Abstract EN:

The 20th century has seen the expansion and the triumph of the textbookk in the teaching of history in secondary schools. It has left its mark on the lives and fed the memories, of generations of students and teachers. It has been the source of impassioned debates which , as they always led to innovations, allowed it to survive by adapting to a world governed by the media. Its social, cultural and thus, historical importance, its difference from the textbook of elementary schools, are at the origin of this research. Since it is at the crossroads of various sources, influences and viewpoints, the textbook has acquired its inner dynamics. The intent was, through an open approach, to trace through the represenatations, the images of the hsitory book and its relations with memory, its evolutions, its projects, its fundamentally human as well as purely functional dimensions. Its definition, beyong the legal and institutional rules and regulations, is also a matter of idealized, realistic, dubious or critical firsthand testimonies, childhood memories and practices. Through all the turmoils of its existence, the textbook changes faces , structures, but will constantly keep its specificities which echo the needs of the public at which it is aimed. As witnesses of these internal and external ruptures and continuities, the fluctuating destinies of a few complex and controversial politicians reveal the esential reference to the civic values which it will naturally promote. A model object, itself modelled by tyhe irregular rhythms of the evolution of contemporary history, it certainly proves its vitality which originates in contradictions and a rich complexity wxhich are still the basis of its pedagogical interest in the school system.