Resumen de Phelps-Stokes in Congo: Transferring educational policy discourse to govern metropole and colony
This article combines a historical with a social/political anthropological framework to examine the role played by the transfer of educational discourse between the United States-based Phelps-Stokes Fund and the Belgian Ministry of Colonies in the formulation of the colonial education policy of "adapted education" in the 1920s. The author argues that the transfer of racialized discourses of education and educational language was instrumental in the political governance of both metropole and colony as well as in improving the image of Belgian colonialism in the international political arena. In particular, the author emphasizes the political clout of the Catholic Party and the role played by two problems that ascended to the center stage of Belgian national politics after World War I (i.e. the cost of rebuilding the country and the so-called "Flemish problem") to show how colonial educational policy, and national and international politics are interconnected.
