Does the 1902 curriculum program modernise teaching in boys’ high schools, as the Republicans committed to its implementation argue ? It is a fact that, inasmuch as the program reinforces the teaching of the sciences and of modern languages which, on a par with the classics, constitute from then on the basis of an education without Latin, and inasmuch as it revises the contents and the methods used in order to diffuse the “positive” spirit, characteristic of the radical and laic Republic, the program is both innovative and modern in the sense that it tries to adapt the course of studies to the needs of the democracy and nation at the beginning of the 20th century. The result is that the reformers’ adversaries accused them of distorting secondary education, some of them making use of the reform’s critique to discredit the regime. The battle around renovation lasted no less than ten years but the ministry of Education did not give in and, even if the analysis of inspectors’ reports shows that the reform had a limited impact on actual teaching because the evolution of pedagogical practice takes place in the long run, the reform signalled the end of the Napoleonian lycée.