| Summary: | President of the powerful French Society of history and geography teachers just before the Second World War, the geographer Henri Boucau (1887-1956) was appointed General Inspector of the National educational system in August 1940. He then left his position as professor of preparatory classes in Colonial, at the Louis-le-Grand high school in Paris: as such, this former teacher in colonial “classes préparatoires” in the prestigious Parisian high school Louis-le-Grand was by function very close to the different Vichy secretaries of Education and had, just like his disciplinary colleagues, to cope with the contradictions and needs of Petain’s government. Between protective corporatism and broadcasted propaganda, from failed attempts to save his persecuted colleagues to opposition to the creation of an independent geography teaching diploma, Boucau reveals many crisis and tensions of the French educational system (particularly in high schools and in the ministry) in these very confused years, even during the “legal épuration” period when he had to justify his deeds.
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