Philippe Marchand

The history of the colleges of Ancien Régime is known today well enough. But that do we know ambitions and logic of the parents who send their children to college? What do we know from the point of view of the children?

In May 1920, on the occasion of an International Exhibition for the Renaissance of the liberated regions, Georges Lyon Lille chief education officer, asked the teachers to reply to a questionnaire and asked the pupils to write an essay about their memories at war and a narrative dramatic experience they could have been watching as well.

The aim here is to place the student at the centre of analysis, whether under the authority of a preceptor or integrated into a school, and to study him or her over the long period of the 17th-20th centuries.

Between 1914 and 1918, the Nord and Pas-de-Calais geographical areas met numerous difficulties. About 70% of the Nord and 25% of the Pas-de-Calais had to face a strong German occupation. On the west part of the front line, the territory became a strategic place for the allied armies, landing on Calais, Boulogne and Dunkerque. With such terrible...