In France, nursery school accommodates children aged 3 to 5, and some schools will accept students as young as 2 years old.
An école maternelle in the Burgundy region
Sara Banzet's wood burning stove, near which children learned to knit
A building still marked as housing a 'room of asylum' (salle d'asile) in northeastern France
An école maternelle in a southeastern suburb of Paris
The education system in France can be traced back to the Roman Empire. Schools may have operated continuously from the later empire to the early Middle Ages in some towns in southern France. The school system was modernized during the French Revolution, but roughly in the 18th and early 19th century debates ranged on the role of religion.
Typical school furniture of the period 1930 to 1950; Cité Découverte Nature at Miallet, Dordogne
'The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur Gaudry and His Daughter)'; by Louis-Léopold Boilly
"École chrétienne à Versailles"; by Antoinette Asselineau; 1839