Lycée Janson de Sailly

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Lycée Janson de Sailly is a lycée located in the XVIe arrondissement of Paris, France. . It is generally considered as one of the very best lycées in France. The lycéens of Janson are called les jansoniens and they usually refer to their high school as Janson, or JdS. It is the biggest lycée of the country: 3,200 boys and girls from 11 to 20 attend it.

Location: lattitude: 48°51'55.28"N ; longitude: 2°16'47.60"E.

[edit] History

Monsieur Janson de Sailly was a very rich parisian lawyer, who found out that his wife had a lover. Therefore, he decided to disinherit her and to bequeath all of his fortune to the State, under the condition that it would be used to establish a modern high school that will distribute an excellent education and where no woman will ever be allowed. The lycée was built in the 1880s. Victor Hugo who lived nearby made a speech for the inauguration. The lycée Janson de Sailly was the first republican lycée of France (the others were royal or imperial inheritances); it aimed at training the future french scientific, literary, military, industrial, diplomatic and political elites of the young Third Republic.Because of its excellency, it soon gain a reputation in the whole country and attracted the most brilliant pupils of France. It also turned out to become one of the lycées of the parisian high society.
The moto of the lycée was Pour la Patrie, par le livre et par l'épée (For the Homeland, by the book and by the sword). Indeed, a lot of jansonians joined the army or the navy, and became famous by taking part in the conquest of the french colonial Empire, especially in Africa.
In 1944, a few hundreds of jansonians managed to leave the lycée and joined the French Free Forces (the 1st Army of Jean de Lattre de Tassigny): they founded a new elite unit, le 2ème Bataillon de Choc, also kown as Bataillon Janson-de-Sailly. They faced the German divisons in Alsace (especially in the battles of Masevaux and Colmar) during the great counter-attack of Ardennes, and entered Germany with Patton's forces in 1945.

[edit] Teaching

Nowadays, the 3,200 students are equally divided into the three traditional formations of the french education system: collège (30 classes with collégiens from 11 to 14), lycée (30 classes with lycéens from 14 to 18) and Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes écoles (30 classes with sudents from 18 to 20).

In France, students must choose 2 languages that they will learn. At first, in Janson, they can have English or German. The second choice is larger: English, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese or Russian.