This article examines eight issues of the Serbian periodical L’Instituteur/Učitelj/Primary School Teacher - the journal of the Association of (Serb, Croat and Slovene) Primary School Teachers, which was produced for Serbian teachers and students living in exile in France. It was published in Paris between November 1917 and June 1918, both in French and in Serbian Cyrillic. Almost impossible to find in libraries in Serbia and France, it remained out of the reach of researchers for years and was almost completely forgotten until it was reprinted in 2017. In this article we firstly provide an outline of the events that brought Serbian students and teachers to France. We then analyse the sections of the Učitelj/Primary School Teacher periodical written in Serbian to relate achievements of younger people or to encourage their compatriots. We also look at the articles in French which provide information about Serbian customs and their way of life to the French-speaking readership. These articles promote cooperation between the two nations, illustrate the specificities of the Serbian national education system in exile, and, still to this day, provide extremely valuable information. The wide-ranging experiences, both of the French and others, which are collected together in this periodical, together with the motivation and knowledge of Serbian pupils and students returning from France, would prove crucial for the revival of the Serbian education system after the Great War.
- France
- education
- teacher
- Great War
- Serbian youth