“The school must restore its letters of nobility to all its lost know-how”: Lorànt Deutsch talks about the new immersive experience of M6

Lorànt Deutsch, comédien et passeur d'Histoire.

While National Education is at the heart of numerous debates, M6 offers to retrace its evolution, during two special evenings, in "L'School to go back in time", from Monday February 19, at 9:10 p.m. An immersion for middle school students and teachers in 1880, 1930, 1950 and 1980, carried by the voice of the actor and history translator Lorànt Deutsch. Interview.

M6 proposes to retrace the history of the school from February 19 with an immersive experience, what will the concept be ?

It's a joy to see today's young people struggling with the codes of yesterday's schools. It's funny to see them a little lost, entangled in our own codes, whether it's my generation of the 1980s, or that of the 1950s/1960s, it's quite tasty …

And finally to bring everyone together around a common denominator which is the relationship with school.

To do this, you immerse around fifteen college students and four teachers in four eras: 1880, 1930, 1950 and 1980.

Yes, the teachers are also transformed with this time machine, it is also a question of the way of transmitting knowledge, it is fascinating and above all it serves this great institution that is the school.

What struck me was his youth. It is often said that it is an old institution, the school is not at all a mammoth (nickname given to it by Claude Allègre, Minister of Education). Education, in 1997, Editor's note), it's a young antelope, you have to take care of it.

What most surprised the middle school students who took part in this exercise ?

For example, the school, in the 1880s and 1930s, had a patriotic and warlike dimension which seems crazy today, France was leaving of two wars and the school was part of this plan of reconquest from the German enemy.

Today, for middle school students who grew up in peace, it's a "crazy" as they say (laughs), they were shocked.

And in our time we dissected frogs, today if you open a dead animal in front of a student, you will have a huge buzz on social networks…

Did the students, however, have any good surprises ? 

Education, until the 1960s, had a practical, almost manual dimension, where we tried to train and guide young people, we categorized them, we specialized them very early on towards apprenticeship, and we realize today that we desperately need manual work, because we know more and more more things, me first, but we know how to do fewer and fewer things. So many young people have an appetite for it.

The girls loved, for example, the sewing classes, it's terribly simplistic to say that, but they realized that they could work on a piece of clothing that didn't ;was not good to throw away or sell on Vinted and that we could patch it up, single it out. And the boys loved carpentry.

Three astonishing anecdotes about the history of the school

Three anecdotes, recalled by M6, during this immersive experience.
1 Swimming has been compulsory teaching at school since 1879, but has been partly taught "dry"  until the 1950s, that is to say lying on a bench during recess to simply work on gestures.
2 In 1890, the teachers offered red wine to the students during the meal served by the school, a very fatty meat and vegetable soup… accompanied by bread and fruit brought back by each student. And it was only in the 1950s that there was a real change in vision on alcohol at school.
3 At the end of the 19th century, life expectancy was 40 years. To pass on new healthy habits, hygiene was checked at school every day. 

This was long considered as enslavement because we did not work with our heads but with our hands, in addition it was gendered categorizations, boys on one side, girls on the other. the other, but they all came away with the pleasure of having learned something and the feeling of being able to do something with their fingers. That's what they liked the most I think. 

Didn't the school widen inequalities by teaching girls that they had to prepare to be women in the world? nbsp;home, unlike the boys ?

It did not lead to a widening of inequalities, from a social point of view there was a desire to shatter what had always been the case. school before Jules Ferry, by now allowing everyone and no longer just the richest, to access as much knowledge as possible. But structural, physiological differences were maintained between boys and girls, in fact, and were there for a very long time, it is indisputable.

Finally, what have we lost and what have we gained, in your opinion, over the course of its evolution ?

The school has gained parity, fortunately, women and men learn the same things from now on being destined for the same qualifications and standards of living, even if there are still profound disparities.

What she has lost is that there is a tendency to valorize university careers to the extreme, the fact of' #39;go as far as possible, but we are not all destined to be Prime Minister. The school must restore its letters of nobility to all its lost manual know-how, this is its greatest challenge today.

Can this program echo in a certain way current events ?? It arrives at the very moment when school is at the center of debates (level ;of students, methods…), the head of state has just advocated civic rearmament, the uniform will be tested at school… 

The aim of this documentary, in any case, is to bring together all generations around a common value that is our school. It's an institution that can be weakened, the State has leaned to its bedside, that's so much the better. 

But it's not just the role of the State, it's also up to us, citizens, to parents, to perhaps respect a little more the choices of teachers when they decide on a repeat or a program.

The uniform at school, this is going in the right direction in your opinion ?

I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing, my children had a uniform when they were in the private sector, there they find the public, when they are in the public sector, #39;dress as they want, they don't feel naked, they don't feel like clowns.

But the players of the France team, we only look at the jersey they wear, I still like it anyway ;idea. They're not rich, poor, black, white, they're blue, I don't think that's bad.

The Oudéa-Castéra controversy has relaunched the debate on the opposition between public and private, can the program, here too, have a particular resonance in this context ?

I hope this program goes beyond that. This notion of public and private is everywhere. I'm an actor, in the world of theater, it's sometimes borderline if people who work in the public sector don't hold their noses when, in the name of the private sector, you have to play at their house.

I've even seen technicians become unemployed so as not to have to work with us. This war between public and private is not mine but, unfortunately, it is a reality.

This program, adapted from the British format Back in time, is also for M6 in the tradition of "Pensionnat de Chavagnes&quot ; ?

We are in this lineage, but we are in a less romanticized, narrative dimension, we are not in the school of Chorists or of Vipère au fist. ;#39;school has always been welcoming and caring. Donkey caps, for example, never existed or so it was due to certain individuals.

We know your appetite for History, that's what attracted you to this project ?

Yes, when I was little there was a show by Alain Decaux, "The camera explores time”, I had the feeling of being find myself there, I hope to keep the eyes of childhood, I still like to dress up, that's why I'm an actor, so it's ;#39;was amusing to see the kids put on shoes with wooden soles, fight with a pencil case and an inkwell…

What does the place occupied today by History on the small screen inspire you ?

She has been occupying more and more of it for around twenty years. But it's a field of struggle, as soon as we do something, Stéphane Bern or me, there are always people who sue us for it. #39;intention, of the so-called historians who fall on us. I leave these debates to them, I am not political unlike the people from La France insoumise who attack us (accusing them of putting forward a royalist point of view on the small screen , Editor’s note).

They have a legitimate desire to make history a manual to educate people, for them it is a fight, with a political dimension. 

I am much more naive, I have an ambition for entertainment. History gives sunshine to my days, I'm curious, it's a manual for explaining things. There is no hidden dimension, I am not the fifth column of something. It's not an ideological withdrawal: it's because I' I love current France as much as I love history, not because I want to return to the France of before.

Continuation and end of "L'School to go back in time", Monday February 26, at 9:10 p.m., on M6. Lorànt Deutsch also offers a daily show on RTL, "Enter the History", at 7:28 a.m. on weekdays, at 1:30 p.m. on Saturdays. The actor (theater, television, cinema), also has a YouTube channel, "A tout Berzingue!", on which he tells the history of the cities of France. I subscribe to read more