War in the Classroom: The Materiality of Educational Spaces in the French Front-line Towns, 1914–1920

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the materiality of educational spaces in towns near the Western Front, and examines how military violence shaped representations and experiences of childhood. Educators, local officials and parents conceptualised schools as safe spaces where education could continue normally, and where children could do a national duty by studying under fire. This required material changes, with schools moved underground and gas masks distributed. But despite these changes, war was traumatic for these children, as their post-war writings demonstrate. This article reveals a deep tension between the wartime militarisation of childhood, and the desire to keep young people safe.