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Résumé Alors que sous la Troisième République les questions scolaires occupent une place importante, dans une France majoritairement rurale, le monde agricole est traversé par la rivalité des républicains anticléricaux et des catholiques. Dans le département du Pas-de-Calais, ces deux forces s’affrontent sur le terrain du syndicalisme mais aussi sur celui de l’enseignement professionnel agricole. Cela conduit certes au développement de deux réseaux distincts qui se partagent les formations longues ou courtes, les cours par correspondance et les cours post-scolaires mais ces luttes d’influence n’ont pas réellement œuvré en faveur de l’essor de la formation initiale des agriculteurs. Ces derniers n’y sont guère sensibles et le syndicalisme, le mouvement coopératif... retiennent davantage l’attention des dirigeants agricoles.

Farmers’Education and Vocational Training in the Pas-de-Calais under the Third Republic During the Third Republic, education issues were at the forefront of preoccupations and, as France was still a predominantly rural country, the farming community was not spared the rivalries between anticlerical republicans and Catholics. In the Pas-de-Calais department, these two forces fought over the control of unions but also over that of farmers’vocational training. Consequently, this split led to the development of two distinct education networks which both managed shorter and longer training curricula, provided distance learning and further education courses, but this struggle for influence did not really benefit the farmers’initial training. Furthermore, these latter were not really interested in training issues and were more focused on the questions of organisation and the development of the co-operative movement.