The Collège Sadiki (rear RTL المعهدالصادقي) is the first modern secondary college of Tunisia.

Its walls also accommodate an elementary school. Teaching is free there and its capacity in the beginning is of 150 pupils including 30 interns.

Cultural innovation

Located at the kasbah, with the doors of the Médina of Tunis, it is created by a Décret January 13rd 1875 on the initiative of the top dog Kheireddine Pasha after a visit in France where it is allured by the education system. It then intends to form interpreters and the future executives which would have to manage the country but also to exempt to the pupils of the courses of Science S and of Mathématiques which would be “useful for the Moslem all while not being contrary with their Foi” (preliminary of the decree). The college is a revolution in the Tunisian intellectual spheres because it introduces new and completely foreign matters with those taught with the Université Zitouna.

Development of a new elite

It thus acquires a certain prestige through the country by playing the part of seedbed of a Intelligentsia occidentalized with the claiming spirit and reformist. Thanks to this college, the colonial authorities find executives bilingual (French and Arab) which are used as intermediaries with the remainder of the Tunisian population. However, the authorities supervise closely the college because they fear the development of nationalist ideas hostile with the colonial project: as declares it in 1902 Victor de Carnières, “the diffusion of the sceondary education could give to our protected Tunisian from the ideas little in connection with the state of political subjection in which they are and in which our interests order us to maintain them. ”

According to Noureddine Sraïeb, the French then try to make use of the college to increase the French influence: “Suppression of the languages Italian and Turkish of the teaching of the Sadiki College, with the only profit of the French language as single foreign language which will not be long in even supplanting the Arab language, is not foreign with this objective. Indeed, by imposing French in teaching, the colonial authorities want to increase the French influence near the autochtones in their inculcating new systems of value which facilitate the legitimation of the new established order. ” However, it should be specified that the schools of protectorate comprise two sections then: one bilingual (French and Arabic) and the other monolingual (Arab only).

Nevertheless, resistance to the French occupation will come all the same from the former students of the college who will take part in the reforms of the country after independence. Thus, at the political office of the Néo-Destour, “the former students of the Sadiki College account for 60% of manpower (92 people) between 1955 and 1969”