Vergonha is imagined as a process of "being made to reject and feel ashamed of one's (or one's parents') mother tongue through official exclusion, humiliation at school and rejection from the media", as organized and sanctioned by French political leaders[2][2][3] from Henri Grégoire onward. Vergonha is still a controversial topic in modern French public discourse[5] where some claim that such discrimination never existed; it is a commonly cited example of sanctioned systematic linguicide.[6] In 1860, before schooling was made compulsory, native Occitan speakers represented more than 39%[7] of the whole French population, as opposed to 52% of francophones proper; their share of the population declined to 26–36% by late 1920s,[8] Since the end of World War II, it experienced another sharp decline, to less than 7% by 1993.[9]