Manuals of French through 1968: A Distinctive 20th-Century Genre

The discursive codes of manuals of French grammar prepared for use in French schools are shown to persist with minimal modification after WW1, even though the historiography of education in France tends to regard 1914 as a watershed year. Moral & civic education is paramount in the prescribed curricula & the grammars, which equate language with morality; the moralizing tone of grammars persists through WW2 until 1968, although the Vichy regime introduced substantial revisions to eliminate examples that did not conform to its national goals. Following the radical transformation in 1969 of the triad of moral, intellectual, & physical education, a profound revision of French language instruction abandoned composition modeled on great authors & instituted writing instruction based on a view of language as a useful tool, not an end in itself. References. J. Hitchcock