SCHOOLBOOKS BUTTRESS THE MINDSET ADS PROMOTE

SOCIAL FORCES ALMOST VANISH AND INDIVIDUALS REPLACE THE GROUP

Two versions of the latest program, published in 2019.

French schoolbooks prepare students for the national exam that they must pass for a high school diploma. Presentations vary, but they cover the same subjects from the same point of view. (In the U.S., programs vary because states decide them.)

The Paris Commune...

•  A civil war without social content: 

The Paris Commune: 

A civil war (1871)

1.  Monarchists' return to power exasperates the Parisian population

Legislative elections bring monarchists to power, who choose Adolphe Thiers as head of the government. Thiers allows the German army to have a march of triumph in Paris, chooses Versailles as the new capital and stops paying the National Guard. He is ready to sign peace with Germany.

Not mentioned: 

• The end of the moratorium during the siege on rents, debts and on pawnbrokers' sales

• The loss to almost bankrupt merchants of the clientele of deputies their families, and servants by installing the government in Versailles.

• The widely-held belief that Versailles wishes to make peace with the Prussians out of fear of Parisian social demands.

2. The Paris Commune vs. the "Versaillais"

On March 18 1871, the drama explodes. Thiers orders the National Guard to take hold of the cannons on the Montmartre hillside. Furious, the Parisians oppose that, as does Louise Michel. Thiers orders his troops to leave the town, to besiege it. The whole city revolts and representatives of the Commune of Paris who adopt the red flag in replacement of the tricolor.

• A change of flags is all that indicates the social transformation that the delegates will sketch out.  

• Louise Michel is not only singled out but given a picture, though she was only one participant among thousands. 

 [Paris wants to] be free, govern itself, invent a new society: separate Church and State, secularize schools, liberate the press, open museums to the public. 

• Those measures do not explain liberal republicans' antagonism to La Commune, since they will adopt them a decade later. 

• Omitted: Letting workers manage establishments when owners have left and the projected decree of employees running public services.

"The Communards too plunge into a revolutionary logic of violence, with the execution of several hostages."

• Six unjustified shootings. 

Wishing to get it over with, Versaillais troops enter Paris [and engage in a violence] without limits during Bloody Week (May 21-28 1871), leading to at least 10,000 dead. Judicial sessions succeed military repression with condemnations to death, to prison or else  — as for Louise Michel — to New-Caledonia (see chapter 8 p. 240).

• No mention of the government permitting the officers' encouragement of carnage or of their presiding over extra-judicial shootings.

# # #

A single figure, Louise Michel, replaces the Communards as a whole...

Left, Louise Michel's arrest; right, the fires associated with La Commune, with no mention of the army's equal responsibility.

...a choice that implicitly counters actions like this: 

Zoom (please scroll down)

"Homage of construction workers for our elders who died for the Commune."

Louise Michel (shown on the banner to the left) was one Communard among others.

Emphasis on an individual cheers up data

divorced from reality

and echoes the omnipresent ads.

Corner, rues de Tolbiac and Nationale, 13th

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The City Museum before renovation (in 2016-2022)...