Article updated on January 7, 2023 at 07:05 am
Judith Manya, history teacher at Arago high school posted this “Atypical history textbook» available at the editions Trabucaire.
A work whose first path was provided by Alba, Hugo, Lucille or Thomas, all 1st year students of the Arago high school between 2020 and 2021. The 34 students of the French-Spanish bilingual section went in search of their memories family’s; those of their grandparents and great-grandparents, those who lived through the decade 1936-1946.
Fragments of life that join the great story
Carla, Aurélien, Inès or Victoria immediately took over the project. Judith Manya recalls having collected a myriad of information, military notebooks, letters or photos that have allowed her to open new horizons. “JI asked for clarifications, helped contextualize the snippets of stories being told, the raw facts delivered, searched the archives for more information. (…) We were going to (…) cross these individual stories to develop the common narrative and I was crossing this to teach the history of this famous decade»
“When, at the end of November 2020, when the first lines of this atypical manual were being born, two students came to see me to tell me that this project was “fantastic”, that they had learned and were learning many things about their family stories, that their grandparents were “well-rounded” and that, in these times of physical distancing and confinement, this quest has allowed them to maintain a connection with their loved ones, I thought that, whatever the future of the project, the manual, the film has achieved the main objectives that I set for myself and therein lies the essential.
«I have tried to articulate the themes of the official curriculum and the individual trajectories of my students’ great-grandparents. Furthermore, before addressing the great events of the decade 1936-1946, it seemed to me necessary to begin the story by focusing on the diversity of work in the 1930s to try, modestly, to understand the daily life of families before the wars upset the balance.» (…)
Due to the large number of great-grandparents who experienced the Spanish Civil War, exile and internment in French camps, Judith Manya has devoted several chapters to this.
“In the end, the history of our class micro-society is above all a European history, but so is the history taught. Unlike the official programme, it ignores some themes as such, such as totalitarianism and the genocide of Jews and Gypsies. On the other hand, it largely integrates others (internment camps in France (…), the Spanish civil war, stalags, concentration camps) and tackles new ones (Romania at war, the evacuation of children from Spain). Above all, he taught us so much”.
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Maïté Torres, journalist and founder of Made In Perpignan, writes most of the articles. Especially in the fields of politics, economics and society. Thanks to her experience in social networks, Maïté will be your privileged interlocutor if you send us a private message or an email.
