Introduction to Part 2: Education under the Derg: Emancipation and Encadrement (1978–1991)
p. 177-180
Texte intégral
1In April 1976, the new government promulgated the programme of the National Democratic Revolution, which set out the broad directions of the new national policy. The Derg declared that “scientific socialism” had been officially adopted, and committed the nation to the construction of a “socialist Ethiopia.” This political project implied a new way of thinking about the nation, its future and consequently its education system. Together with the disappearance of the aristocracy, the Derg announced the emancipation of those who had been oppressed in the past: peasants, marginalised populations in the south and women. These objectives required mass education with the objective of building a new society. The new education policy was developed with the participation of East German pedagogues, who replaced North American expatriates in the wake of the changes in alliances brought about by the revolution.
2The feudal system was considered responsible for the fact that Ethiopia was one of the most “backward” countries in the world.1 This was why the programme of the National Democratic Revolution announced that the objectives of the revolution were: “To completely abolish feudalism, imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism from Ethiopia and, with the united effort of all anti-feudal and anti-imperialist forces, build a new Ethiopia and lay a strong foundation for the transition to socialism.”2 Although the term seems strange, “bureaucratic capitalism” referred to the alliance of the Ethiopian “feudal class” and US imperialism as the particular system used for the oppression of Ethiopians under Haile Selassie’s regime.3 Breaking away from “backwardness” meant fighting those who had made this system work. The notion of the “class enemy” (የመደብ ጠላት) then appeared in official rhetoric. The nation was redefined on an egalitarian basis, and would be cemented by class consciousness, and united in the construction of the new society. The programme of the National Democratic Revolution announced the promotion of nationalities that had been oppressed in the past.4 It was, the “monarchy of divine right” that had divided Ethiopians along national, regional, religious, linguistic and sectarian lines.5 The Derg proclaimed the abolition of the cultural domination of the Christian North over the Muslim and “pagan” south, and in so doing, the new regime proposed a form of secular nationalism that would be free from the religious, social and cultural discrimination of the past (Clapham 1988, 195). But any idea of self-determination was excluded. The definition of common enemies and the equality of nationalities was intended to create a nationwide sense of class solidarity that transcended particular identities. Finally, under the overthrown regime, Ethiopian women had been subjected to the dual oppression of class and gender.6 But the programme of the National Democratic Revolution declared that this would no longer be the case in socialist Ethiopia: “There will not be any sort of discrimination among […] sexes. No citizen will be accorded special privilege in his or her political, economic and social undertaking on the basis of […] sex.”7 The Derg announced that women’s liberation was an integral component of national policies. The three categories to be mobilised in the service of the egalitarian redefinition of the nation were ranked in descending order of importance: class, nationality and gender. Only in a united Ethiopia cemented by class consciousness could nationalities and then women achieve emancipation.
3The school system, which had hitherto been oriented towards a capitalist industrial society, was to be pointed in the direction of socialist countries. More generally, the official adoption of “scientific socialism” meant a change in international alliances. Between 1976 and 1989, six work plans were established between the Ethiopian ministries of Education, Culture and Health and their East German counterparts. The Ethiopian government was interested in educational cooperation with East Germany because its school system was considered one of the best among the socialist models. For its part, the GDR sought to orient the Ethiopian school system towards its own model through the design of educational policies and curricula, and the training of administrative and teaching staff (Haile-Gabriel 2006, 74–76). The school system of Haile Selassie’s regime was accused of having been aimed exclusively at creating a loyal administration in order to ensure that the same class remained in power. The limited spread of school education was the result of a deliberate choice by the monarchy, [which] had kept the population in ignorance in order to better be able to oppress it.8 The National Democratic Revolution, on the contrary, announced that “There will be an educational programme that will provide free education, step by step, to the broad masses. Such a programme will aim at intensifying the struggle against feudalism, imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism. All necessary measures to eliminate illiteracy will be undertaken.”9
4The eradication of illiteracy was a priority because it was understood that illiteracy, poverty and marginalisation overlapped. A literate population was the first step towards a general education, which would ensure the mobilisation of everyone for the common good, a prerequisite for a collective escape from poverty. Under Haile Selassie, the school system had provided an elitist education, based on the argument that a minority of enlightened people would guide the nation towards progress. The Derg announced a general basic education for development from below. In 1980, the Ministry of Education specified the three general objectives of the new school policy in a document titled General Objectives for Ethiopian Education: education for scientific consciousness, production and a socialist consciousness.10 While the National Democratic Revolution’s programme included major educational principles that were common to all socialist regimes, the General Objectives for Ethiopian Education are strongly reminiscent of the pedagogical discourses of the GDR. Like its East German counterpart, Ethiopian pedagogy envisaged the formation of a complete personality, a “new man” who would build a “new society” through a polytechnic education linking theory and practice.11 Building a socialist society implied an integrated education that was concerned with the political awareness and the technical, scientific and intellectual skills of individuals, while also paying special attention to ethics and moral qualities.
5In the 1980s, the Ministry of Education also mobilised the concept of the “learning society,” which had been in vogue in international institutions such as UNESCO since the 1970s. In the preface to the booklet Education in Socialist Ethiopia: Origins, Reorientation, Strategy for Future Development, the Minister of Education, Bililign Mandefro, explained: “‘We believe that education in Ethiopia has now been set on a course which will result in the creation of a LEARNING SOCIETY. Through the generations to come, that learning society will transform Ethiopia.”12 Based on a recognition that contemporary societies were undergoing permanent change and that education must be adapted to this situation, the notion of a “learning society” emphasised education for all throughout a person’s life, which must extend beyond schools to children and adults alike. Its first theorisations were developed by liberal education researchers in the late 1960s (Jarvis 2000). Their aim was to adapt the circulation of knowledge to transformations in the market and the capitalist economy, and to enable people to live in a world of increasingly rapid change. In the concept of the “learning society,” Ethiopian school decision-makers did not mean an education that was adapted to the market, but rather a society in which teaching and learning would be integrated into daily activities, in which communities would be the actors of their education within a dynamic of social transformation.
6In order to achieve this educational project, the Derg implemented an ambitious school policy that extended to non-formal and formal education alike. Before that, however, the strengthening of its power went through an extremely violent and striking revolutionary moment (Chapter 6). The regime launched a national literacy campaign, which lasted from 1979 until the fall of the regime in 1991, with the aim of totally eradicating illiteracy (Chapter 7). This campaign was carried out in conjunction with a major extension of schooling to rural areas (Chapter 8). Lesson content was modified to correspond to the new political project, and transmitted the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism and advocated planning, collectivisation and industrialisation on the Soviet model (Chapter 9). Power relations within the school space were transformed. Discrimination based on cultural criteria diminished, while the violence of the pedagogical relationship intensified sharply alongside the Derg’s violent practice of power (Chapter 10).
Notes de bas de page
1 MOI, Ethiopia in Revolution (1977), 6.
2 PMGE, Programme of the National Democratic Revolution of Ethiopia (20 April 1976), 1
3 MOI, Ethiopia in Revolution (1977), 20–21.
4 PMGE, Programme of the National Democratic Revolution of Ethiopia (1976), 5.
5 MOI, Ethiopia in Revolution (1977), 20.
6 Ibid., 39.
7 PMGE, Programme of the National Democratic Revolution of Ethiopia (1976), 6.
8 MOE, Education in Socialist Ethiopia… (1984), i.
9 MOE, Basic Information on Education in Ethiopia (1977), 3–4.
10 MOE, General Objectives for Ethiopian Education (1980).
11 MOE, Education in Socialist Ethiopia… (1984), 15.
12 Ibid.

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