Sequel to the series Stories of a Nation: Immigration.
If there is an experience common to all of us, it is to have spent our childhood on the school benches. We either loved it or sometimes hated it. But in the end, each generation shares a body of knowledge that they acquired during these school years and images that remain with us forever.

School is the first place where we feel that we are part of a shared history, that of a nation. And in fact, building a public school, open to all, is intimately linked to the construction of the French Republic. For 200 years, from elementary to high school, French children have embarked on the adventure of knowledge. They are attached to their school that is public, free and secular, and at the same time, they keep wanting to change it. For students and teachers alike, learning and teaching remains an ordeal, full of pitfalls, misunderstandings, discoveries, and mixed emotions.
Because in France the school is intimately linked to the nation, it is the place where the stories of our childhood mingle with the history of the nation. Tumultuous and passionate – in short, a French history. In this great story in two parts, eye witnesses - famous or anonymous - , teachers and students link their memories of the History of education to that of the nation, told from the viewpoint of children.

Part One : Une affaire d’état / A Matter of State (1830 - 1945)
Part Two : School For All (1945 - present day)

AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING: French version only