As the Popular Primary opens this Thursday, which is to run until January 30, teacher-researcher Laurent Frajerman, specialist in educational policies at the Center for Research on Social Ties, is asking the organizers to account. He denounces in particular their acquaintances with Fatima Ouassak, spokesperson for the Front de Mères, a group of parents of students who hold a very controversial discourse on school and teachers. Certain proposals by activists – which do not appear precisely in the common base but in texts which the Popular Primary says have been inspired by and to which its site refers – would, according to him, also deserve to be debated. For this associate professor of history, the winning candidate will have to make a clear speech on the issues and priorities of the education system. And remove any ambiguity on the issues raised. Interview.
L’Express: Why did you find it important to decipher the vision held by certain organizers of the Popular Primary on education? What was the trigger?
Laurent Frajerman: It all started last November, when I discovered the participation of Fatima Ouassak, spokesperson for the Front de Mères, a group of parents, in an event organized by the Popular Primary. In a tweet, I was surprised by this invitation, stating that Fatima Ouassak “made herself famous by explaining that the school is racist and mistreats non-white students”. In response, the People’s Primary social media person told me that the organization was “proud to have her as a supporter.”
I wanted to go further by offering, still on Twitter, a kind of “best of” taken from a manifesto written by the Front de Mères, i.e. a few very explicit sentences including this one: “Our children understand very early that the school has a problem with their hair when it’s frizzy, with their mother tongue if it’s African, with their religion when it’s Islam”. Or: “Our children learn at school to be ashamed of what they are”. This time, I came up against total silence from the Popular Primary, despite the echo of my tweets, then of an article on the subject posted on my blog. Other sentences show that Fatima Ouassak’s objective is to oppose parents from working-class neighborhoods to teachers. Displaying this type of support seems problematic to me and worth discussing.
In what way does the thesis put forward by Fatima Ouassak seem dangerous to you?
His speech conveys the idea of structural racism within the school. This famous manifesto of the Front de Mères claims that immigrant mothers or mothers of immigrant origin would send their children to school “with a lump in their stomachs”. Words that are not only misleading but also dangerous. Some families may be seduced by this discourse, especially since part of the report drawn up by Fatima Ouassak is based on real facts. It is true that some schools combine several factors: an over-representation of families with an immigrant background, very strong social difficulties and a high school failure rate. In the current context of strong social and societal tensions, putting forward the idea that these difficulties are largely due to a form of racism in the teaching world risks giving an erroneous reading grid. However, if the students and their parents begin to doubt the intentions of the teachers, the consequences will be catastrophic. Teaching is a relational profession. It requires mutual trust.
Why taxing the school of racism is nonsense in your opinion?
On the one hand, there is no indifference to differences. Since 1981, priority education programs have been in place, granting additional resources to the most disadvantaged students. We can of course always discuss the effectiveness of these policies, but they exist. I would add that the school institution and the legislation strongly condemn any racist, homophobic or sexist idea.
“Teachers, on the contrary, constitute a pole of resistance to the ideas of exclusion and racism”
On the other hand, for forty years, sociological surveys have shown that the significant school failure of certain children is explained by their social position and not by their foreign origin. Reliable statistical tools allow us to measure the impact of the various factors. A study carried out on behalf of Cnesco (National Center for the Study of School Systems) confirmed this again recently. We can certainly do better, in particular by increasing social diversity, and by giving priority to school in budgetary choices, but let’s avoid caricatures.
Are teachers open to racist ideas?
Three major scientific studies, carried out over the past fifteen years, have shown that teachers form one of the categories of the population least permeable to far-right ideas. The percentage of teachers concerned is between 1 and 3%. Other more general polls – whose methodology I consider less reliable – arrive at a maximum of 10%. Which, of course, is always too much. But if we compare these figures with those of the rest of the population, we see that teachers are, on the contrary, a pole of resistance to ideas of exclusion and racism. We do not choose this job by chance, but on the basis of humanist values. These accusations correspond neither to what the teachers think nor to what the school institution does. I am surprised to be obliged to recall this evidence today.
Some activists are careful not to point teachers as responsible and prefer to talk about systemic racism….
The idea that teachers are racist “unknowingly” is less frank, and rather contemptuous. Teachers have a perspective on their profession, and are still able to question themselves if they find that such and such a “professional gesture” is likely to produce discrimination!
Some proposals, set out in a text hosted by the Popular Primary website, seem problematic to you… Which ones?
It is not because the Popular Primary puts forward a person like Fatima Ouassak that all its organizers adhere to its words. It is not for me to launch amalgams but rather to open the discussion. However, the content of certain texts, to which the site of the Popular Primary refers, deserves that we stop there. The common base, which conveys some very consensual major proposals, is not in question. On the other hand, the content of the brochure “Rencontre des justices”, written by “400 young activists and entrepreneurs of all causes” – including the leader of the Popular Primary Samuel Grzybowski – should be debated.
Theme 13 of this brochure is devoted to their education programme. One of the main objectives put forward: to give teachers “the necessary means for their missions and for non-discriminatory and critical learning”. Obviously, everyone on the left approves of the fight against discrimination. But isn’t the essential question that of academic failure? Or that of the decline of the French school system in international comparisons? I find it a pity that this last point is completely overlooked. I do not deny the presence of black sheep among teachers, as in all professions. It is normal to mobilize against certain inadmissible behaviors. But from there to making it the number one priority…
This text also evokes the importance of integrating “anti-colonial narratives” into the history program. How does this proposal shock you?
Both terms worry me: first, that of “stories” because history is not literature. As a teacher, I strive to impart scientific knowledge to my students. Then that of “anticolonial” because it specifies that the course must criticize colonization and not make it possible to understand this system and this time. It is customary among teachers to criticize the way the right defends the idea of a national novel, the story of the myths of eternal France. As a professor and historian, I join my colleagues. However, I am not ready to adopt a discourse that would convey other myths, even if it is for a good cause.
Many people talk about what history teachers wouldn’t teach without knowing the curriculum and practices. I recall that the question of colonization began to be taught in the 1970s. From the 1980s, it appeared in the curricula in a more constructed way. Scientific reflections are regularly carried out on the way in which it is approached. In short, it is not a terra incognita.
You also fear a questioning of the pedagogical freedom of teachers, a normally intangible principle…
A last point came to reinforce my concern: the idea of establishing a “compulsory and continuous training of teachers in the different pedagogies, in particular alternative” and in the “struggle against discrimination”. No minister has gone so far in the idea of an official pedagogy. Teaching is not an exact science, there are many theories and the professionalism of teachers must be respected. I may be on the wrong track, but I wonder: what are the good pedagogies according to the popular Primary? What should we teach all teachers, repeatedly, that they do not know about the fight against discrimination?
I therefore await answers to these questions. The popular Primary cannot pride itself on inventing a new political model and remaining in such vagueness on such serious questions.