To articulate their stance, they collectively assert: “If we admit the children of potters, slaves, blacksmiths, weavers, and all their peers into schools, our own knowledge will emancipate them from our control; they will transition from ignorance to enlightenment, to our disadvantage. If peasants acquire knowledge, where will we find a pool of ignorants?” They staunchly oppose my efforts, claiming it is not in their interest. (YeZareitu Ethiopia, 19 March 1989)

    56Balabbat, princes and aristocrats all opposed the education of craftsmen and, by extension, of dominated classes. Balabbat were local chiefs who had been co-opted by the conquerors in order to associate them with the system of political control and economic extraction (Markakis 1974, 106). They received land and titles, and served as intermediaries between the provincial administration in the cities and the predominantly rural populations. They were indispensable cogs in the conquerors’ power structure. The families that had benefitted from incorporation into the Christian kingdom were keen to maintain the social hierarchies as they were. The “princes and aristocrats,” on the one hand, were members of the northern aristocracy and descendants of the soldiers of the armies of Menilek II who had been rewarded for their military service with gult and titles. They had been sent by the central government, and they were all representatives of the state who enjoyed substantial political and economic benefits. From the conquest in 1894 to the Italian invasion in 1936, the settlers and balabbat monopolised the exercise of power. They practised politics almost exclusively on the basis of force and, as Bogale Wallelu’s letter shows, they did not see an alternative. At the time of the liberation in 1941, they had a vested interest in ensuring that the social hierarchies and modes of government that had prevailed before the war continued.

    57Their opposition to educating the dominated shows that they viewed the issues of education from a political standpoint. What kind of knowledge were the dominant referring to when they spoke of “their” knowledge? Since they were opposed to its being transmitted to the dominated, what ties did it have to the forms of domination they exercised? The settlers were convinced that their domination was not merely based on their material and military supremacy: they saw themselves as proponents of a superior civilisation with a long and glorious history. According to their national epic, Kebre Negast (Glory of the Kings), their government was sacred and their emperor, who was God’s chosen one, was a descendant of Solomon. They considered themselves a people descended from Israel who enjoyed divine election. They believed that their religion endowed them with superior humanity. As a religion of the book, Christianity also meant several centuries of literate culture. As the historian Teshale Tibebu puts it, the north displayed the superiority of its civilisation, Christianity and writing over the “barbarity” and “paganism” of the “others,” and felt that these “others” lacked a history (Teshale 1995, 14). This legitimised the granting of a right of conquest and domination over the dar ager, the “surrounding countries”: that is, populations who were viewed as savage and lacking a history, whose ignorance and “paganism” allowed them to be subjugated. This idea was spread in the capital’s elite schools before the occupation. In 1925, Hakim Workneh Eshete, the intendant of Tefari Mekonnen School, explained to the pupils the reasons that had made expansion of the empire and domination over the peripheral populations possible:

    የጋሎች እና የወላሞዎች እንዲሁም በዙሪያችን ያሉ የሌሎችንም ጥቁሮችን ምሳሌ እስቲ እንመልከት። በምን ምክንያት ነው ልንገዛቸው የተቻለን ፤ የኛን ያህል ብልሆች የኛን ያህል ኃይለኞች የኛን ያህል የሠለጠኑ ባለመሆናቸው ነው።

    “Let us take the example of the Galla [sic], Wollamo [sic] and other Blacks around us. Why can we govern them? Because they are not civilized as we are.”42

    58The fact that a cultivated and humanist mind such as Hakim Workneh Eshete would put forward these arguments attests to the fact that they were a part of the shared view of the Ethiopian elites.

    59In addition to being the ideological justification for power itself, the written word as an instrument of government was superimposed on it. Although various procedures, such as leases between the melkegna and the gebbar, were oral (Lefort 1981, 23), the new masters immediately began to use the written word to administer the conquered territories. The proclamations (awaj) read in the markets by civil servants, which had the force of law, were written down first. In disputes, testimonies were recorded in writing before the judge reached his decision. The power of the written word impressed the Wolaita, who neither used it nor knew it before they were conquered (Balisky 2009, 86–87). With the unprecedented acceleration of centralisation after 1941, the written word became increasingly present. Under Ethiopian rule, Wolaita society became a place where the written word represented the attributes and monopoly of power exercised over an illiterate population. Reading and writing also gave access to the Amharic language. Expressions such as “Amharic, the language that punishes you!” or “the language that keeps making you pay taxes”43 leave no doubt about how the Wolaita perceived it: Amharic was a language of domination. They also testify to the link established by the Wolaita between power, the written word and Amharic: judgments and the payment of taxes were always accompanied by a document written in Amharic. Furthermore, as an official language, Amharic in its oral or written form was required for all communication with the authorities. Alain Gascon stressed “the fear of peasants who [entered] the city,” where “nothing good could await them: payment of taxes, fees and rents, summons and approaches to civil servants who [affected] not to understand them” (Gascon 1989, 440). A failure to master Amharic meant exclusion from the order of legitimate communication. The opposition between oral and written, Amharic and Wolaita, civilised and wild, and dominant and dominated all overlapped. The ruling class in Wolaita was well aware that the loss of a monopoly over the written word and Amharic would erode its power.

    60Bogale Wallelu’s letter also shows us that as early as 1942, the local political elites were conscious of the fact that education would replace membership of the nobility as a route to power. The local aristocracy, which represented the central government, was in regular contact with it and was informed of its decisions, knew that the political transformation towards bureaucratisation that had begun at the beginning of the 20th century would accelerate. It also understood that the skills needed to gain access to power would become more demanding, and that schools were the places where they were acquired. A school-educated Wolaita, Bogale Wallelu was an example of these newly-educated men who were competing for power with the aristocracy for the first time.

    3.5 Guiding the people towards unity and progress

    61Bogale Wallelu believed that the school-educated elites needed to coordinate their efforts against the class interests of the aristocracy. In a second letter written to the Governor of the Sidamo region on 10 February 1942, he urged his superiors to join him in advancing the educational cause. He saw schools as the outposts of a progressive power in a region where people’s ignorance, division and oppression went hand in hand. He emphasised unity and progress as two major goals:

    ሕዝቡን እርስ በራሱ እያሟገትን የልማት ሥራ መጐተት ለዚች ኢትዮጽያ አንዳችም ጥቅም የለውም ። ይልቅስ ሁላችንም ሕዝቡን ከጨለማ ወደ ብርሃን እንምራው ። የብርሃን ጮራ እስከወላይታ ድረስ ወጋጋኑ ይታያል ። መልካም ለሚሠራ መልካም ዋጋ እንዳለው የታወቀ ነው ። ይህም የታወቅ ዝንድ እኛ ከዚህ ወደናንተ እናንተም ወደኛ ኩራዝ ኩራዛችንን ይዘን የጨለማውን ኃይል ብንቃወመው ማሸነፋችን አይቀርም ።

    People quarrel with each other and show absolutely no interest in working for Ethiopia’s prosperity. Let us instead lead the people together from darkness to light. The light of dawn can be seen all the way to Wolaita. It is known there is good reward for the ones who do good. Knowing that, if we fight the power of darkness getting closer to each other, carrying our torches, we will not fail to win.44

    62The expressions “lead the people together from darkness to light” and “carrying our torches” expressed a forceful idea that was pervasive in schools from the 1930s until the revolution in 1974—that the school-educated elites had a mission to lead the country towards progress. This goal acquired a whole new dimension after the end of the Italian occupation. It was no longer a question of defending the country against colonisation, but of rebuilding it. For this task, the right to leadership unquestionably lay in the hands of those who had had the privilege of being exposed to an education in government schools. Bogale Wallelu adhered to the vision of those Ethiopian intellectuals who blamed Ethiopia’s stagnation and backwardness on the incurable conservatism of the aristocracy. They believed that the aristocracy should be politically neutralised in favour of the educated elite (Messay 1999, 288–89). While the metaphor of light translated the aspiration for a better future without defining it, Bogale Wallelu also saw the role of the school, to be associated with other institutions, in a more concrete way:

    ትምህርት ቤቶች ፤ ገበያዎች ፤ የእርሻ ጣቢያዎች ፤ ክሊኒኮች የአስተዳደር መ/ቤቶች ጐሳዎች ግጭት በሚያደርጉበት ቀበሌ እንዲቋቋም ፤ የየጐሳዎች ልጆች አንድነት ተሰብስበው ካንድ ክፍል ሲማሩ ቢውሉ ፤ ቢሠሩ ፤ ቢገበያዩ ከጊዜ በዋላ አስከፊውን ባህል ሊተዉ ይችላሉ።

    Schools, markets, agricultural centres, clinics and administrations need to be set up in districts where tribes are in conflict. If children from different tribes are brought together in a classroom to learn, if they spend their days together, if they work, if they exchange, the harmful practices of fighting each other can later disappear.45

    63Here, he proposed a pragmatic vision of the role of the school as a federating institution that would help calm the discord among the various populations of southern Ethiopia. School was one of the institutions that would mark the presence of a peacemaking government and make people aware of their common interests. Schools would be responsible for transmitting habits of collective activities, knowledge and shared values from childhood. It was by proposing a common socialisation to children whom they considered educated with hostility towards their neighbours that schools would be the key institutions of the unification policy.

    Conclusion

    64The national school system that was set up after 1941 was conceived as a continuation of the types of schooling that had existed before the Italian occupation. Like those of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, government schools were responsible for spreading national myths. They were to inculcate devotion to the king, God and homeland and in common with the schools set up by the government before the occupation, their function was to exalt patriotism, to spread the cult of the emperor’s personality and to instil the myth of progress. After 1941, however, the project took on a completely different purpose. The education system was there to enable Haile Selassie to complete his project of autocratic centralisation and continue the cultural homogenisation of the southern regions that had been conquered at the end of the 19th century. The aim was to build a nation unified by the Amharic language, the values of the Christian kingdom, loyalty to the emperor and a belief in a common future of progress.

    65Beginning in the 1950s, US support and influence were instrumental in the establishment of the national school system. The concept of progress was redefined by the theory of modernisation, which provided the framework for the thinking and action proposed by the American advisers. It was adopted by the Ethiopian pedagogues who were working in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. By taking up the idea of a transition from the traditional to the modern, they advocated a type of education that would enable Ethiopia to enter a phase of modernity that took the form of a capitalist industrial society. Importing a foreign development model was not incompatible with Haile Selassie’s ambition to legitimise his power through education by fuelling his image as a progressive monarch. It could therefore draw its legitimacy from both a past of national myths and a future represented by modernisation.

    66These educational aims were interpreted differently by those who were crafting education at the local level, who placed it at the crossroads of the local and national spaces. For Bogale Wallelu, the opportunities for social advancement offered by schooling would enable children from peasant families to escape the system of oppression that had been established in Wolaita after its incorporation into Ethiopia. Moreover, Bogale Wallelu was convinced that the central government represented emancipation and progress against oppressive and reactionary local elites, and advocated assimilation into the culture of the centre. It is interesting to see how his own path informed his opinions. He was a Wolaita who owed everything to his school-education. He adhered to the cult of Haile Selassie’s personality and believed in the progressiveness of his regime. This is why this Wolaita school administrator’s thinking combined loyalty to the state and the emancipation of the dominated Wolaita.

    Notes de bas de page

    1 The highest military rank, the leader of the vanguard.

    2 An important political and intellectual figure of the 1920s, Hakim Workneh Eshete, who was also known as Dr Charles Martin, was educated in India and Scotland, where he qualified as a surgeon (Bahru, 2002: 37).

    3 Gebre-Hiwot Baykedagn, ምንግስትና የሕዝብ አስተዳደር (The State and People’s Administration) (Addis Ababa, Berhannenna Selam, 1953 EC [1916 EC]), 67.

    4 Berhannenna Selam, 3 August 1933.

    5 Berhannenna Selam, 7 May 1925.

    6 Henri Rebeaud, a teacher at Tefari Mekonnen School, reported: “Mr Aïntaplian, the Armenian English teacher, is riding his mule. Mister Bombay, the Hindu master of carpentry […] passes in turn. Then Captain Ditrich, the Russian drawing teacher. Then Mr. Raphael, the Egyptian professor of Arabic. Then French, English, Swiss and Syrian professors. With its teaching staff, our school is a bit like the Tower of Babel.” (Rebeaud 1934, 139)

    7 Merse-Hazen Wolde-Kirkos Fund, 18.06, NALE. Merse-Hazen was a teacher of Amharic at the Tefari Mekonnen School from 1925 to 1930 and then held various government posts. He collected many documents about the school, which are now in the National Archives of Ethiopia.

    8 Emmanuel Abraham, Reminiscences of my Life (Oslo: Lunde forlag, 1995), 16–24.

    9Merse-Hazen Wolde-Kirkos Fund, 18.06, NALE.

    10Ibid.

    11Berhanenna Selam, 26 May 1927.

    12 MOEFA, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools Years 1–8 (1947), 113.

    13 MOI, Ethiopia Today: Education (1973), 12.

    14 MOEFA, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools Years 1–8 (1947), 89.

    15 MOEFA, Basic Recommendations for the Reorganization and Development of Education in Ethiopia—The First Report of the Long-Term Planning Committee for Ethiopian Education (1954), 7–8.

    16MOEFA, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools Years 1–8 (1947), 91.

    17Ibid., 116.

    18 MOEFA, Elementary School Curriculum Years I-VIII (1958), 109.

    19 MOEFA, General Information on Educational Policy, Legislation, and Administration (1968), 2.

    20MOI, Education in Ethiopia (1964), 1.

    21Ibid., 2.

    22MOI, Ethiopia Today: Education (1973), 4.

    23“Point IV: Its Concept and Development,” Ethiopia Observer (February 1959), 3–9.

    24 “Inaugural Address of Harry S. Truman” (Thursday, January 20, 1949. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/truman.asp [archive]).

    25Paulos Milkias further cites a 1963 letter from the US ambassador in which he states that one of the tasks of US teachers should be to introduce the history, culture, and customs of the United States to the people of Ethiopia (Paulos 2006, 89).

    26MOEFA, Basic Recommendations…, 4–5.

    27MOEFA, A Ten Year Plan for the Controlled Expansion of Education in Ethiopia, suggestions prepared by the Long Range Planning Committee attached to the Imperial Government of Ethiopia (1955)), 1–2.

    28MOEFA, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools Years 1–8 (1947), 86–87.

    29MOEFA, Basic Recommendations…, 1.

    30 MOI, Education in Ethiopia (1964), 8.

    31 “Point IV: Its Concept and Development,” Ethiopia Observer (February 1959), 5.

    32 Fancho Fanta (lecturer in the Department of History and Heritage Management, Wolaita Sodo University), interview by the author, Soddo (Wolaita), 10 May 2016.
    All the interviews quoted in this book were conducted by the author. They were conducted in English, Amharic or Wolaita—in the latter case Asela Gujubo was responsible for the translation. For full details, see the “Sources” section at the end of this book, subsection “Interviews.”

    33Addis Zemen, 31 May 1985.

    34Merigeta Tesfaye (a priest of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church), interview by the author, Soddo, 20 October 2010.

    35This narrative was also used by Menilek II to justify the conquest of kingdoms other than Wolaita; see Bouanga (2013).

    36 Berhanenna Selam, 24 July 1941.

    37 Addis Zäman, 31 May 1984; YeZareitu Ethiopia, 19 March 1989.

    38 Addis Zäman, 31 May 1984.

    39YeZareitu Ethiopia, 19 March 1989.

    40 Anjulo Agago (farmer), interview, Dubbo (Wolaita), 10 December 2010 (in Wolaita; translation by Asela Gujubo).

    41Before the occupation, the term was used very frequently in the columns of the newspaper Berhannena Selam. After the occupation, see for example Kebede Mikael, ጃፓን እንዴት ሰለጠነች (How Japan Modernized) (Addis Ababa, Berhannenna Selam Printing Press, 1946), 128 p.; Kebede Mikael, የሥልጣኔ አየር (The Breath of Civilization) (Addis Ababa, Aynalam Editor, 2008 [1958]).

    42 Berhanenna Selam, 15 May 1925. “Galla” and “Wolamo” are derogatory terms used to describe the Oromo and Wolaita respectively; these are the terms used in the source.

    43Zebdewos Chama (teacher, missionary school director, district governor), interview, Soddo, 3 November 2010.

    44YeZareitu Ethiopia, 19 March 1989.

    45 Addis Zemen, 31 May 1985.

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    1 The highest military rank, the leader of the vanguard.

    2 An important political and intellectual figure of the 1920s, Hakim Workneh Eshete, who was also known as Dr Charles Martin, was educated in India and Scotland, where he qualified as a surgeon (Bahru, 2002: 37).

    3 Gebre-Hiwot Baykedagn, ምንግስትና የሕዝብ አስተዳደር (The State and People’s Administration) (Addis Ababa, Berhannenna Selam, 1953 EC [1916 EC]), 67.

    4 Berhannenna Selam, 3 August 1933.

    5 Berhannenna Selam, 7 May 1925.

    6 Henri Rebeaud, a teacher at Tefari Mekonnen School, reported: “Mr Aïntaplian, the Armenian English teacher, is riding his mule. Mister Bombay, the Hindu master of carpentry […] passes in turn. Then Captain Ditrich, the Russian drawing teacher. Then Mr. Raphael, the Egyptian professor of Arabic. Then French, English, Swiss and Syrian professors. With its teaching staff, our school is a bit like the Tower of Babel.” (Rebeaud 1934, 139)

    7 Merse-Hazen Wolde-Kirkos Fund, 18.06, NALE. Merse-Hazen was a teacher of Amharic at the Tefari Mekonnen School from 1925 to 1930 and then held various government posts. He collected many documents about the school, which are now in the National Archives of Ethiopia.

    8 Emmanuel Abraham, Reminiscences of my Life (Oslo: Lunde forlag, 1995), 16–24.

    9Merse-Hazen Wolde-Kirkos Fund, 18.06, NALE.

    10Ibid.

    11Berhanenna Selam, 26 May 1927.

    12 MOEFA, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools Years 1–8 (1947), 113.

    13 MOI, Ethiopia Today: Education (1973), 12.

    14 MOEFA, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools Years 1–8 (1947), 89.

    15 MOEFA, Basic Recommendations for the Reorganization and Development of Education in Ethiopia—The First Report of the Long-Term Planning Committee for Ethiopian Education (1954), 7–8.

    16MOEFA, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools Years 1–8 (1947), 91.

    17Ibid., 116.

    18 MOEFA, Elementary School Curriculum Years I-VIII (1958), 109.

    19 MOEFA, General Information on Educational Policy, Legislation, and Administration (1968), 2.

    20MOI, Education in Ethiopia (1964), 1.

    21Ibid., 2.

    22MOI, Ethiopia Today: Education (1973), 4.

    23“Point IV: Its Concept and Development,” Ethiopia Observer (February 1959), 3–9.

    24 “Inaugural Address of Harry S. Truman” (Thursday, January 20, 1949. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/truman.asp [archive]).

    25Paulos Milkias further cites a 1963 letter from the US ambassador in which he states that one of the tasks of US teachers should be to introduce the history, culture, and customs of the United States to the people of Ethiopia (Paulos 2006, 89).

    26MOEFA, Basic Recommendations…, 4–5.

    27MOEFA, A Ten Year Plan for the Controlled Expansion of Education in Ethiopia, suggestions prepared by the Long Range Planning Committee attached to the Imperial Government of Ethiopia (1955)), 1–2.

    28MOEFA, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools Years 1–8 (1947), 86–87.

    29MOEFA, Basic Recommendations…, 1.

    30 MOI, Education in Ethiopia (1964), 8.

    31 “Point IV: Its Concept and Development,” Ethiopia Observer (February 1959), 5.

    32 Fancho Fanta (lecturer in the Department of History and Heritage Management, Wolaita Sodo University), interview by the author, Soddo (Wolaita), 10 May 2016.
    All the interviews quoted in this book were conducted by the author. They were conducted in English, Amharic or Wolaita—in the latter case Asela Gujubo was responsible for the translation. For full details, see the “Sources” section at the end of this book, subsection “Interviews.”

    33Addis Zemen, 31 May 1985.

    34Merigeta Tesfaye (a priest of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church), interview by the author, Soddo, 20 October 2010.

    35This narrative was also used by Menilek II to justify the conquest of kingdoms other than Wolaita; see Bouanga (2013).

    36 Berhanenna Selam, 24 July 1941.

    37 Addis Zäman, 31 May 1984; YeZareitu Ethiopia, 19 March 1989.

    38 Addis Zäman, 31 May 1984.

    39YeZareitu Ethiopia, 19 March 1989.

    40 Anjulo Agago (farmer), interview, Dubbo (Wolaita), 10 December 2010 (in Wolaita; translation by Asela Gujubo).

    41Before the occupation, the term was used very frequently in the columns of the newspaper Berhannena Selam. After the occupation, see for example Kebede Mikael, ጃፓን እንዴት ሰለጠነች (How Japan Modernized) (Addis Ababa, Berhannenna Selam Printing Press, 1946), 128 p.; Kebede Mikael, የሥልጣኔ አየር (The Breath of Civilization) (Addis Ababa, Aynalam Editor, 2008 [1958]).

    42 Berhanenna Selam, 15 May 1925. “Galla” and “Wolamo” are derogatory terms used to describe the Oromo and Wolaita respectively; these are the terms used in the source.

    43Zebdewos Chama (teacher, missionary school director, district governor), interview, Soddo, 3 November 2010.

    44YeZareitu Ethiopia, 19 March 1989.

    45 Addis Zemen, 31 May 1985.

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    Guidi, P. (2024). Thinking about the Purposes of the National School System: The Ethiopian State, the USA and Wolaita. In Educating the Nation in Ethiopia (1‑). Centre français des études éthiopiennes. https://doi.org/10.4000/12iy7
    Guidi, Pierre. « Thinking about the Purposes of the National School System: The Ethiopian State, the USA and Wolaita ». In Educating the Nation in Ethiopia. Addis-Abeba: Centre français des études éthiopiennes, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4000/12iy7.
    Guidi, Pierre. « Thinking about the Purposes of the National School System: The Ethiopian State, the USA and Wolaita ». Educating the Nation in Ethiopia, Centre français des études éthiopiennes, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4000/12iy7.

    Référence numérique du livre

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    Guidi, P. (2024). Educating the Nation in Ethiopia (S. Dix, Trad.; 1‑). Centre français des études éthiopiennes. https://doi.org/10.4000/12iy3
    Guidi, Pierre. Educating the Nation in Ethiopia. Traduit par Simon Dix. Addis-Abeba: Centre français des études éthiopiennes, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4000/12iy3.
    Guidi, Pierre. Educating the Nation in Ethiopia. Traduit par Simon Dix, Centre français des études éthiopiennes, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4000/12iy3.
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