Figure 1.--This is a school portrait from colonial Algeria taken in 1951. The sorce udentified them as 9 year olds, meaning the fourth year of primary school. We see a wide range of outfits including berets, knit caps, jackets, sweaters, shirts, smocks, pants, what look like rompers, and a varierty of footwear. We see both French and Algerian boys. The lnguage of instruction was French. It would be interesting to know what relations were like between them. The Algerian families had to make a decision after the Algerian war and the French left Algeria (1961). Some accepted French culture, others were afraid of reprisals. None came to France with the idea of launching terror campaigns. What ever the merits of the current arguments over immigration, the one indisputable fact is that Europe after several decades has not suceeded in assimilating large numbers of North African-Middle Eastern Muslims. And those communities are now producing terrorists as well as much larger number of disaffected people with different values than the European people. Is it really reasonable to expect the long-term outcome with the current wave of immigrants to be any different? Put your cursor on the image to see the rest of the class.

The only schools in Algeria for centuries were schools associated with mosques. Only boys could be educated and the numbers taught in the Islamic schools were very small. This was the case into the 19th century. It is part of the reason the Arab world was so backward, essentially caught in time, unchnged for centures. France was the colonial power. The French introduced the first secular schools in Algeria. Until the arrival of the French, education in Algeria as very limited. There was some limited education conducted through the mosques, but the curriculum was largely limited to reading Arabic and memorization of Koranic texts. Education in French controlled Algeria followed trends in metroploitan France. Thus secular schools were opened with high European standards. These schools were open to Algerians, but many Algerian parents were suspicious of what was being taught. Thus few Algerians away from the coasyal cities attended the French schools. This was especilly true for Algerian girls. Algerians fought a long and brutal war during the 1950s and early-60s, at times looking more like a civil war, to achieve independence. We have not yet been able to acquire much information on schools in independent Algeria.

Pre-colonial Algeria

Until the arrival of the French, education in Algeria was very limited. There was some limited education conducted through the mosques, some of which established madrasas for boys. This was not just in Alhiers, but other towns as well. This varied over time depending on economic conditions. Some of the madeasa were of some importance. We note little sniptes here and there anout some of these madraas. One reports indicates that the trading center of Tlemcen at the peak of its success (early 14th century) was a prosperous city with a population of some 40,000 people. [Ehret, p. 334.] It is said to have supported several well-known madrasas. There were also respected madrasas in Constantine. The curriculum at these madrasas was largely limited to reading Arabic and memorization of Koranic texts. The main aim of Madrada education throughout the Muslim world was to memorize the Koran in classical Arabic and to inculcate the students with Islamic religious precepts. The pupils who successfully memorized the Koran were considered to have succeeded in their basic education. This was a minority of the students. Not only were only a small number of algerian boys educated at these schools, but most graduates did not acquire the basic elements of literacy as we would assess it today, both reading and writing. Nor was rudimentary mathematical knowledge an important concern. As far as we can tell, attendance at these madrasas was very limited and literacy rates in Algeria very high. We have not found any definitive assesments of literacy levels. One report claims that literacy rate in Algeria at the time of the French invasion was 40 percent. This seems very high, especially as girls were not educated as this estimate has to be taken with some skepticism. One author claims that madrasas (zaouias) taught basic literacy to a large proportion of children even in quite remote mountainous areas. [Ruedy, p. 103.] He uses the term 'children', but suspect he is talking about boys. And he raised the possibility that literacy rate were higher than in France. One reason we are somewhat skeptical about these claims is that the author is taking the politically correct route of trying to point out that Algeria was not as backward as commonly believed in the West. And he and others do not ask the obvious question. If the Algeiand were so literate, why were they so backward? We have been unable to obtain definitive evidence of a high literacy rate. And we suspect that whatever reading that took place was mostly the Koran and other religius texts. We do know that Algeria indigenous society was virtually unaffected by the scientific, medical, technical, and industrial sweeping through Western Europe. This was in fact the general pattern in the Arab world for centuries. This was reflected in Arab society. With the development of photography (1839), we have images of Arab life in the 19th century. There had veen so littkle changec in Arab society that many of these early photigraophs coukld have ceasily been taken centuries earlier. It is notable that we see no technical or scientific advances in the Arab world since the 13th century. This is important because many in the Arab world attempt to explain the region's backwardness to the European colonial era. In fact the Algeria the French encountered, and the same was the case in other countrie, was essentially a medieval society. Virtually all the modern infrastructure that independent Algeria inherited was the product of the French colonial era.

Colonial Era (1830-1961)

Most of our informaion on Algeria at this time comes from the colonial era. France was the colonial power. The French introduced the first schools in Algeria. Until the arrival of the French, education in Algetria as very limited. There was some limited education conducted through the mosques, but the curriculum was largely limited to reading Arabic and memorization of Koranic tects. Education in French controlled Algeria followed trends in metroploitan France. Thus secular schools were opened with high European standards. These schools were open to Algerians, but many Algerian parents were suspicious of what was being taught. Thus few Algerians away from the coasyal cities attended the French schools. This was especilly true for Algerian girls. Algerians fought a long and brutal war during the 1950s and early 60s, at times looking more like a civil war, to achieve independemce. We have acquited some images from European schools that existed in the country before independence. The school uniform styles reflect the clothing worn by conmtemporary European boys--ther is little evudence of Algerian clothing styles.. Some schools appear to have restricted the entry of Algerian boys, but we have view details about this.

Independent Algeria (1961- )

HBC does not yet have detailed information on schools in Algeria since independence.

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Created: 3:53 PM 3/5/2016
Last updated: 3:53 PM 3/5/2016