Vic-en-Bigorre – Lycées Jean Monnet Unite in Honor of Europe’s Founding Father
On May 30, 2024, a group of students from Jean Monnet in front of the Pantheon, with the grandson, Jean-Gabriel Lieberherr.
By Clément Beaume
Last week, at the initiative of Jean Monnet’s grandson, several high schools in France bearing the name Jean Monnet gathered around this founding father of Europe.
In 2022, Jean-Marc Lieberherr, the grandson of Jean Monnet (1888-1979), contacted about thirty high schools named after his grandfather to showcase the importance of uniting people within a peaceful Europe through the unique journey of this founding father of Europe.
The European call
Four schools responded to the call: they are located in La Queue-Lez-Yvelines, near Bazoches-sur-Guyonne where the Jean Monnet House-Museum is located, La Fère (Aisne), Vic-en-Bigorre (Hautes-Pyrénées), and Le Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire).
At the Jean Monnet House-Museum…
During the first year, the educational teams worked together to define the pedagogical tools needed to promote the values of the character. Jean-Marc Lieberherr, with the “Jean Monnet Institute, uniting Men” that he created in 2021, developed several resources: a biography, a list of 100 quotes, 7 panels on the man’s life, a 9-minute film, available to schools from the start of the 2023 school year; then in 2024, a comic book and a 90-minute documentary “Jean Monnet, the adventurer of Europe” which will be broadcast on June 2, at 9 pm on France 5.
Pedagogy at the heart of the project
If Jean-Marc Lieberherr attended the centenary of the Agricultural and Forestry High School/Campus Agri-environment, Nature & Forest of Vic-en-Bigorre on April 8, 2023, he welcomed the schools of Vic-en-Bigorre and La Fère with the school of La Queue-Lez-Yvelines on May 22-24, 2024. The pedagogical program, discovery, and conviviality delighted the students and the educational and management teams.
For this meeting, each class had built playful tools to discover Jean Monnet within their school program and presented them to their classmates and local personalities: an emotional and engaging tour of the Jean Monnet house, a Wheel of Fortune questionnaire for the locals, street interviews and digital quizzes for the Pyrenees, a Life Fresco reconstruction game for the Axonians.
Emotional moments
In a preview, Jean-Marc Lieberherr offered and signed a Jean Monnet comic book (from the “they made history” collection) to each student.
At the Pantheon in Paris, his brother, Jean-Gabriel, welcomed the now “family of Jean Monnet high schools.” The students laid flowers in the colors of Europe and Ukraine on their grandfather’s tomb. They were able to exchange in an atmosphere of respect, solemnity, emotion, communion, and sharing.
At the Pantheon
Surely, they left with the feeling of having experienced historic moments just days before the upcoming European elections, where the awareness of unity must be strengthened. Another way to bring students closer to Europe in a school where Erasmus+ mobilities are frequent. Meetings are scheduled between educational teams to strengthen this new network.
