Education Revolution

The war transformed French education profoundly. Teachers mobilized en masse—35,000 served, 8,000 died. Their replacement by women, elderly men, and wounded veterans changed education's character. The rigid, authoritarian prewar system gave way to more flexible approaches born of necessity.

Curriculum transformed to serve war needs. Geography became military strategy. Mathematics taught artillery calculations. Chemistry explained gas warfare. History glorified French military tradition while demonizing Germany. This militarization of education had lasting effects on students' worldviews.

Yet progressive changes also occurred. Teacher shortages forced innovation—combined classes, peer teaching, practical education. Women teachers, previously confined to girls' schools, taught boys for the first time. Their different approaches—less authoritarian, more nurturing—influenced pedagogical evolution.

The war revealed educational system's class biases starkly. Working-class children left school for factories while bourgeois youth continued studies. This inequity, tolerated prewar, became intolerable when equality of sacrifice was demanded. Veterans' organizations demanded educational democratization, laying groundwork for postwar reforms.

Higher education transformed radically. Universities emptied as students enlisted—the École Normale Supérieure lost 50% of its students. Women filled vacant places, transforming institutions that had excluded them for centuries. By 1918, women comprised 20% of university students, an unthinkable proportion prewar.