The clash was predictable. During the board of directors on October 21, a group of teachers from the Marcelin-Berthelot high school in Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis) presented a motion entitled “The Republic is us”. The teachers mention the upcoming arrival of two inspectors, members of the Créteil academic mission dedicated to the values of the Republic. The latter have been mandated to provide secularism training to all staff. For some time, a dozen young girls have been wearing the veil in high school, despite the law of March 15, 2004 which prohibits the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in public schools. “When laws and regulations seem to be poorly articulated, it is possible that certain provisions are applied with moderate zeal”, advances the collective.
The training will take place. But will take place in a very tense climate. “While we were there to recall the law, a handful of protesters constantly brought us back to the field of ideology, accusing us of Islamophobia”, says an inspector present, who wished to remain anonymous. At the next board meeting, a teacher will read a new motion written in fable form, “The Snake and the Pug.” “A single theme chosen, the veil of young girls”, accuses the text in reference to the content of the training. “What mistake would they make, if in addition to being women, at the present time, they were Muslims”, he continues. “The pug is me!”, Specifies the inspector who filed the complaint. “This is the first time in my career that I have been faced with such a situation”, she nevertheless wishes to specify.
Is the Lycée Berthelot affair an isolated case or the reflection of a more general fundamental movement? During a trade union training course, which took place on January 24 and 25 at the Saint-Denis Labor Exchange, SUD Education 93 offered a workshop on the theme “Law of 2004: chronology and struggles against a law racist and sexist in education”. This frontal opposition is a first for the far-left union. “Our position on the subject has not changed, we are not calling for the repeal of this law”, says Jules Siran, federal co-secretary of SUD Education. “There can be debates within the framework of a training course, we can discuss a topical subject without deducing that it is for us a central theme”, continues- he. An ambiguous positioning according to Iannis Roder, professor of history and geography in Seine-Saint-Denis. “Would the instruction given to their activists and members by the union representatives of SUD Education 93 be – I am careful to use the conditional – not to enforce the law of the Republic in schools? This deserves a clear answer”, insists the one who is also a member of the Council of Elders of Secularism set up by Jean-Michel Blanquer.
However, this radical position remains very much in the minority in the teaching world. According to a survey by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, carried out in December 2020, 94% of public teachers are now in favor of this 2004 law (compared to 76% the year of its vote). Overall, the measure is well accepted in the field. Nevertheless, some recent examples show that it is not necessarily well applied everywhere. Last year, two teachers from the Angela Davis high school in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) received a reprimand for refusing to have their signs “ostensibly manifesting a religious affiliation” removed from young girls in their classes. “Recently, a teacher contacted me to tell me that students, once they passed the control at the entrance to the establishment, put the veil back inside without their colleagues finding fault”, continues Iannis Roder. Also in the Paris region, a teacher took the side of a student who did not want to remove her veil during a school outing, clearly opposing the deputy headmaster who ordered him to do so.
Reflection of a generational divide around secularism
For the former Inspector General Jean-Pierre Obin, author of How Islamism was allowed to penetrate the school (Hermann, 2020), these militants in question “are part of the tradition of anarcho-syndicalists who place their own values above those of the Republic”. “Some are also in a demagogic posture vis-à-vis their students perceived as victims of so-called state racism,” he adds. For the former senior civil servant, these debates which resurface around the veil at school would also reflect a generational divide around questions of secularism. According to an Ifop poll carried out for the Licra in January 2021, 52% of high school students surveyed are in favor of the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols by students in the public (compared to 25% among all French people). “This divide also exists between some young teachers and the older ones. The former would be more inclined to lean towards Anglo-Saxon “secularism”… Which, for me, is an oxymoron!” exclaims Jean-Pierre Obin.
The school is one of the main epicentres of the quarrel between the supporters of a so-called “republican” vision of secularism and those who advocate a so-called “liberal” vision. “For the former, putting cultures of origin on hold is the obligatory passage point for the training of future citizens, explains sociologist and economist Eric Maurin. For the latter, the diversity of cultures of origin must be recognized and to be able to express themselves in the classroom.” In this latter perspective, banning the veil at school would be counter-productive, even testifying to an anti-Muslim obsession. In his book Three Lessons on the Republican School (Seuil, 2021), the director of studies at the EHESS is precisely looking at the concrete effects of the 2004 law. Which had never been done before. We discover, supported by a study, that the Bayrou circular of 1994 – this one comes a few years after the Creil affair and mentions for the first time the prohibition of ostentatious religious symbols -, then the law of 2004 , were followed by an increase in the educational level of young girls of Muslim origin*.
Eric Maurin’s book also looks back on the debates of the time and the role of the Stasi commission. Within the framework of this commission, created by Jacques Chirac in 2003, several hearings had been conducted with actors in the field. The members, who initially defended very pluralistic visions, ended up rallying unanimously (minus one abstention, that of the sociologist Jean Baubérot) to the principle of the prohibition of religious symbols at school. “The testimonies of teachers, on the front line in the field, but also neighborhood associations, opened their eyes to the intolerable pressures suffered by certain young girls. It has been shown that, for many of them, wearing the veil was not a personal choice”, continues Eric Maurin who points out, however, that times have changed. Debates around questions of identity have hardened, driving an irremediable fault line between the different currents of thought.
No union is calling for the repeal of the 2004 law
The activist Fatima Ouassak, co-founder of the Mothers’ Front, which presents itself as a “union of parents of students” and for whom the school is part of a racist system, does not hesitate to point the finger at the law of 2004 in his writings. She encourages parents to “fight at all levels, from the law against the headscarf of 2004 to the obligation to put meat on the plates in the canteen, from the massive non-replacement of teachers to the stigmatization of frizzy hair, from white-centric school curricula to missionary teachers, from the racist guidance system to the hunt for the long skirt”. Last January, the teacher-researcher Laurent Frajerman challenged the organization of the popular primary school which said it was “proud to count it among its supporters”. “What seems problematic to me when we know that Fatima Ouassak’s speech consists in opposing the inhabitants of the districts to the teachers”, he explains.
A form of lobbying to be taken seriously, even if, on the side of the national teachers’ unions, no one is today calling for the repeal of the 2004 law. “Going back on it would be a mistake since we have found a good balance” , says Paul Devin, president of the FSU Research Institute. The work coordinator Secularism at school. For a necessary appeasement (Editions de l’Atelier, 2021) however warns against “the too rigorous use that we could make of it”. Very clear allusion to the line held by the Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer. “What do I blame him for? To focus on what is dysfunctional and to suggest that the school would today be in a catastrophic situation. Which contributes to accentuating the current tensions on the ground”, he denounces .
For his part, Jean-Pierre Obin, mandated by the Rue de Grenelle to produce a report on the training of National Education personnel in secularism and the values of the Republic, considers that it is urgent to act. A vast training plan was launched from the start of the 2021 school year. In this context, the 2004 law, relating to the prohibition of the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in schools, will of course be mentioned. “But transgressions related to wearing the veil are far from being the main problem, underlines Jean-Pierre Obin. “. According to the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, 1 in 2 teachers (49%) say they have already self-censored in secondary school (compared to 36% in 2018). A phenomenon which tends to increase since the assassination of Samuel Paty.
* The author used data from the “Trajectories and origins” survey, conducted by INED and INSEE from 2008. As well as INSEE’s annual employment survey, which gives an indication of the nationality of persons at birth.