Saturday December 7, Floureto offered its last meeting of the year to its members at the Grand Angle cinema. Like every December (and June), the discussion began around a film. The film was Louise Violet, by Eric Besnard, starring Alexandra Lamy and Grégory Gadebois. This historical film which evokes the difficult beginnings of public education in the 19th century in the French countryside is very well produced. The pathetic and fascinating story of this teacher with a chaotic past is well scripted. The film, full of emotion, captures the viewer’s interest through its technical and cinematographic qualities. The main performers are, of course, a big part of it, as is the production with careful sets and sublime images of the Doubs landscapes where the film was shot. It is also a good reflection on the human nature of the time and the difficulty of changing mentalities. These first steps towards free, secular and compulsory schooling in France, and more particularly in rural areas, in the heart of Auvergne (a beautiful village, by the way) are sometimes difficult. Of the three qualifiers stated above, it is of course that of “obligatory” which has the most difficulty to pass, for farmers who use their children as labor, for work in the fields. After the viewing, there was talk of the Gers, the school laws before Ferry (Guizot in particular who in 1833 obliged the communes to have a school). Speakers from the Saint-Clar Public School Museum, Laurent Mauras, president of Floureto, Jacques Lapart, president of the Gers Archaeological Society, answered the questions that we can legitimately ask on the subject , on the times, on the teaching of yesterday… and today.
The next afternoon organized by Floureto will take place in February around a conference on a little-known but nevertheless terrible camp of the Second World War: Rawa-Ruska.
Canada
