Conference organised by Aime's History and Archaeology Society

Having achieved literacy and access to schooling at an early stage, Alpine communities in the early 19th century served as breeding grounds for schoolteachers, both for their own communities and for others. This was particularly true in the high valleys of the Tarentaise and Maurienne, as well as in the French-speaking regions of Piedmont—that is, in the eastern part of the former Escartons of the Briançonnais.
These peasant schoolteachers—the Tarins in particular, who were eager to train for this purpose—taught elementary school as part of their multiple occupations, an essential component of mountain life. Some taught in their own village or in a neighboring “region,” but others joined the “migration industry” and found work in the towns and hamlets of the lower valleys and the foothills.
It is the story of these teachers—known as itinerant, traveling, or even “writing peddlers”—that my presentation aims to shed light on, far removed from the image of the “teacher of yesteryear” and his “three feathers in his hat.”