The ègeLycéeCéCollège Cévenol—later known as Le Collège-Lycée Cévenol International—was a unique and historic international secondary school located in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the département of Haute-Loire, France. It enrolled day students from the local area, along with a substantial body of regional, national, and international students from around the world who boarded at the school. The last President of its governing board (the AUCC) was Claude Le Vu; the last director was Patrick Sellier.
The Collège Cévenol was founded in 1938 by local Protestant activists and pacifists, and had been shaped from its beginnings by the area's long-standing traditions of resistance to political and religious oppression. From the beginning, the Collège promoted education linked to principles of nonviolence and the development of mutual understanding and solidarity in a socially and ethnically diverse society. The school's founders were also key organizers of the now-famous community effort, in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, to shelter and save Jewish refugees during the Second World War. Thus an important part of the school's early development was linked to this much discussed episode.
During its early years, from 1938 to 1971, the school was entirely private, and was associated with the Protestant Reformed Church of France, although it welcomed students regardless of their religious or non-religious orientation. From 1971 on, it was part of the French national education system and was secular. It was organized as an “établissement privé sous contrat d'association” (a private school associated by contract with the state), a category of French schools that are privately managed, but bound to the national system by contracts which provide basic funding and teacher's salaries, and require adherence to national curricula and other standards.
On February 9, 2014, President Andre Gast announced that the College would be closing its doors at the end of the school year, faced with mounting financial difficulties and declining enrollment.
Founding as L’Ecole Nouvelle Cévenole
“Cévenol” is an adjective meaning "of the Cévennes mountains," a nearby mountain range that is historically significant as a site of resistance for French Protestants. Le Chambon and the Collège are not located in the Cévennes themselves, but just to the north, on the high Plateau Vivarais-Lignon. The "Cévenol" reference in the school's name is thus cultural and historical rather than literal, situating the school's founding within the long heritage of French Protestant (Huguenot) resistance to persecution after the Reformation, for example during the Camisard wars of the early eighteenth century. The peasant fighters called “Camisards” who struggled against the French crown were also known as “Cévenols” after the rugged, mountainous terrain that facilitated the small group's ability to resist the much larger forces arrayed against them. In the 1930s, this long-standing regional tradition of resistance and hospitality to refugees became essential to the school's beginnings.
In May 1938, at a regional synod of the French église réformée (the Reformed Church of France, historically the primary Protestant council in France), pastor André Trocmé, then assigned to the Protestant church in Le Chambon, proposed the creation of a new secondary school. His proposal envisioned a school that would address four goals: work against the rural depopulation and impoverishment of Le Chambon, then a small farming village in an isolated mountain region; provide high-quality secondary education for the children of the area's Protestant parishes; experiment with innovative educational ideas and practices that might eventually spread to the wider public school system; and provide a milieu in which teachers and students of different nationalities could meet and develop values related to internationalist ideals of cooperation and peace.
Working with Edouard Theis, another local pastor, the school's first classes were held in September 1938. On its first day, the school had four teachers and 18 students, and met in a room in the Protestant “Temple” or church of Le Chambon.
Shelter for refugees during World War II
Because of its relatively remote and protected location in Le Chambon, and because it was founded by the same pastors who became the leaders of local efforts to save refugees from Nazi occupation forces and the French Vichy regime that collaborated with them, the Cévenol school played an integral role in the now-famous efforts of the local citizenry in hiding and protecting several thousand Jewish refugees, including many children, throughout the war.