At 98, an ENSET Normalien Tells the Story of a Century of the School

2026-09-21 08:00:00

2026-09-22 19:57:15

2026-09-14 15:18:41

Camille BELMONTE BAVIERA

Born in 1927 near Arcachon, Charles Daney has just published Paris — Arcachon, Le Retour (Éditions Book Envol, 2025), a memoir that spans more than seventy years of professional and intellectual life. Admitted through the ENSET entrance examination in 1950 — the school that would become Cachan in 1985, then ENS Paris-Saclay in 2016 — he experienced all of its transformations, until his retirement from teaching in 1993.Paris or not Paris?It all began with a poster pinned to an information board at the Faculty of Arts in Bordeaux. A young teacher seconded to the École normale de la Gironde, Charles Daney discovered there the existence of a school he did not yet know: ENSET. At the time, the entrance examination took place on Boulevard de l’Hôpital, in the premises of Arts et Métiers, while awaiting the completion of the Cachan campus. Admitted in 1950, he hesitated for several days before leaving his native Gironde — a “Cornelian choice,” as he himself puts it.Le Havre, Corbeil, Jean-Baptiste Say: a career at the heart of the transformations of technical educationHaving obtained his CAPET as early as 1955, he first taught in Le Havre, returned to prepare for the agrégation at Cachan in 1958, then took part in the opening of the national technical high school of Corbeil in 1959. There, already as a passionate amateur, he conducted geographical research into the social origins of students in the different educational tracks. His career continued at Jean-Baptiste Say — where he experienced May 1968 from the inside —, then at the École alsacienne and Janson de Sailly.At the same time, he pursued a second intellectual life: proofreading newspapers, writing economic articles alongside Bertrand de Jouvenel, and above all maintaining a long-standing commitment to the Société de géographie de Paris, where he helped make use of its old photographic archives — work that would lead to several publications.Arcachon: the return, and a second career as an authorHis retirement in 1993 was not an ending but a new beginning. Back in Arcachon, Charles Daney became the author of around fifteen books on the history of the Arcachon Basin, Gironde and the Landes, published notably by Cairn and Loubatières. In 2007, he co-founded the Académie du Bassin d’Arcachon. Paris — Arcachon, Le Retour brings this cycle to a close by examining, with rare lucidity, what returning to one’s native land does to childhood memories — and what fifty years in Paris have, despite everything, changed in him.A testimony to the School’s long transformationBeyond the personal journey, this book is also a document about our institution: from ENSET, a school that was “technical and higher education at the same time,” housed in the buildings of Arts et Métiers, to today’s ENS Paris-Saclay. Charles Daney recalls, in small touches, just how much the School’s identity was built around the tension between academic recognition and its technical vocation.Source: Charles Daney, Paris — Arcachon, Le Retour, Éditions Book Envol, 2025.

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