It was a Monday like any other at the Sévigné high school in Tourcoing, an establishment like France has hundreds of them. On October 7, the weekend break closed, the school anthill could resume its daily frenzy: the race for the last photocopies in the teachers’ room, and that of students rushing to classes. The whispered questions, laughter and discussions enliven this little theater of human comedy. A unique theater though. Because this high school, like its peers, welcomes within its walls a partly constrained public, who, let’s not hide it, would dream of being elsewhere. He welcomes it because it is there that the noblest of missions takes place: transmitting knowledge, educating, training free and enlightened citizens, capable of making their own choices.
This Monday, October 7, at the Sévigné high school as everywhere in France, teachers reminded us, through dialogue or firmness, of the rules that govern our school. Some which concern good citizenship and decorum: “Take off your coat”. “Get your stuff out.” “Throw away your gum.” Others which touch on the very philosophy which founded the school: the secularity of teaching, staff and students.
This secularism which, by its very essence and its requirement, asks everyone to put aside their inherited identity, prohibits all proselytism, to make themselves available to knowledge. “No, what I teach you is not what I believe, but scientifically proven knowledge”; “No, you cannot refuse to come to class because the chapter offends you or displeases you”; “You know very well that you must not wear a veil within the premises of the establishment, take it off.”
Beaten up by a student
It was for having uttered these last words that a teacher, that Monday in Tourcoing, in a high school of which there are hundreds in France, was insulted and beaten up by a student.
If the students have always dealt with the rules and the authority of their teacher, the seriousness of the attack suffered by our colleague lies in something completely different. The law of March 15, 2004 which prohibits the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols is intended to protect the freedom of conscience of our students, the cornerstone of our republican school and its emancipatory function. However, it has become usual, in certain establishments, for some adolescents to try to circumvent this provision. By removing your scarf a little after entering. By wearing a hood, sometimes with a surgical mask. No one is fooled, except those who want to be and who regard this as epiphenomena or unfortunate news items. Like Panglosses of the 21st century, we can see them, sneering and shrugging their shoulders saying: “But, they are young people after all! It’s normal for them to protest against prohibitions”, “And after all, this law , between you and me, isn’t she a little racist and Islamophobic?”
For a long time now, schools have become grounds for religious confrontations and community drama. It is a privileged target of the Islamists and a privileged ground of conquest for the latter. What some present as a contemporary manifestation of a gentle war of buttons nevertheless leads teachers, as in Tourcoing this time, to be beaten, threatened with death, socially executed. And we know it in this disastrous month of October, sometimes physically.
Do not “saw the branch you are sitting on”
Students from Sévigné high school support their incriminated comrade. No wonder: mimicry, particularly gregarious, is widespread today in our classrooms. We were able to take stock of this when the wearing of abayas spread like wildfire, via calls on social networks mixing adolescent emotion and Islamist arguments. The agents of terror and fundamentalist activists have partly realized their dream: turning young people against their teachers.
Let us therefore salute the courage and honor of our colleague who, like some, could have looked away, and like others, looked at his shoes, and then exclaimed that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”. These vestiges of vagueness, coated in false generosity masking a real social miserabilism under the vague pretext of “fight against discrimination”, are those which today continue to deeply harm the teaching profession, and often prevent them from uniting. .
In an environment bruised and deeply destabilized by identity pressures of all kinds, particularly Islamist, certain teaching unions, first and foremost SUD, are deploying crazy energy to denigrate the law of March 15, 2004, presenting it as “liberticidal”. They do not hesitate to speak out for those who helped organize the manhunt which cost the life of Samuel Paty. What can we also say about political parties claiming to be the heirs of Jaurès or Jean Zay, and who have thrown overboard, through demagoguery and pure electoral calculation, the defense of secularism, which they now present as discriminatory.
Not apart from a contradiction, these are the same people who, quick to denounce the “commodification of school”, behave like McDonald’s customers: dear students, come as you are! Because who can still argue, unless they are in bad faith or blinded by ideology, that the ban on religious symbols in schools is tantamount to racism? Who can believe that the simple authorization of the veil will bring calm and serenity to educational establishments? How can we accept, when we are a teacher, that religious intimidation imposes its law on school grounds? Should we like to saw the branch we are sitting on…
While the middle and high schools of France commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy suffered by Samuel Paty, coupled last year with the massacre in Arras which cost the life of Dominique Bernard, and injured several other of our colleagues, the aggression of Tourcoing must lead us to hammer and call again and again what seems obvious to us: the sacred union in the unshakeable defense of any teacher suffering threats for the defense of secularism.
The reaction of the authorities seemed to be commensurate with the seriousness of the facts and must contribute, through its consistency, to ensuring that this type of violence does not happen again. Regularly, however, secularism will be attacked. Because it is demanding, because it does not come naturally: asking a student to leave a belief, a faith that can be structuring for them, outside the establishment is not so obvious.
It is up to teachers, all teachers, unfailingly supported by management teams firm in respecting the law, to try to help them grasp all the freedoms that secularism promises. This is the entire honor of our colleague attacked in Tourcoing: having recalled, through his intervention, as a civil servant of the Republic, the singularity of this place. School is not a place like any other and that is why it must be ardently defended.
And this is why we will continue as long as necessary to defend the law of March 15, 2004 and its principles, because the secular breathing that it allows is necessary to consider another possibility, another knowledge than that transmitted by the family. or religions.
Let us hope that the violence suffered by our courageous colleague will not lead to the passivity of the rest of the educational community. That other teachers will not fear having a veil removed for fear of beatings, reprisals and threats. That management personnel will remain implacable, and will not allow flaws to appear or allow accommodations which in themselves constitute denials.
Renouncing our principles and the 2004 law, in addition to dishonoring us, will not bring us peace. Those who argue the opposite must understand that, under the pretext of openness and tolerance, they will prepare future attacks against the defenders of the law of March 15, 2004, and will deal a fatal blow to our values, just as violent as the blows dealt on our colleague in Tourcoing, just as lethal as the knife of the murderers of Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard.
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