On the Internet you can find a statement that until 1956, French schoolchildren were allowed to drink wine within the walls of an educational institution and that alcohol was even included in the canteen menu. We decided to check if this is true.
A story about the unusual assortment of French school canteens can be found on websites, dedicated to wine, in blogs on the platform "Zen", on the website Pikabu and in Facebook. It is alleged that students were allowed to drink up to half a liter of wine, cider or beer with meals, as it was believed that these drinks would strengthen the body of adolescents and give them additional strength. It was only in 1956 that this practice was eliminated.
By the 1950s, alcohol consumption in France had reached alarming levels. According to the UN, in 1952, a resident of the country was over 14 years old on average drank 138 liters of wine annually. In 1951, French statisticians calculated, that per Frenchman there is 21 liters of pure alcohol per year (for comparison, in Italy this figure in the same year was 9.2 liters, in the USA - 6.2 liters, in the UK - 5.9 liters).
In 1954, the French government was headed by a socialist Pierre Mendes-France, who immediately began to combat excessive alcohol consumption in the country. At the end of the year he established The Supreme Committee for the Study of Alcoholism, which since 1955 has launched a large-scale information campaign.
Mendez-France paid particular attention to alcohol consumption among children. How writes historian Stefan Le Bras, at that time, parents often gave their children a flask of wine diluted with water to school, and in the 1930s the state even welcomed this, calling for children to be taught the taste of wine from an early age. Le Parisien quotes Psychiatrist Suzanne Seren, who sounded the alarm in the 1950s: “Many parents gave their children alcohol with them. Sometimes it was half a liter of wine, sometimes cider or beer - depending on the region. I myself witnessed a small drama in the Paris region: parents insisted that their children take alcohol with them, but the director refused. Then the parents decided that the children would drink wine before leaving for school. The children came flushed, sweaty, and slept almost the entire morning right in class.”
Mendes-France himself participated in the campaign: he demonstratively drank only milk even at official receptions and, as an experiment, ordered free milk to be given to schoolchildren in several educational institutions. His government resigned in 1955, but during just over seven months in power, the prime minister managed to convince society of the need to combat excessive alcohol consumption.
On August 8, 1956, the French Ministry of Education issued circular, which completely prohibited the serving of any alcoholic beverages in school canteens to schoolchildren under 14 years of age. Older students were allowed to drink wine, but diluted with water and not more than 125 ml per meal. It was also allowed to drink light beer or light cider. At the same time, parents, according to the document, had the right to ask that their children not be given alcohol at all in school canteens.
Fully banned alcohol in schools only a quarter of a century later, on the initiative of the Minister of Education Alain Savary. In a circular dated September 3, 1981 indicated, that restrictive measures now also apply to lyceum students, that is, high school students: “Students are not supposed to be given any alcoholic beverages, even if we are talking about wine, beer or cider diluted with water. Acceptable drinks are water, milk and fruit juice (grape or apple).” The document specifically notes that schoolchildren cannot bring alcohol with them and drink it with meals.
Thus, alcohol was indeed allowed in French schools in the 1950s. For high school students, a complete ban came into force only in 1981.
Cover photo: France, school canteen, 1930/Archives de Paris
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