School House (L'école)

Louisiana's 1864 constitution made English the language of public instruction, but French returned to primary schools from 1879 and to secondary schools by 1913. The 1921 constitution reversed it and banned French teaching in every public school. Teachers who could not speak French were hired, and students who spoke it at school faced corporal punishment. Roughly a million native speakers lived in the state around 1968, the year CODOFIL began; by 2011 estimates were 150,000 to 200,000. Cajun French fell 17 percent as a first language among Cajuns born during World War II.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — steps away
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 5.7 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 12 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 12 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• Mouton Kitchen (La Cuisine de Maison Mouton) — steps away
• Beau Bassin House (La Maison Beau Bassin) — steps away
• Acadian House (Maison Acadienne) — steps away
• Trappers Cabin & Boat Shed — steps away