School museum in Arvieux
A discovery, a memory, an emotion
That smell of chalk wafting through the air, those porcelain inkwells filled with a purple ink that stains the fingers so well, that sergeant-major quill with which pies were not uncommon, those large wall maps on which we learned the lesson of things or geography, what emotions aroused in the elders who remember, in the younger ones who discover the school of their elders!
In the Musée de l'école d'autrefois, housed in the Brunissard school in Arvieux, inaugurated in 1898, we have reconstructed an old-fashioned classroom, with its wooden furniture on which generations of children have engraved their names, its cast-iron stove in the warmth of which it was so good to doze, the shoes that dried, grouped close to the stove, its books and notebooks of a bygone era.
All you have to do is close your eyes for a moment, and the teacher is there, on her platform, facing her pupils
On the blackboard, this advice given to the children of Queyras, with its outdated spelling, in a village where great importance was attached to the education of boys and girls alike: Learn if you are wise... and this arithmetic problem that one might be tempted to solve with algebra, but that would be forgetting that this discipline was not taught in the 19th century.
Ecole d'Arvieux (Queyras) - Maîtresse devant le tableau
Un conseil aux élèves
Le problème d'arithmétique du jour
We close our eyes again and the students are there, too...
Des élèves de tous âges
Pourquoi manquer une occasion de s'amuser ?
There are children of all ages in the same class. Depending on who's sitting next to you, you're either a good boy or a bad boy
The reaction is not long in coming:
"Hey, you there! Come to the blackboard!
And watch out for the first misbehavior"
Hep vous là-ba !
Elève au tableau
Sortie des élèves
Students exit. All in all, we didn't do too badly!
Visits to the school museum
The school museum has been set up by the Quey'racines association, whose aim is to preserve the memory and knowledge of the Queyras, in a building owned by the commune of Arvieux.
Visits :
- june by appointment: 06 89 90 06 62
- july and August Tuesdays (4 pm - 6 pm) and Fridays (10 am - 12 pm)
Enseigne de la Maison du Costume à Abriès (Queyras, Hautes Alpes)
Life in the past and clothing in the past in Queyras
Interested in the school museum of yesteryear and want to find out more about life and clothing in the past?
Then take a look at the Musée du Soum in Saint-Véran (Hautes Alpes) and the Maison du costume in Abriès (Hautes Alpes). You won't be disappointed.
