“Afraid for my safety? It’s especially for my children that I worry, because my students sometimes come across me in the city center with their family and I wouldn’t want them to attack them,” confides this teacher who filed a complaint for threats and insults against three minors in March 2021. Two months before, from the first day of her arrival at this high school located in the heart of Valence, in Drôme, this replacement – who wishes to remain anonymous – became insulted in the middle of class by a small group of middle school students. “At noon, when I leave the establishment to head towards my car, the latter, who were at the bus stop, start yelling: “Look, it’s the French teacher, a bitch, a dirty whore!”” For many weeks, the young woman suffered insults and intimidation. His complaint was dismissed in October 2022; his lawyer decides to file an appeal with the attorney general. Nothing moves until she alerts the local press. The classification without further action is then canceled. The young people will appear before the Valencia children’s judge next January. That is almost three years after the events!
“This case that I am responsible for is a summary of all the obstacles that teachers who go to court face today,” protests Me Anne-Valérie Pinet. Mandated for thirteen years by the Grenoble academy to defend the agents of the National Education of Drôme who benefit from functional protection – which includes payment of their procedural costs – this lawyer denounces “the inertia of the justice”. “It’s always the same story. Once the complaint has been filed, we have to relaunch it constantly to, ultimately, end up with no further action being taken. And even when the young people are finally judged, the fact that it takes years later no longer makes any sense,” she laments. On paper, what do they risk criminally? Community service, awareness training, home detention under electronic surveillance, or even a prison sentence from 13 years in extreme cases. “But prison is generally not what my clients ask for. What they want above all is to be recognized as victims and for a time before the judge to have an educational value for their attackers,” insists Anne-Valérie Pinet.
These last few weeks have once again been marked by tragedies: on December 13, a 12-year-old schoolgirl threatened a teacher with a knife at the Hautes-Ourmes college, in Rennes; on November 28, a young Strasbourg resident in third grade, whose cell phone had been confiscated, told a French teacher: “I’m bringing friends back from the outing, I’ll kill you”; on November 23, a student from Le Ribéral college, in Saint-Estève (Pyrénées-Orientales) tried to spit on several teachers… and received a simple permanent suspension of exclusion following the disciplinary council. What the teaching team denounces in a letter where they say they are “angry and in danger”… According to a survey carried out in 2021 by Ifop for the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, 1 in 2 teachers have already been victims of physical or verbal aggression during his career from students or their parents. Nearly half of them (45%) were the subject of insults or slanderous remarks during face-to-face encounters, 28% of threats of aggression and 21% of light physical aggression (i.e. without temporary work interruption). 7% were placed on sick leave due to a “serious” physical attack.
Catherine Weill was violently attacked in the middle of class on February 8, 2019 while she was teaching at the Louis Armand vocational high school, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. Since her arrival in October, this contractual math-science replacement had drawn up several incident reports, notably for having been called a “dirty whore” in the corridor; for having been challenged in the middle of class by five students excluded the day before, one of them asking her: “Are you Jewish? And in any case you are nothing here”; or when someone else broke into his room and took the class hostage for a quarter of an hour.
Until that famous day when a student asked her, between two physics practicals, if it was she who wrote a report on him. “I nod, the student comes out and then thirty seconds later a hooded individual enters, jumps on me and sprays me with tear gas,” recalls Catherine Weill, who says she suffered ocular after-effects. However, his complaint will be closed without further action, on the grounds that “the investigation did not make it possible to identify the person(s) who committed the offense”. The teacher then filed a civil suit but the procedure ended with a dismissal of the case. “I remain convinced that the young person against whom I wrote the report knew the perpetrator of the acts but we did not see fit to go further, to carry out a real investigation and we preferred to cover up the matter so as not to “not make waves”, says the woman who was also dismissed her complaint for inexcusable fault on the part of the employer.
A glaring lack of doctors, nurses, psychologists
On an educational level, the most important disciplinary sanctions taken against a violent student is the definitive exclusion voted on by the disciplinary council. “But school leaders often do everything to avoid it knowing that, through a game of musical chairs, the risk is that they will find another excluded student elsewhere. It is better for them to keep the one they already know,” advances Arnaud Fabre, professor of literature and national administrator of the Stylos rouge collective. The ministry denies the existence of “this ‘one for one’ logic”. “After an exclusion procedure, the choice of a new establishment mainly takes into account its ability to ensure close monitoring, or its accessibility by public transport,” explains rue de Grenelle. And Valérie Piau, lawyer specializing in education law, points out that schooling up to the age of 16 is compulsory. “The institution therefore has no other choice than to relocate an excluded young person elsewhere. And fortunately because what prospects would they have left if they were deprived of access to education?”, she insists.
A simple change of assignment is not always enough to stop the spiral and the risk is great that a student who commits violence will start again. Hence the possible use of “relay systems” designed to help young people “marginalized academically and socially” to get back on track. In 2019, the then minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, announced that he was going to strengthen these programs which benefit from a partnership with the judicial protection of youth (PJJ), local authorities and associations. Currently, there are 400 units of this type in France – workshops, boarding schools, classes – or four per department. In 2017, 8,500 students benefited. In the 2021-2022 school year, there were 7,987. The trend is therefore downward. “There was a decline with the Covid period,” responds the ministry, for which “the current idea is not to open new structures.” “One of our priorities is that upon release, young people can reintegrate as best they can into an ordinary school environment, with the help of the PJJ and child welfare services,” continues rue de Grenelle.
In France, the lack of specialized educators, but also of doctors, nurses or psychologists in schools is regularly pointed out. Like recently, in Rennes, where the first elements of the investigation show that the young girl who threatened her teacher with a knife had a psychiatric history. “Silence” and “loneliness”, these two words come up regularly in the testimonies of these teachers confronted with attacks. “When I arrived at what was my last school, I discovered that I was the replacement for the teacher’s replacement. Everyone had broken down before and left without it making any noise,” confides the teacher from Valencia. “I think of all these other students forced to endure the disorder and fear caused by a small handful of their classmates who impose their own laws. They are the first victims and I remain convinced that many drop out because of that.” insists Catherine Weill in turn. Both teachers have since thrown in the towel and stopped teaching.
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