What do you think France will be like when these students grow up?
“TESTIMONY. After Samuel Paty’s assassination, ‘a third of my students are contesting the curriculum,'” translated from “TÉMOIGNAGE. Après l’assassinat de Samuel Paty, ‘un tiers de mes élèves conteste les programmes,'” by Arnaud Bélier, Ouest-France, November 16, 2020 (thanks to Mason):
A month ago, on October 16, Samuel Paty, professor of history and geography, was assassinated on leaving his high school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines). His killer had learned that he had shown caricatures of Mohammed published in Charlie Hebdo in class. He had wanted to punish him for it. An extreme gesture, which happily remains isolated. But the difficulty remains of teaching these curricula, of nurturing debates in class calmly. As evidenced by Isabelle (assumed name), a French teacher practicing in the Parisian suburbs. She “fell from her chair” after questioning her students following the minute of silence organized in her establishment on November 2. Here is his testimony.
“I’ve been teaching for six years. I love this job that I discovered by chance, after working in the event industry. But I feel like things are changing, and not in a good way. After the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015, national unity formed spontaneously. Of course, we heard phrases like, “They asked for it.” We heard students say it, but it was very rare.
I wondered how I could tell the students about it
After Samuel Paty’s assassination on October 16, I wondered how I was going to be able to tell the students that I would have during the minute of silence on November 2. I was amazed that I hadn’t seen anything on social media, when students usually react quickly to news, like when girls were banned from wearing crop-tops. This time, nothing. I thought to myself: this is not normal, there is something underground.
I started my class by showing drawings by Daumier [a famous 19th century cartoonist], then some from Charlie Hebdo, but not those depicting Muhammad. I never used the word caricatures. The class went well. Afterwards, I told them to take a sheet of paper and answer, anonymously, these three questions: “What happened on October 16th?”; “What did you take away from Emmanuel Macron’s speech during the tribute to Samuel Paty?”; “Are there any points you wish to raise?”
Reassure me, aren’t you going to behead me?
And then I fell from my chair. In short, a third of the students said: “It is not normal to criticize Islam, like other religions, by the way”; “It was better before, when there was no freedom of speech”; “Why are the cartoons in the curriculum?”; “I don’t see the point in talking about all this.” We discussed this. At the end, I said to them, to lighten the mood, “Reassure me, aren’t you going to behead me?” A student replied, “Don’t worry. Not you …”
A third of a class that challenges the curriculum, it’s scary, it’s going to be hard to deconstruct. What to say to this second-grade student who, during a presentation, pixelated the sex of a statue of Modigliani, because he found it “inappropriate”? What to say to these students who say they are shocked by Persepolis [a comic strip, then a film by Marjane Satrapi on her youth in Iran]? What to answer when someone asks me: “Why does Dieudonné lose all his trials, and Charlie Hebdo, never?”
Teachers should be forced to take civics classes
I feel helpless. I think that we can only deconstruct these discourses by being concrete about the scientific knowledge that we teach students. When I became a teacher four years ago, I was asked to memorize the Ten Positions of a State Official. Slogans that mean nothing. Teachers should be required to take solid civics lessons. However, it is clear that we do not have enough control over these subjects today.”