Hell is not the only place paved with good intentions. Public schools are preparing to welcome a new devil: the uniform. In the name of equal opportunities, schoolchildren, middle school students, high school students, and we don’t see why not, in the long term, students and workers, in short everyone who does something will have to dress the same in their workplace. It is the beginning of social peace, the cement of citizenship, the last chic of secularism.
It was enough to think about it, but only he, President Macron, was capable of producing such a simple, pure common sense, and luminous idea. The uniform is the best response to discrimination of all kinds, protection against school harassment, it is the weapon of destruction of violence which, we have known since René Girard, is first and foremost a story of mimetic rivalry. And in our society, where everything is based on appearances, clothing imposes itself as a symbolic marker and patati et patata. It was time to put an end to the visible disparities, to attack the evil at the roots, starting by covering all the little French people with chaste democratic chasubles. Wave of a magic wand worthy of Wild swans from Andersen’s tale, remember: Elisa weaving nettle coats for her 11 brothers changed into swans by the wicked witch, weaving them with her bare hands, soothing her fingers blistered with nettle stings with her tears of pain, 11 coats that she will throw on the 11 swans who will then resume their human form. Macron is Elisa throwing on the little wild French people the nettle uniform that he woven with his bare hands to civilize them.
But be careful, according to Andersen, Elisa only managed to weave ten and a half coats, which means that one of her brothers, if I remember correctly, remains half brother and half swan. A bit like children born in France, but to foreign parents who, since the recently passed law, are no longer completely French, they are only temporarily. Generous law which grants these young temporary French people the precious advantage, the rich possibility, the sacred right to choose: French or Somali, French or Palestinian, French or stateless, the senators have nevertheless set limits for them, they will only be able to hesitate until the age of 18 and on condition that they have kept their cool during these eighteen years: no hash trafficking, no pro-Palestinian demonstration, that they do not try to take advantage of this status privileged to burn cars, frequent mosques a little too much, say bad words in their stupid rap songs. Eh.
Crazy money
For the wise, the exemplary children-of-foreign-parents, we imagine the relief, at 18, the joy, the well-deserved reward of choosing to become French or not. Their first criterion of choice, in this journey of ethnic shedding, this meritocratic sorting, will be the uniform, the one they will have worn during their schooling: if it was their size, to their taste, if they felt very French when wearing it, or if the rough seams of their madder pants will have irritated their crotches during these eighteen years of primary school, middle school, high school. In short, if they have bad memories of the uniform, we understand that they prefer to go to hell. By charter.
The problem, because there are always pros and cons, in Mr. Macron’s big decisions, is that this uniform thing is going to cost a crazy amount of money. Who will pay for the 15 million uniforms multiplied by two? And are shoes included? And the schoolbags? And who will design these uniforms? Pharrell Williams? And when it rains, when it snows, when it’s too hot, will we let the beautiful principles melt away under the weather?
It promises to be much more joyful to organize than the Olympic Games. The fact remains that we can count on our Gallic common sense of nonsense to derail this stupid project, and with a laugh.
*Christophe Donner, writer
.