Chapter 10
School Experiences: Openness and Violence
p. 289-316
Texte intégral
1By looking at the classroom and the schoolyard as places where curriculum requirements and pedagogical recommendations are developed through social relations, we can identify some of the concrete effects of educational transformations (Dams, Depaepe & Simon 1999). The objective here is to understand how political and educational transformations were developed, and to reveal the gaps and tensions that were created so that we can shed light on how educational practices and discourses were received. In the first place, what were the new relationships between schools and their social environment in a context in which social hierarchies and power relations were reshaped by the regime’s agrarian reforms and egalitarian discourse? Secondly, what forms did the power relations between teachers and pupils—and among pupils themselves—take in the light of the social divisions of identity, class and gender? Finally, how were the aims of educating “for political consciousness” and “for production” translated into action in the school space?
1. The end of the cultural domination of the north?
1.1 Going to school: mitigating cultural barriers?
2Under Haile Selassie’s regime, the government school was an urban reality. Rural people had to move from the countryside to the city and leave their familiar Protestant village schools, which were founded and run by their communities, to attend a state institution. The obstacles they encountered were due as much to the characteristics of the city as they were to those of the school. The city was a projection of the centre into the periphery; it was the place of power, where government departments held sway, where the settlers from the north gathered, where resources from the countryside converged, and where the Amharic language was de rigueur. In the cities, the Wolaita felt the full weight of their marginalisation. For their part, schools ranked the various groups that governed the nation according to the culture of the north, and sought to bend identities into the “Amhara” mould. In Wolaita, and in the south in general, going to secondary school meant that rural people had to adapt to the dominant culture, and not everyone was equally well-equipped to do so. It was not, in fact, a particularly welcoming world:
“The “Amhara” regime just… until Derg’s time… never accepted our people as citizens, in the educational area specially, and to give positions as administrator, police commander and like that. And that was our problem. Even to live in the town. […] At this time […] 95% is Wolaita. At that time 99% was not Wolaita but other peoples, the opposite.”1
3Abebe Fola makes the link between schooling, having to travel to the city to study and the employment opportunities that were available after graduation. He recalls that before the Derg, these three components formed a system that caused serious problems when it came to achieving full membership of the national political community. He emphasises that the city changed its face after being taken over by the Wolaita: 50 percent of the urban population was Wolaita in 1967 and 60 percent in the early 2000s (Planel 2008, 205). In demographic terms, the transformation was therefore not that straightforward. However, Abebe Fola’s testimony is indicative of the fact that the city lost its “Amhara” pre-eminence and that Wolaita from rural origins no longer felt alienated from it. As Sabine Planel has underlined, this appropriation of the town by the Wolaita began under the Derg. It was not so much a radical transformation of urban sociology as a change in power relations. Those from the settlers and their descendants who had been the masters under Haile Selassie’s regime could no longer assert the same authority under the Derg, and from that time on, the city was opened up to the marginalised sections of the local population. This phenomenon was part of the Derg’s discourse on the equality of nationalities.
4The Derg also attempted to reform regional government by appointing regional and local administrators from the region (Clapham 1988, 202). With particular regard to the Wolaita, Jacques Bureau noted in the early 1980s that they had “gained control of their political machinery since they [held] almost all the key positions in their administration” (Bureau 1982, 225). This was the educated minority, who were able to become integrated into the power structures much more easily than had been the case under the previous regime. But, as the peasant Mana Madibo testifies, this process had a wider impact:
“We were frustrated by the administrator of Shewa who was walking armed. He could even reduce someone he met on the road to servitude. Now we are in a good position, little by little our children have gone to school. They are magistrates, policemen and occupy all sorts of positions in the government. With the Shewa man, we used to hide in the woods. Now we have moved from the shadows into the light. This is the merit of education, it gives equality and self-confidence. In front of the judge or the police, we walk normally, we no longer bow down.”2
5Mana Madibo evokes a movement that evolved over a long period, from Haile Selassie’s regime to the current federal government. However, he insisted throughout the interview that it was during the Derg period that the process was actually initiated. Because school was the route to administrative jobs, the mass education promoted by the Derg, together with the broadening of the criteria for nationhood, played a central role.
6Under the Derg, school undoubtedly remained an instrument of assimilation. The expansion of the school system contributed to the intensification of centralisation and the integration of the population into state structures. Within schools themselves, the forms of violence associated with the assignment of an inferior identity to the southern populations undeniably diminished.
1.2 Discrimination in schools diminishes: status of the Amharic language, pedagogical practices and sociability
7This twofold movement of accelerated assimilation and a softening of identity-based violence is perceptible in the change in status of the Amharic national language in both teaching practices and relations among pupils.
8While local languages were used during the literacy campaign, Amharic, along with English, remained the language of formal education. The requirement to master it became less inflexible, however, and Amharic lost its status as a subject that could lead to elimination in national examinations (Bahru 2008a, 88). Witnesses underline the importance of this reform. The fact that Amharic had been a subject that could lead to elimination from exams was seen by Wolaita students, who were at a disadvantage compared to pupils whose mother tongue was Amharic, as a profound injustice. The way the examination procedure was experienced was part of a complex relationship with the national language. Amharic, which was both an instrument of domination and a means of enabling people to escape marginalisation if it was mastered, attracted as much as it repelled. The eliminatory status of the Amharic examination was a barrier to its being appropriated by an affective relationship. It was a high-stakes examination for pupils, who were therefore extremely fearful of it. The fact that it was possible to fail the entire examination because of this one subject alone could destroy all the hopes that had been invested in school. As a consequence, because school was the best way to access the national space, the reform was a very important gesture of integration.
9Did the function of Amharic as a vehicle and integrating factor thus gain ground at the expense of its attributes as a “language of oppression?” Amharic certainly became more influential during the Derg period. The literacy campaign and mass schooling played a key role, of course. The literacy campaign used local languages transcribed into the Amharic syllabary, which facilitated the transition from one language to another. The great advance in formal schooling that accompanied the literacy campaign meant daily contact with the national language for thousands of children and adolescents in the south. Having become just one subject among the rest in the examinations, it ceased to be a threat. Being able to speak Amharic was therefore more widely seen as an opportunity. In this regard, it is revealing that under the Derg, no demands for a formal education in the local language were made in Wolaita or elsewhere in southern Ethiopia (Abbink 1998, 69). These demands did not emerge until 1991 and the introduction of federalism by the EPRDF.3 The language-related claim that appeared after the fall of the Derg was in the first place the work of local intellectual elites, and to assert that such a claim was universally shared would be tantamount to thinking of nationalities as homogeneous groups cemented together by a perfect community of interests. This vision is fiction. The only people who had the capacity to express themselves in the nation’s political arena were those who had gone through school. They had incorporated the codes that governed participation in national politics, and they were fluent in Amharic and English. They therefore had a power of representation that was disproportionate to their numbers, and became the essential representatives of their respective nationalities. Similarly, the national struggles, which were a nightmare for the Derg and led to the establishment of federalism after its fall, were primarily fought by minority educated elites (Abbink 2000, 159–60).
10Not all nationalities rose up together to advance linguistic and cultural claims. What of those who were deprived of the educational capital that was available to the local intellectual elites? Was the opportunity to learn Amharic not at the heart of the schooling movement that was born in rural areas? Did the peasants ignore the opportunity to seize an instrument of power? Mastery of Amharic was a sine qua non for the longed-for social ascension that schooling offered. Today, some peasants deplore the fact that education in the Wolaita language closes the doors of the national space to their children (Guidi 2015). The issues of centralisation and cultural assimilation are not simply a matter of support or opposition; rather, they raise the question of the terms for access to the national space and its economic, political and symbolic resources. The greater opportunity to speak, read and write Amharic offered by the Derg’s school policy was a way out of marginalisation, and there is little reason to believe that it was not perceived as such by those who were the most marginalised.
11This was all the more true because the practice employed by some teachers under Haile Selassie’s regime of belittling and humiliating pupils who had a poor command of Amharic was apparently no longer applied in Derg schools. It is true that it had begun to diminish in the final years of the overthrown regime, and the generation of teachers trained from the late 1960s was more aware of social issues and the “nationality question” than their elders had been, but under the Derg, the movement to end discrimination in schools accelerated. Wolaita society changed radically with the revolution, and the old hierarchies on which political and cultural discrimination had been based collapsed: the “Amhara” were no longer the “masters.” Relations of domination based on identity were part of the “feudal” behaviour that needed to be banned.
12It is also very likely that the transformation of the sociology of the teaching profession played a role in this phenomenon. The statistics available in Wolaita offer details on the education level, gender and age of teachers. In 1990, the overwhelming majority were between 25 and 35 years old, which means that there was a high turnover in the 1980s.4 It had been necessary to train teachers to ensure that the school system would expand, and the thousands of foreign teachers who had taught at secondary schools before the revolution but had left the country also needed to be replaced. Unfortunately, the statistics provide no information on the social origins of this new generation of teachers. However, considering the ever more significant numbers of rural Wolaita who attended school from the 1960s and the fact that the teaching profession represented one of the main opportunities for graduates, one might suppose that the proportion of teachers from rural and poor urban origins increased. The social proximity between teachers and pupils was greater under the Derg than it had been under Haile Sellasé’s regime.
13What were the relationships among pupils like? In 1971, there was a brawl at the secondary school in Soddo in which children of settlers from the neighbouring region and young Wolaita children clashed violently, with children of melkegna and landlords on one side and children of peasants on the other. The former did not recognise the latter’s right to study: they had to stay in their place, which was to serve. The situation was quite different in the 1980s. A former pupil recalls that pupils of several nationalities—Wolaita, Amhara, Gurage, Oromo, Sidamo, among others—lived together at the secondary school and communicated with each other in Amharic, and that their origin was not a criterion for determining their sociability.5 Class and nationality no longer overlapped in the structuring of social hierarchies. In short, although school was still a place where the language and values of the centre were learned, nationality was no longer a criterion on which power relations were based. School, this stepping stone to the national space, had become more welcoming. When combined with the policy of mass education, this process led to a greater appropriation of the school by broader segments of the population, by those whose culture was a very long way from that of the centre.
2. The pedagogy of the dictatorship
14Although discrimination and bullying on the basis of nationality diminished under the Derg, the educational relationship became far more rigid, a phenomenon that was linked to the political violence that marked the Derg period.
2.1 The vertical transmission of knowledge
15The official 1984 curriculum stated that a school education should help students develop self-confidence and autonomy.6 The new school system should produce an open-mindedness to scientific debate, new ideas and working together.7 This was reflected, for example, in Amharic textbooks by an emphasis on discussion and collective decision-making. The school should encourage creativity, a mingling of ideas and the circulation of practices leading to a dynamic community life. Building a new society involved active and autonomous individuals taking initiatives. However, as a study of the geography textbooks has revealed, the path was entirely mapped out in advance. The 1984 curriculum summed up the Ministry of Education’s pedagogical approach very well. Students were expected to:
be deeply convinced that revolutionary Ethiopia is proceeding to the bright future. They should also be convinced that the guidelines given by the revolutionary forces are the necessary precondition for the achievement of the better living condition of man. This will help them grasp the discipline of working class to study hard, and participate in social activities and contribute to building the new society.8
16The contradiction between autonomy and discipline was only an apparent one. The concept of autonomy was absolutely central to 20th century pedagogical thinking across the political spectrum. Regardless of how power was exercised and how the economy was organised (whether it was the aim of education to reproduce an existing system, reform it gradually or transform it radically), autonomy was always thought of as a way of asserting discipline, of “governing souls” through “reason and responsibility” (Nóvoa 2002). From this perspective, self-discipline is a corollary of autonomy, and the educational aims of the Derg were no exception in this respect. The ideal type of autonomous individual would follow the path traced by the “revolutionary forces” without the need for coercion. He would be fully conscious of the fact that the project of power was of benefit to him and the society as a whole, he would have incorporated the objectives of the revolution and he would work towards their realisation of his own free will. Aside from the project, what was the most common pedagogy used in the classrooms in practical terms? In former teacher Elias Damtew’s opinion:
According to the pedagogical aspects […] there was no group working… the great emphasis was given to one-way communication. The students were listeners, they listened what the teacher said. So there was one way of communication based on theoretical aspects, with no practical works. The only important person in the campus was the teacher. Less emphasis was given to the students. So, aspects at that time was not initiating the students. No place for discussion.9
17There were neither discussions among students nor exchanges with teachers, only inculcation. Vertical transmission, which was nothing new, was reinforced. According to this former teacher, the main reason was the objective of ideological transmission. In the official texts, “education for a socialist consciousness” included “the development of a political consciousness, an understanding of the nature of the change of the transition to a socialist society and the role of the individual and the masses in bringing about these changes.”10 The aim was to get society as a whole moving behind the government’s project. In the discourse, this project, the future of Ethiopia, was based on knowledge as an exact science, knowledge that had been fully developed, a closed knowledge. The ideological orthodoxy adopted by the Derg and the categorical tone of the textbooks left little room for doubt.
18Bernard Lahire reminds us, without postulating a purely mechanical relationship, that: “School is a central institution of socialisation. It is therefore particularly sensitive to the most important changes from the point of view of the configuration and conception of the exercise of power at a level of social formation.” (Lahire 2005, 324). Politics operated on the basis of the omnipotence of the state, and pedagogy on that of the teacher. One former pupil believes that “[The teachers] should have set the pupils free and allowed them to clarify their ideas. The educational situation did not invite this at all. [The teachers] should have made sure at the time that the students expressed their needs.”11 The educational situation could not be separated from the political situation. Why solicit the opinions and autonomous initiatives of students if those who were governed were not allowed to question the discourse and policies implemented by the state? The indisputable nature of knowledge, the way it was articulated and the regime’s power practices all contributed to reinforcing the vertical mode of transmission that was already under way in Ethiopian schools.
19However, the political context and the practices of the teachers, who had themselves received an education based on authoritarian transmission, did not explain everything. The political context potentially left teachers room for manoeuvre, especially in the classroom, and their habits could change. Teachers had access to the pedagogical theories of the student-actor, notably through the pedagogical journal published by the teachers’ association, YeMemerhan Dems (The Voice of Teachers), which was available at local branches of the national association. Therefore, the idea of an active pedagogy as stressed in official curricula and textbooks was relayed and explained to teachers. Of course, it cannot be assumed that the magazine was read by everyone, but other channels existed, such as pedagogy courses in teacher training colleges and shorter, seminar-based training courses, of which there were many at the time of the Derg. There is no reason to believe that teachers did not, at least in theory, adhere to forms of active pedagogy. Tekeste Negash rightly identified classroom overload as the main cause affecting teacher practice (Tekeste 1990, 29–30). Indeed, in its ten-year plan announced in 1984, the government emphasised that:
The single most important challenge which the expansion of formal education has entailed relates to the significant increase in the teacher-student ratio. The latest information available reveals that the teacher-student ratio has increased from 48 to 62 in primary schools, from 31 to 74 in junior secondary schools and from 21 to 44 in senior primary schools in the last 14 years. The ratio could range between 90–150 students in some urban areas. These ratios compare very unfavourably to the standards of 50, 35, and 30, for elementary, junior and senior secondary schools, respectively. The negative implication of this trend on the quality of education is obvious and therefore there is a need for elaboration.12
20Under these conditions, it is difficult to imagine an active pedagogy based on intense exchanges between teachers and pupils. First of all, the class had to be “held” and somehow, a minimum amount of knowledge had to be transmitted. Teachers’ working conditions were further aggravated by a lack of teaching materials and low salaries:
Another development with similar implication is the falling of the cost per student which should be interpreted in terms of the low salary payments for teachers and the inadequacy in the provision of teaching materials and other supplies. This is particularly so for technical and vocational education where the cost per student has fallen from 1,816 Birr in 1974 to 830 Birr in 1983. The cost per student in primary schools has also fallen from 81 Birr in 1974 to 57 Birr in 1983 and in junior secondary schools from 185 to 137 Birr. Similarly, although the budget for elementary teacher institutions has been increased from Birr 3.7 million in 1974 to Birr 6.5 million in 1983, the cost per student has gone down from Birr 1,213 in 1974 to Birr 1,093 in 1983.13
21In many schools, pupils simply did not have textbooks; only the teachers had them.14 The lack of teacher motivation was considerable under these conditions, as evidenced by the ERGESE report (Evaluative Research of the General Education System in Ethiopia: A Quality Study) carried out by the Ministry of Education between 1983 and 1986. More than half of secondary school teachers would have preferred to have a different job, and felt trapped in a profession that did not suit them. As state employees, they were assigned to their posts by the Central Planning Commission and there were very limited opportunities for changing profession. The issue of pay was not the main reason given by teachers for feeling discouraged: only 20% did so, and 70% said they had an “average” standard of living. More serious was the low esteem in which they felt their profession was held (Tekeste 1990, 26–27).
22In summary, the vertical, authoritarian pedagogy was explained by both the political context and the conditions under which teachers worked. Those who would have liked to apply another method other than vertical teaching would not have been able to do so, both because of political pressure and because of the material situation in which they were forced to teach.
2.2 The harshness of punishments
23The Ministry of Education’s 1981 Handbook on School Administration provided guidance on how to deal with disciplinary problems. These were graduated provisions based on discussion and self-criticism. The regulatory measures were as follows: a discussion with the pupil to make him or her aware of the error, and writing a self-criticism to be placed in the files; a warning from a counsellor or, in the absence of such a person, teachers close to the pupil; a report to the parents; a discussion with the pupil in the presence of the parents, a counsellor, a teacher and a member of the pupil’s association; suspension; and finally expulsion.15 Corporal punishment was excluded in theory, but in fact it was at the heart of the pedagogical relationship.
What I myself saw in primary school was that the punishments were very harsh. In Grade 1, a teacher who hits… very painful, he hits you there, your buttocks. The fault is not serious, but he thinks that if a pupil is beaten he will learn, it seems to me to be poor psychology! And the beating on the hands for being late. If a pupil is late, he just stands there “bam! bam!” [The teacher] hits harder and harder. What was the method? They thought that he who is punished learns! And I remember… something I heard… [someone] seriously injured… he was hit in a bad place when he was beaten up…. Do you know what a teacher was doing? He used to have people who came in late pull up tree stumps. Those who were late for school, who didn’t arrive on time, he made them work, and the work was very hard.16
24Teachers inflicted very severe corporal punishment and were convinced of its pedagogical virtues. Some forms of discipline, such as beating the palms of the hands with a stick, were particularly widespread. Another form of punishment involved a pupil being made to keep still in an uncomfortable position. The one that left the most mark on former pupils was having to crouch for the entire lesson (40 minutes) with their arms behind their knees and their heads down between their hands. The effects were felt rapidly: back pain, exhausted thigh muscles, severe headaches and a feeling of vertigo. A pupil who could not maintain this position would be hit. In addition, as under Haile Selassie’s regime, it was common for a student who answered a question incorrectly to be insulted. The most common insult was dädäb17 (stupid, obtuse, slow-minded). Although not all teachers used violent corporal punishment, the fact that former teachers and pupils mentioned it spontaneously is testimony to how commonplace it was. Former student Telahun Ayele also emphasises the gender aspect of punishment, noting that female teachers were more interested in explaining than insulting. They did not impose a position any more painful than kneeling, and only hit the palms of the hands in a measured way, whereas the men hit all areas of the body indiscriminately, and did not always try to control their strength.18
25There are several factors that help us interpret this intensification of pedagogical violence. The first is the socially accepted character of corporal punishment, which had already been practised under Haile Selassie in family education, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church schools and government schools. There was a widespread view among teachers that physical punishment allowed students to make amends. However, the intensity of punishment under the Derg was unprecedented because it was linked to the transformation of the way power was exercised. By talking spontaneously today about the harshness and arbitrariness of punishments, by rejecting these past methods while fully assuming that they themselves practised them, teachers contextualise pedagogical violence as an intrinsic social fact of the Derg period. Under Haile Selassie, pedagogical practices were part of a paternalistic relationship. Emotional relationships were bound to develop between pupils and teachers, who had the authority of the father. Under the Derg, this relationship seems to have disappeared, giving way to a style of pedagogy based on an anonymous authority. State violence was an assumed, organised and institutionalised form of government. This led to constant violence, which spread throughout society to the point where it left its mark on pedagogical practice.
26Finally, families had no right to supervise what was happening in schools: “The parents did not intervene in this matter [corporal punishment] because they considered that the pupil was subject to the school rules. This was widely accepted.”19 Two issues can be identified here. The first concerns the relationship society had with school as an institution, and the second relates to the fact that disciplinary practices were socially accepted. Members of society considered a school’s internal rules to be sovereign. The idea that the school was a closed space of power, governed by its own rules, in which there was no question of intervening, seemed self-evident. It was seen by families as a place where political power was deployed, a place outside their sphere of competence. In this sense, the fact that corporal punishment was socially accepted does not mean that the degree of violence of punishment inflicted in schools under the Derg regime was socially accepted. The school experience was a painful one for pupils, but their families had no leverage to counter these practices. Solomon Maereg, a pupil in the 1980s, recalls that some developed a real aversion to school, mixed with disgust: “After these punishments, you first hate your teacher, then you hate the class… even the walls, and then you hate your books….”20
2.3 A hardening of gender relations
27What was the specific school experience of girls in this general educational context? The power discourses and textbooks claimed that socialism would free Ethiopian women from the dual oppression of class and patriarchy. Education was presented as an essential tool for women access to equality in the political and economic spheres: it would allow them to participate fully in the construction of the new society. School textbooks reproduced the empire of men, however. Women were very little represented and, when they were, they were wives and mothers whose character traits were things such as decency and discretion. Nevertheless, the regime encouraged schooling for girls.
28The school experience of girls was, first of all, part of a demography. In 1991–92, the number of girls exceeded 40% at each level.21 Between 1974 and 1988, the percentage of female teachers in primary school rose from 14% to 24%, while in secondary schools, their numbers dropped from 14.9% to 9.9%.22 In Wolaita, in 1990, at the very end of the Derg period, women made up 26% of primary teachers and 6% of secondary teachers.23 Teachers were thus overwhelmingly men. In this demographic context, what was the experience of girls in school? What gender relations existed in the school space? The prejudices that devalued the intellectual capacities of girls—who were considered to be less capable of academic success—which were widespread among teaching and administrative staff in the 1960s, still persisted. In her 1989 study on girls’ education, Gennet Zewdie highlighted teachers’ negative perceptions of the academic abilities of their female pupils (Gennet 1991, 96). This meant that girls did not receive as much support, and had less incentive than boys to persevere with their studies. Girls did, in fact, perform less well, and their failure rate in national examinations was extremely high. Between 1978 and 1987, 40% of girls who took the national Grade 8 examination failed it. In 1988, the share of girls in Grade 12 graduates was 6%. Pedagogical staff attributed this to their supposedly lower abilities, while the failure of boys was attributed to a lack of study. The success differential between boys and girls was actually due to the much more difficult study conditions. The workloads imposed on girls in the home became much heavier as they became older compared to the workload of boys. This left them with very little time for schoolwork outside school (Gennet 1991, 91–92).
29Girls also interrupted their studies much more quickly and in far greater numbers than boys. The journey to school was a major obstacle in this regard. Families were reluctant for girls to continue their education at secondary schools in the city, a long way from home.24 Except for trips related to household work, such as carrying water and wood, which were made in groups of women, it was not considered appropriate for young girls to make long journeys on foot. Families also feared that their daughters would become victims of abduction, which was a common marital practice. Ayelech Tekle-Mariam, a secondary school pupil in the early 1980s, says that she was able to continue her studies because she went to school accompanied by male pupils whom her family trusted.25 However, in general, it was the urban dwellers, those who lived close to the secondary schools, who were more easily able to continue their education. Finally, many girls interrupted their studies because of the social pressure to marry.
30Various forms of male domination manifested themselves in the school space. Several witnesses highlighted the practice of blackmailing girls into marriage. Teachers used their position of power to propose mariage to students, whose acceptance or refusal was immediately reflected in their academic performance.26 Teachers were generally assured of silence from students who were ashamed to talk about it, or who, if they dared to do so, were not listened to or were even accused of using this pretext to harm them.27 This phenomenon existed under Haile Selassie’s regime, but it was less widespread, and less pressure was exerted.28 It therefore appears that it began to spread in the time of the Derg. In fact, this sort of pressure and blackmail was far riskier under Haile Selassie’s regime, when there were very few girls at school, and most were the daughters of teachers or notables, a status that gave more weight to their word. Under the Derg, female pupils were more numerous and of more modest social origin, and were more anonymous and vulnerable.
31On the other hand, girls were beaten less than boys. Beatings were very rare because “they were discreet and less disturbing to the class.” However, their discretion was so socially expected that mere laughter from a teenage girl could provoke terrible insults. The most common were berenda adari (you sleep in the street) or shermuta (slut/hooker).29 Belaynesh Antonios speaks of “unspeakable insults.”30 In short, teachers were able to abandon all sense of decency for trivial reasons and take the liberty of aiming extremely vulgar and violent insults at female pupils. Problems with male pupils, also, arose during adolescence. Again according to Belaynesh Antonios: “In school, they faced problems, inappropriate jokes, intimidation and a variety of insults from the opposite sex.”31 Girls who went to school were at risk of pregnancy. Whether the sex was consensual or not (with all the nuances of the term “consent” for someone in a subordinate position), it was they alone who had to bear the consequences.
During adolescence, the problems they faced… no girls were counselled, nothing was set up for that, those who were not counselled got pregnant, so they had the biggest problems. There were no female teachers. Today, if they have any problems, women teachers give them advice. There was none of that. The teachers were all men. So no one saw their difficulties.32
32In general, due to the negligible number of female teachers, girls had very little recourse in the face of all the pressures and violence they experienced. Despite the higher enrolment of girls in school, the school space was still a male-dominated environment.
33To sum up, under the Derg, education for girls was a two-pronged movement. On the one hand, even though few girls completed studies that led to a paid job, more were able to benefit from a school education. Most were urban girls who moved into nursing and secretarial jobs (Gennet 1991, 97). Even if they were confined to “women’s occupations,” this meant in the long term that they had a greater presence in educational, medical, administrative and commercial institutions. In spite of the pressures and violence suffered at school, girls were on the move, all the more so if the effects of the literacy campaign are taken into account. On the other hand, as had been the case under Haile Selassie, the experience of the specific forms of gender violence experienced by girls in school forged adult women who were determined to set an example, to push girls to go to school and to fight in the school space to improve their conditions of study.33
3. “Educating for a socialist consciousness” in action
34The transmission of ideology was central to everyday school life. What did a “socialist consciousness” mean in detail? What channels was it transmitted through? Can the degree to which it was appropriated by the pupils be calculated? The pedagogical and disciplinary practices we have analysed above were not standardised in school policies. These practices, which on occasion contrasted with the official educational discourse, formed part of these specific forms of school culture, which were secreted through the interactions between the school and its social environment. The pedagogical system was the result of relations among actors locked in power relationships deployed outside the school framework—between the governors and the governed, between different social groups, between the sexes—and modified or reinforced by the pedagogical relationship. Although a desire to put a non-authoritarian pedagogy into practice did not appear to be manifested, the ideological transmission function assigned to education was the subject of careful attention on the part of the school institution. Political education was considered to be a foundation for the construction of a socialist society, and it was an integral part of the daily lives of the pupils through multiple media: special classes, songs and theatre. By “socialist consciousness,” the Derg’s pedagogues meant knowledge of the theoretical foundations of Marxism-Leninism, moral and disciplined behaviour, an investment in the construction of the new society and feelings that were both patriotic and internationalist.34 These educational goals were similar to those of countries in the socialist bloc, especially the GDR, which played a key role in the design of Ethiopian school policies and curricula through bilateral agreements, which were renewed between 1976 and 1989, and large numbers of development workers (Haile Gabriel 2006, 76).
3.1 Selected and trained political education teachers
35The first task was to select and train political education teachers. They had to be known for their loyalty to the regime and they needed to cooperate closely with history and geography teachers (Giday 1992, 15). In practice, the vast majority of those responsible for political education were themselves history and geography teachers.35 More rarely, some might be from other subjects if they were known for their political involvement. Teaching political education always involved selection.
They select the appropriate person, regarding his class background. Is he from feudal or royal family, or from poor family? Even if the teacher is from royal or feudal family, if he denied, if he ignored his class… […] For the theory, by itself it was the known theory at that moment… So the teachers were teaching but not all the teachers. Those who deny their royal family class, those who were next to fight for communism, socialism, would teach this. The other will never do this. They will never accept.36
36It was certainly impossible to oppose Marxism-Leninism publicly, as this would have meant opposing the Derg. This was all the more true for teachers who, being responsible for the intellectual and ideological training of future adults, were controlled especially closely by school committees. However, according to Elias Demtaw, teachers were not forced to teach political education if they did not accept the ideology of the authorities. Afework Ayalew, on the other hand, says: “We were obliged to teach Marxism-Leninism. It was not good for people who did not like it.”37 The school authorities forced some teachers, but were careful to select the most convinced among them as far as possible. This shows a desire for efficient ideological transmission on the one hand, and the need to entrust it to people loyal to the regime on the other. The teachers who were selected then undertook several types of training.
They have short time of training and long period of training. The long term of training, they use Yekatit 66 School in Addis Ababa. […] For short term of training, they use Awassa. The training was given in TTC [Teacher Training Centre] at that time. The TTC teachers prepare the training for the elementary teachers and for the others. Based on Marxism-Leninism. So the teachers know something about Marxism-Leninism.38
37Like regime officials, political education teachers attended political and ideological training at the Yekatit 66 School in Addis Ababa that lasted for between three and six months. A proclamation issued in July 1977 placed the school under the direct control of the Derg, after it had previously been a territory of its former ally, the Meison political party. From there, it came under the control of East German advisers, who played a central role in the training of Ethiopian administrative and teaching staff (Haile Gabriel 2006, 76). Yekatit 66 School had branches at regional, provincial and in some places local levels (Clapham 1988, 66–67). Teachers also received specific training at teacher training centres. Teachers from Wolaita received their training at the teacher training centre (TTC) in Awassa, the capital of the Sidamo region. Unlike Yekatit 66, the TTC training was specifically tailored to teachers and was more pedagogically oriented. In all likelihood, the TTC teachers themselves had attended training at the Yekatit 66 School, which was virtually a compulsory step for all civil servants.
38In addition to this training, teachers had various materials to support them: not only textbooks, but also literature produced by the regime to spread Marxism-Leninism among officials, teachers and the masses. Political education courses started at Grade 4 and continued up to Grade 12. The textbooks dealt first with what the revolution had brought and the future it promised to the masses in general, and to children and young people in particular.39 The short- and long-term objectives of the revolution were explained in detail. The books stressed the participation of young people in the revolutionary process and the construction of socialism, inviting them to become involved in the common collective project. They then described the political and administrative institutions of socialist Ethiopia and explained how the adoption of democratic centralism had placed the state at the service of the masses, whereas it had hitherto been an instrument of oppression in the hands of the ruling classes. The process of social change was the subject of several chapters: every social advance was a result of the class struggle and after the imperialist phase of capitalism, the inevitable process of world revolution was under way, and the times proved the accuracy of Marx and Engels’ analyses of the transition to socialism. It was then necessary to develop an internationalist attitude among students: “An internationalist attitude based on mutual cooperation and solidarity between the world progressive forces”40, i.e. the Eastern Bloc and especially Russia. Ethiopia had to be inspired by the example of the revolutionary struggle of the Russian proletariat and its allies. Particular attention was devoted to the struggle against the enemies of the revolution and Ethiopia: the internal enemies who had opposed the Derg and the external enemies, which were Somalia, the Eritrean independence fighters and imperialism. Finally, the grades 11 and 12 textbooks were devoted to political economy, historical materialism and dialectical materialism. In short, the political education courses were a breviary, a compendium of what a citizen of socialist Ethiopia should know and think.
39The official curricula also specified that revolutionary writings, newspapers and magazines were to be used by students (Giday 1991, 15). Although they were never, or only rarely, circulated in classrooms, they were available to teachers.
In addition to this there was a newspaper which is called Serto Adder, and there was also the book called Political Economy. YeMemerhan Dems (The Voice of the Teachers) was available. Because there is association of teachers from the grassroots. At elementary level, in each school there was an association of teachers, at the wereda level and the zone level. So the book was distributed to all teachers. So it created awareness for the teachers about Marxism-Leninism.41
40The weekly newspaper Serto Adder was founded in 1980. It was the official organ of COPWE (The Commission for Organizing the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia) and then the WPE (The Workers’ Party of Ethiopia) when it was established in 1984. With a print run of 100,000 copies, its aim was to spread Marxism-Leninism among the masses. In addition, the monthly theoretical journal Meskerem, which was also published by the single party and had a print run of 200,000 copies, circulated through the urban network and most likely also reached Wolaita. The editorial staff of these two official publications were familiar with the party publications of socialist countries (Sherr 1989, 438). Meskerem dealt with topics such as: the faces of current anti-communism, American imperialism before the revolution, the revolutionary role of intellectuals, the history of Ethiopian unity and Eritrean separatism;42 or ideological deviation and its channels of dissemination, industrial technology in Ethiopia, population growth and development.43 They were in-depth articles for adults on themes that were covered in the school curriculum.
41As Elias Demtaw recalls, teachers also had access to the monthly magazine published by the national teachers’ association, YeMemerhan Dems, which was available in every school. The magazine contained articles on various general and pedagogical issues. For example, the August 1987 issue dealt with the global spread of HIV, sex education in schools and the role of languages in education and development.44 The July 1988 issue dealt with homework, the organisation of learning tests, a description of the school system in the Soviet Union and an analysis of writing and language.45 Each issue contained a section titled Teachers and Creativity which consisted of interviews with teachers who had written songs or plays or created works of art. They told of their backgrounds, described their activities and presented their views on the role of art in the service of a “pedagogy of the revolution.” The last page of each issue was devoted either to a famous person (the July 1988 issue contained a short biography of and a translation of a text by Bertolt Brecht) or to a political poem written by a teacher. The themes were broad and open-ended. This reveals a tension between the authoritarian practices analysed above on the one hand, and the real concern of the national teachers’ association to work towards an open pedagogy based on a living Marxist culture, far removed from the dogmatism of the official curricula and certain school textbooks, on the other hand.
42From the point of view of the state, the distribution of these journals, and the fact that the school curricula called for their use in the classroom, revealed a desire to include teachers and students in a national community of readers. It had an integrating function, reading shared at a national level, creating a political culture and similar themes of reflection. Did the Grade 12 geography textbook not state that the development of printing was essential to the development of a new national culture? Through teachers and students, the idea was to gradually familiarise the governed with reading these newspapers and magazines. This major interest on the part of the state in creating a common culture through the writings it produced was also one of the main objectives of the literacy campaign. Although the magazines were a long way from circulating as far as villages, schools could become centres for the dissemination of ideas and themes developed at the national level.
3.2 Lessons, songs and plays
43According to the official curricula, political education classes were taught in forty-minute periods twice or three times a week, depending on the level.46 The frequency was no greater than it was with other subjects. However, the inculcation of political ideas and behaviour permeated the school space to a considerable degree. It was achieved through the knowledge taught in the humanities and social sciences as well as all the school rituals. As had been the case under Haile Selassie, the days were punctuated by songs. Pupils sang two songs every day that had been written specifically for the raising and lowering of the flag, as well as the national anthem:
ኢትዮጵያ ቅደሚ ፣ በኅብረተሰባዊነት አብቢ ለምላሚ ፣
ቃልኪዳን ገብተዋል ጀግኖች ልጆችሽ፣
ወንዞች ተራሮችሽ ድንግል መሬትሽ ፣
መስዋዕት ሊሆኑ ለክብር ለዝናሽ ፣
የጀግኖች እናት ነሽ በልጆሽ ኩሪ ፣
ጠላቶችሽ ይጥፉ ለዘለዓለም ኑሪ !Ethiopia, the ancient! Thriving and fertile through socialism,
Your heroes and children pledge unto you a promise.
Your rivers, your mountains, your untouched lands,
Demand sacrifice for your dignity and prestige.
Mother of heroes, take pride in your children.
May your enemies perish, and may you live forever.
44As a national anthem, this song took up the great themes of nationalism in general and Ethiopian nationalism in particular. However, the imperial mystique and divine protection that were sung of during the Haile Selassie regime had disappeared in favour of socialism, which, instead of the emperor, watered the country with its benefits and symbolised prosperity. The flag-raising song was along the same lines:
ያንድነት የህብረት የትግላችን አርማ ፣
የድል የጅግንነት የነፃነት ግርማ ፣
የህብረተሰባዊነት መሪ ኮከባችን ፣
ትውለብለብ ዘላለም ሰንደቅ አላማችን !
ያገራችን ውበት ፣ የወንዝ የተራራ ፤
የተስፋችን ብርሃን ፣ የማለዳ ጮራ ፣
የታሪክ ቅርሳችን ፣ የደም ያጥንታችን ፣
ትውለብለብ ዘላለም ፣ ሰንደቅ አላማችን !Emblem of our unity, cooperation, and struggle,
Grandeur of victory, heroism, and freedom.
Our guiding star towards socialism,
Fly forever, our flag!
Beauty of our country, of rivers and mountains,
Light of our hopes, ray of dawn.
Our historical heritage, our blood, our bones,
Fly forever, our flag!
45Once again, the metaphor of the dawn had already been used under Haile Selassie. But the source of the light was now socialism, not the emperor who had been replaced as the guide of the nation by the flag, the emblem of the union of the members of the political community. Socialism added cooperation to unity, and the struggle to defend the country was linked to the construction of the new society. The projection into the future, which was also present in the past, was more marked. Socialism gave progress a more precise content. Finally, here is the song that accompanied the lowering of the flag:
ወዛደር ገበሬ ህፃን አዛውንት ፣
መለዮ ለባሹ ተራማጅ ወጣት ፣
ቃል ኪዳን አለበት የቆየ ከጥንት ፣
ለሰንደቅ አላማው ሊሰዋ ሊሞት፣
ለፍትህ ለእኩልነት ለሰብአዊ መብት ፣
ለሰላም ለፍቅር ለሀገር እድገት ፣
ለኢትዮጵያ ነፃነት ለልጆቿ ክብር ፣
ሰንደቅ አላማችን ዘላለም ትኑር !Workers, peasants, young children, the elderly,
Wearers of the battle helmet, progressive youth.
An oath sworn since antiquity,
To sacrifice and die for our flag.
For justice, for equality, for human rights,
For peace, for love, for the progress of our country.
For the freedom of Ethiopia and the dignity of its children,
Live forever, our flag!
46While the themes of sacrifice, the oath of allegiance and the eternity of Ethiopia were repeated, this last song placed more emphasis on socialism. It was the goal to be achieved, and its components—justice, human rights and equality—were better defined. It emphasised solidarity among members of the working class and different generations. Finally, its nature as a school song is clear from its direct appeal to students as members of a youth with a specific mission. Young people were progressive, and had to engage in the struggle to build the socialist society in the face of adversity, just as one goes to war. Finally, it is remarkable that the character of Mengestu Haile-Mariam does not appear in any of these three songs. He was a dictator and there was a cult of personality, for example in the many portraits and statues that adorned the cities. However, while Haile Selassie’s presence was omnipresent in all the school songs, the figure of the new head of state faded behind nationalism and socialism.
47Plays were another form of pedagogy. They staged social realities with political implications:
The focal need of the drama was… if it is a class of civics, or history, or political education class, they bring two classes: the feudal class and the tenants class. How the feudal oppress the tenants and how the tenants obey for the feudal or for the landlords, such dramas. […] At the beginning of the class, the beginning of the academic year, during the closing ceremony, the dramas were prepared.47
48The plays portrayed the exploitative relationships that had existed before the revolution. While the songs spread aspirations, and sought to touch the emotions and ensure the incorporation of a patriotic attitude based on tendencies that leaned more towards belief than reason, the plays illustrated practical realities. On the basis of these realities, the pedagogical objective was to encourage a vision of social organisation that would overcome exploitation. This new organisation would reap the benefits of the revolution and encourage the building of a different future. The plays heavily involved the students, who participated in them by acting and contributing to the creative process, and through them, the ideals of the revolution were also to be spread in society: the beginning of the school year and the closing ceremony were the two times of the year when the pupils’ families came to the school.
49How was the ideology received by the students and by society? According to Elias Damtew:
So, the students were very interested to learn this political education. Also the teachers were very interested… because the students were singing and in the same time learning the points of Marxism-Leninism. So generally speaking, it penetrates the minds of the students. It creates the outlook of Marxism-Leninism theory.48
50According to Habtamu Lemma, political education was a popular subject for students, not because of its content, but because it allowed them to achieve good grades without much effort. The knowledge to be acquired was written in simple language, the lessons were repetitive and easily retained, and the teachers were lenient with their grading. From then on: “Everyone got an A or B.”49 In his opinion, this was a strategy implemented by schools to make the subject attractive. He remembers: “We were learning with no interest. The exam came, we took the exam and that was it, we forgot about it.”50 It would seem that students did not really take the subject very seriously.
51This reveals a discrepancy between the importance the regime attached to political education and the way students viewed it. Putting it into a wider context, teacher Demissie Minamo explains that Marxism-Leninism made very little sense to the population. According to him, set in the imported international context of the Cold War, it was imposed and decontextualised.51 Perhaps the omnipresence of slogans ended up by provoking a certain weariness. For his part, Dessalegn Rahmato (1984, 93) noted that the jargon-filled speeches made by officials in endless meetings “bored” the inhabitants. Similarly, it is quite possible that weariness took over in the end, as happened with Solomon Maereg: “At school, songs, lessons, and on Sunday morning at the Youth Association, I got fed up with Marxism-Leninism.”52 Did pupils nor perhaps also see a certain irony between a discipline that spoke of equality and the liberation of all, and young people in particular, on the one hand,53 and a school space where an authoritarian and violent form of pedagogy was practised on the other?
52When discussing how political education was received, Afework Ayalew offers a contradictory answer:
Obviously, they were taught and as children, their minds are quick. If you put something in a child’s head at that age, it stays. But when the government changed, that education got disqualified and maybe they forgot some of it… maybe something was put in their minds, but almost 90% was lost.54
53More than an inconsistency, this contradiction highlights the difficulty teachers experienced when it came to assessing the impact of Marxism-Leninism on their students. When they placed political education in the wider context of society as a whole, teachers laid great emphasis on class background, the position in the old power structure and the experience of oppression as determining whether or not to accept Marxism-Leninism. This is what Demissie Minamo says on the subject, for example: “Some were volunteers, the farmers, those who toiled under the feudal government under Haile Selassie. Honestly, they were very oppressed.”55 Elias Demtaw says the same thing. For her part, Mantagosh Eshete, a former leader of a women’s association, considers that some people accepted it because they thought it could change their lives.56
54To pose the question in terms of “Marxism-Leninism” in the strict sense of the term can be misleading, however, because the teaching, dissemination and appropriations of an ideology lend themselves to various registers of interpretation. It is at least necessary to distinguish between the great general principles (equality, freedom, etc.) and theory (historical materialism, dialectical materialism, etc.). While the theoretical lessons may have seemed decontextualised, this was not the case with the plays, which portrayed actual situations of exploitation experienced by many Ethiopians.
55This is why it is difficult to assess the degree to which the ensemble of ideas, ways of seeing the world and thinking about society conveyed under the heading of Marxism-Leninism were accepted. It seems, however, that the egalitarian and emancipatory discourse was relatively well received. Is it necessary to be versed in Marxist-Leninist theory to aspire to escape from an exploited condition by accepting the idea of a more egalitarian society, especially where school was presented by the authorities as a tool for creating equality and was seen as such by students and families in many ways? Indeed, aspirations for social advancement should not be interpreted as mere strategies for individual promotion: they can simultaneously signify a desire on the part of a group for access to equality. This was undoubtedly the case with the Wolaita who had been marginalised under the Haile Selassie regime. The Derg, its Marxism-Leninism and its school policy trivialised the ideas of equality and justice through the promotion of peripheral groups within the nation. In this respect, the Derg government was a turning point: its ideas spread throughout society, regardless of the registers in which the governed appropriated them, and whether or not they formulated them in Marxist-Leninist terms.
4. Education through work: school gardens
56How was the objective of “education for production,” which was intended to give birth to a socialist mode of production and instil a love and respect for work, translated?57 The school curricula emphasised the need to put an end to the disdain and contempt for manual labour. Pupils should develop a positive attitude towards practical activities.58 The ERGESE report, commissioned in 1983 by the Ministry of Education and completed in 1986, stated that youth associations should join with schools to lay the foundations for a new culture based on education for production (Tekeste 1990, 42). Education for production, and consequently education through work, lay at the heart of socialist pedagogical thinking. Intellectual work and productive activities were both to be part of an education aimed at the formation of a complete human being: an integral education. An educational programme such as this should also put an end to the division of labour on which a class society was based. Finally, it was through work that humans acted on the world to transform it. This concept can be found in Marx—who himself inherited it from the utopian socialists – in Lenin, in the workers’ movement and in the regimes that claimed to be Marxist in the 20th century. In addition, from the 1960s onwards, the idea of linking education to productive work became an important part of the international education policies advocated by UNESCO, on this occasion not to transform the world, but to increase productivity in “developing” countries. The Derg’s goal of “education for production” drew from both sources. As the representative of the Ethiopian delegation to the UNESCO conference in Nairobi in 1976 put it:
Indeed, when we look at the major planks in UNESCO platform we find that they are not very different from those in our Program of the National Democratic Revolution of Ethiopia. The expert group […] recommended that certain aspects of UNESCO’s work be strengthened […]: the linking of education with productive work […] A greater development of the non-formal and informal components of our educational systems.59 »
57The school system was no longer intended to train “office workers,” as had been the case under the Haile Selassie regime, but rather producers integrated into the rural economy, useful to their community and active in a socialist organisation of production.
It is now possible […] to move towards a system of learning which is relevant to the life and work of the society within the school is operating, and to lay the cultural and technical foundations for real change in the countryside. The new rural economy and its new forms of social and economic organization is now more able to absorb the products of the education system and to utilize skills and knowledge which can be developed in the schools and other educational activities.60
58Schools were therefore to be at the heart of the transformations in the rural economy, in constant interaction with their social environment, through productive activities that inserted them into the economic life of the communities. They were to serve communities, and communities were to support the schools. According to the 1984–94 ten-year plan: “Participation has led the community organisations to actively assist their schools in developing practical programmes of work, by providing seed and land for agricultural projects and working with school students in the reafforestation of eroded hill sites.”61 Finally, productive activities were aimed at enabling schools to be partly self-financing. As a report by the Ministry of Education prepared for the International Conference on Education in Geneva in 1981 noted, the income generated by school gardens and production units in secondary schools was used for school operations.62 In the previous chapter, we showed how the goal of education for production was translated into the knowledge taught, especially in Amharic textbooks, but how was it translated into the daily life of schools?
59Girma Bekele, a teacher in Gesuba, remembers with enthusiasm: “I started growing crops! I brought in 42 bags of maize [seed], planted tef, that’s it! The farmers came and ploughed.”63 Evidently, the teacher coordinated activities, the farmers took care of the tasks that required their specific skills and the students were in charge of regular maintenance. However, it does not appear that the farmers shared their skills with the students as the school policy developed by the Ministry of Education intended. They ploughed without them, and do not seem to have stayed behind once the work that required their presence had been completed. Production activities were organised collectively in “clubs”.
There are clubs: agriculture clubs, home economics clubs, handicrafts were producing there, gardens with different vegetables. Even the subject of agriculture was given at that time in the school level, from grade 1 up to high school. It was initiated at that time. […] [The vegetables were] not eaten in the school, they was sold and the income is for the school.64
60The interviews in Wolaita thus confirm that the schools had agricultural and craft production units. It was the same in Lalibela, in northern Ethiopia. As teacher Afework Ayalew recalls: “There were cultivated fields, we prepared them, we planted vegetables with the students, we grew them and then sold them for the community.”65 This was possible in the countryside or in small towns, where schools had sufficient space to grow crops. In the city, however, as Tekeste Negash has noted, there was a wide gap between theory and practice because of the lack of space in schools (Tekeste 1990, 32). Productive activities had to be adapted to the environment. In the city, the lack of space did not allow for agricultural activities, or even, as should in theory have been the case, craft or micro-industrial activities. There were already not enough rooms to accommodate the students in good conditions: how, then, could space be freed up for workshops?
61Another problem was the lack of skills among the teachers, who were neither farmers nor craftsmen or labourers, and who could not devote the necessary days to cultivation, which would require sustained work. This did not work for Girma Bekele. Monkeys were ravaging the fields and the other activities at the school left no time to deal with them.66 The farmers, who knew how to deal with problems such as these, were already too busy with their own farming activities to give time to the school by working with the students, which was of no benefit to them as the school would then sell the produce itself. Furthermore, the school was not able to provide any kind of exchange of knowledge to enable the farmers to improve their own crops. The schools had neither the skills nor the means to be centres of agricultural expertise. Afework Ayalew in Lalibela does not mention any farmers being involved in production with students. In the end, the inclusion of schools in the productive activities of communities, the establishment of dynamic relationships between schools and farmers to increase the farmers’ productivity and train future producers of goods at schools barely worked at all. It is true, however, that the experiment was conducted over a short period of time and in a difficult economic context marked by a fall in the peasant economy. For this reason, the productive activities consisted of vegetable crops which were simpler to grow and could be more easily taken charge of by students and teachers.
62Moreover, despite the desire to lay the “foundations of a new culture” based on “love and respect for work,” productive activities remained disregarded by the students: “[The students] were growing the vegetables and others but not by their interest, forcibly, to obtain marks.”67 Education for production was therefore a constraint for students, who worked unwillingly. Owing to a lack of motivation and resources, productive activities were a marginal part of daily school life. In the end, “Education was [always] for office work.”68 It did not train producers who were adapted to the local economy and who would transform society from below through collective work.
The quality of education, with no exaggeration, it would never bring a student who can stand by himself. There is no such a technical school to develop his mind with his abilities. Only theoretical. […] When they leave the school, they couldn’t do anything, they are waiting for the government work. If they are not employed, […] they couldn’t exist. They are not farmers, because they ignore farming […]. Farming is not a good work. This is the mind of the students at that time. Being carpenter is not a good work. […] You see the workless who were moving there and here were the product of the Derg school policy.69
63The wage economy was not able to absorb the products of the school system, who were not trained or willing to work in other types of jobs. This reveals a profound discrepancy between the project of education through work to create productive citizens and the hopes placed by the population in schooling. Why go to school to remain a peasant or a carpenter? Why sacrifice years of schooling for a job whose skills were best learned outside school, through practice? Education for production conflicted with the imagined success associated with schooling. For pupils and their families, completing their studies meant leaving agriculture and emancipating themselves from a life of subsistence thanks to access to salaried work, which was more remunerative, more socially valued and less demanding. Education for production seemed to take away schools’ indispensable function of a rise in social status and economic security, a phenomenon that was also widely observed elsewhere (Gamble 2009; Deleigne 2010).
Conclusion
64The forms of power relations in the Derg schools reveal two movements in tension. With the broadening of the criteria for nationhood, schools opened up to sections of the population that had been marginalised by reducing cultural discrimination. The centralising function of the institution was strengthened, but by minimising the hierarchy of nationalities, its integrating function became more open. The reduction in discrimination allowing schools to be used more effectively, and made it possible for them to contribute to a stronger sense of collective belonging. Assimilation could then be experienced not just as a form of violence but also as an opportunity. However, the level of pedagogical violence intensified; it was no longer based on cultural criteria but was closely associated with the violence of state power. The social control of schools and the working conditions of teachers also contributed to this hardening of the pedagogical relationship. The Derg’s rhetoric on the emancipation of women and the encouragement of schooling for girls was not followed by a transformation of gender relations in the school space. On the contrary: more than ever under the Derg, schools found themselves combining emancipatory and oppressive features.
65Finally, a study of the process of transmitting the objectives of “education for socialist consciousness” and “education for production” reveals the limitations encountered by the project to transform individuals. The desire to inculcate Marxist-Leninist ideology came up against the weariness of students as well as the rest of society, because of the way it was communicated by incessant repetition. It would be wrong to claim that it had no effect, however; students just adopted it selectively. Even if they did not become Marxist-Leninists, the ideas of social justice and equality spread widely during the period of the Derg as a result of its investment in the political education of the governed.
Notes de bas de page
1 Abebe Fola, interview, November 2009.
2 Anjulo Agago, interview, December 2010.
3 Habtamu Lemma (teacher at the University of Soddo, student under the Derg), interview, Soddo, 17 December 2009.
4 Soddo Zurya wereda, የወላይታ አውራጃ የትምህርት የትምህርት ስታትስቲክስ ማጠቃላይ ጥራዝ (School Statistics of Wolaita Awraja, 1989–1990).
5 Habtamu Lemma, interview, December 2009.
6 MOE, The Ethiopian School Syllabuses (1984), 8.
7 Ibid., 18.
8 Ibid., 112.
9 Elias Damtew, interview, October 2009.
10 MOE, Education in Socialist Ethiopia… (1984), 11.
11 Habtamu Lemma, interview, December 2009.
12 PMGE, Ten-Year Perspective Plan, 1984/85-1993-94 (1984), 137.
13 Ibid.
14 Habtamu Lemma, interview, December 2009.
15 MOE, Handbook on School Administration (1981), 81–87; Shibeshi (1996, 201).
16 Habtamu Lemma, interview, December 2009.
17 Tesfaw Derebe, interview, February 2007.
18 Telahun Ayele (pupil under the Derg and EPRDF, teacher), interview, July 2014.
19 Habtamu Lemma, interview, December 2009.
20 Solomon Maereg (pupil under the Derg), interview, Lalibela, 7 February 2007.
21 TGE, Ethiopia Statistical Abstract 1992 , 271.
22 PRDE, Basic Education Statistics, (1988), table 4.
23 Soddo Zurya wereda, የወላይታ አውራጃ አውራጃ የትምህርት ስታትስቲክስ ስታትስቲክስ ማጠቃላይ ጥራዝ 1982 EC (School Statistics of Wolaita Awraja, 1989-1990), not paginated.
24 Belaynesh Antonios (teacher, responsible for women’s affairs at Soddo Town Hall), interview, Soddo, 2 November 2009.
25 Ayelech Tekle-Mariam (teacher), interview, Soddo, 19 November 2010.
26 Zewde Wolde-Giorgis (teacher), interview, Lalibela, 10 February 2008.
27 Belaynesh Antonios (teacher), interview, Soddo, 2 November 2009.
28 Yemesrach Alula, interview, January 2010.
29 Telahun Ayele, interview, July 2014.
30 Belaynesh Antonios, interview, November 2009.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Yemesrach Alula, interview, January 2010; Belaynesh Antonios, interview, November 2009.
34 MOE, The Ethiopian School Syllabuses (1984), 112–20.
35 Elias Damtew, interview, October 2009.
36 Ibid.
37 Afework Tadesse, interview, February 2007.
38 Elias Damtew, interview, October 2009.
39 MOE, The Ethiopian School Syllabuses (1984), 93.
40 Ibid.
41 Elias Damtew, interview, October 2009.
42 መስከረም, issue 6, September 1981.
43 መስከረም, issue 35, September 1988.
44 የመምህራን ድምጽ, vol. 3, issue 2, August 1987.
45 የመምህራን ድምጽ, vol. 4, issue 1, July 1988.
46 MOE, The Ethiopian School Syllabuses (1984), 247.
47 Elias Damtew, interview, October 2009.
48 Ibid.
49 Habtamu Lemma, interview, December 2009.
50 Ibid.
51 Demissie Minamo, interview, December 2010.
52 Solomon Maereg, interview, February 2007.
53 MOE, The Ethiopian School Syllabuses (1984), 112 and 117.
54 Afework Ayalew, interview, February 2007.
55 Demissie Minamo, interview, December 2010.
56 Mantagosh Eshete, interview, February 2008.
57 MOE, Education in Socialist Ethiopia… (1984.), 20.
58 MOE, The Ethiopian School Syllabuses (1984), 36.
59 MOE, Basic Information on Education in Ethiopia (1977), 56.
60 MOE, Education in Socialist Ethiopia… (1984), 11.
61 PMGE, Ten-Year Perspective Plan, 1984/85-1993-94 (1984), 136.
62 MOE, Report on Educational Developments in Ethiopia, 1978-1981 (prepared for the 38th session of the International Conference on Education, Geneva) (1981), 6.
63 Germa Bekele, interview, December 2010.
64 Elias Damtew, interview, October 2009.
65 Afework Ayalew, interview, February 2007.
66 Germa Bekele, interview, December 2010.
67 Elias Damtew, interview, October 2009.
68 Afework Ayalew, interview, February 2007.
69 Elias Damtew, interview, October 2009, Soddo.

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