INTERVIEW
The primary, blind spot problems of undermining secularism in education? This is the opinion of Ismaïl Ferhat, member of the Observatory of Education and lecturer at the University of Picardy Jules Verne, in Picardy. While the Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer opens a seminar of coordinators of academic teams on secularism at school, Tuesday, the specialist focused on this issue at the microphone Europe 1 Matthieu Belliard.
No ministerial inquiry devoted
"This is a recurring problem: for the first degree, it is difficult to measure the difficulties that exist," says the author of the Scarves of Discord. Returns on the case of Creil 1989 (editions of the Dawn). "The annual ministerial inquiry into school violence (Civis) is for the second degree and it is difficult to measure the level of violence that exists in the first degree."
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However, he says, "we know that there are difficulties": "The fact that there are problems of secularism in primary school is likely, but it is more difficult to identify it." And according to him, this is explained by the fact that there is "no heads of establishment in the first degree, so the recovery is less" with the services of the National Education.
A stronger response from the authorities
This also applies to non-contract schools, which host "less than 1% of students". "It remains extremely small but as it is not regulated in the same way as the public sector or private contract, the off-contract may have much harder cultural or religious traditions," says the specialist of the issue.
Faced with these hard-to-quantify data, coupled with a tenuous border between issues of secularism and school violence, the authorities' response seems to be strengthening. Ismaïl Ferhat takes the example of exemptions of convenience at the pool: "For a very long time, it was accepted, we knew that some of the students were exempted pool for reasons more or less acceptable objectively, sometimes for religious reasons "he says. "Today, we see that the ministry hardens the tone saying that it is not normal that girls do not go to the pool for religious or cultural reasons."