INTERVIEW
An equation for several million unknowns: how are schools, colleges and high schools going to ensure the gradual return of some 12 million students to schools, starting Monday, May 11? Nothing has been decided yet, but to fight the coronavirus, the security conditions will be much stricter than before confinement. To talk about it, Professor Robert Cohen, pediatrician and infectious disease specialist, and Iannis Roder, history professor at a college in Saint-Denis, were the guests of François Clauss, on Saturday, in It happened this week on Europe 1.
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In this period of uncertainty about the way out of the crisis, one thing is certain: "We cannot go back on May 11 as we came out, that is to say in whole classes and all the contingents in the yard to recreation ", notes Iannis Roder, also author of the book Allons-enfants de la République (Odile Jacob editions). "It is absolutely impossible."
The schoolyard turned upside down?
"We can not go back as we left, it seems absolutely obvious to me," says Robert Cohen, according to whom we must see this first year "as a start" of the school system for the future. "In September, it will be exactly the same, except that we will probably have the experience of these first months because it is necessary to organize" the development of a whole section of French society, which concerns everyone under the age of 16, their teachers and staff working in the establishments.
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But concretely, what will change in the daily life of children and their parents? At the microphone of Europe 1, the pediatrician plans "fewer classes, alternating classes, recess courses not organized in the same way, an improved level of hygiene, a way in which parents pick up children from the reorganized school ".
"Real test period"
More than a short-term effort, the fight against the coronavirus "is going to be a pedagogy over time", believes Robert Cohen: "It is important to start now to think about the good possible distancing measures in school, having keep in mind that children carry the virus less often and are generally less sick. We will have to make this enormous effort which involves hand washing, a certain degree of distancing, the idea that there is no of people crowded out of school. "
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A teacher in Seine-Saint-Denis, Iannis Roder also anticipates "a colossal challenge" for the entire school system: "It will require changes to timetables, adjustments to rooms, recreation times … School meals, for example: the pupils will have to be distant from each other in the canteen, if there is a canteen. We are going to live differently, "he says," and this period from May 11 to July 4 will be a real test period for the future. "