This Friday is the 60th anniversary of the Evian Accords. Ceasefire agreements signed on March 8, 1962, in this small commune of Haute-Savoie, between France and what was to become Algeria. Sixty years later, the memory of this conflict is still very strong in Provence, where many descendants of Pieds-noirs, Harkis and Algerians live. However, the kids know little about this period of history.
At first, many students find it difficult to place a start and end date for this conflict on a timeline. The proof with Louis, a high school student in Aubagne: “The Algerian war, it started, uh… in 1956! No, 57! 58? 59? 72?” A hesitation which is not surprising since in class, very often, the students are only flying over this period according to Ilana in Terminale : “Basically, when we talk about decolonization, we are given the dates very quickly, but we don’t talk about the substance of the subject.” “But otherwise, we talk about it between us”, interrupts one of his friends, Pauline. Indeed, there are many students who have grandparents with links to Algeria. Many also have heard their stories. This is the case of Loïs, from a pied-noir family: “My grandparents come back to it all the time… It marked them, having to leave the country in which they were born overnight.”
Teach without judging
These sufferings, still recent on the scale of history, are perhaps one of the reasons why, according to Saïa in first grade, her teachers quickly pass over the Algerian war: “If the teacher says something and a student contradicts it and it messed up the class, we can understand that they don’t want to dwell on the subject”, blows the schoolgirl. The problem with this famous “wave country” is thatit leaves room for historical untruths, regrets Yacine : “The fact of not talking about it maintains the doubt. We say to ourselves: what is there to hide! For me, it is logical to have doubts. baseless doubts.”
The only way to be sure, believes this future Baccalaureate candidate, is to discuss this story at length at school. A story, he says, that he has “not known” and he doesn’t want “not judge”.