Le « Petit Nègre des Missions » de l’École du Dimanche,un artefact ludo-éducatif ?

Abstract

This article looks at the history and practice of the use of money-box figurines, whose use spread in Europe in Sunday Schools from the late 19th to the 20th centuries, and it also examines their educational function. First of all, on the basis of iconographic internet research on missionary money boxes used for offerings in Protestant Sunday Schools in Europe, and the discovery of other forms of such savings banks, the article proposes a typology of these money boxes present in the Protestant world (symbolic figurines), in the Catholic world (realistic figurines) in France, Switzerland and Germany, and coin containers in the domestic and secular context (burlesque caricature figurines) in North America. Secondly, using an open survey of former Sunday School students who are now mature adults – principally in France, Switzerland and Germany – the article seeks to answer the following question: Can we say that, in the specific case of money boxes used for Protestant missionary offerings, this practice contributed indirectly to educating children in the direction of a form of racism? By placing these figurines in their context, the article shows that Sunday School figurines served more as symbolic figures, and the money box as a ludo-communicational ritual than as a ludo-educational artefact.