INTERVIEW
With the simplification of the health protocol announced this week by Jean-Michel Blanquer, all children from primary and middle school are expected in class Monday. But Mathias de Breyne, dad and author of The New Dads, fully commit to your fatherhood , refuses to send his 7-year-old son back to school. Unlike some parents worried for health reasons, evokes reasons "mainly symbolic and psychological" and believes on Europe 1 Sunday that the government has been "authoritarian" in infantilizing the parents.
Infantilization and source of anxiety
"It's not the health rules that bother me the most," says Mathias de Breyne. "The government wanted to show authority, and for me the return should have been on a voluntary basis. I believe that we take parents for children," he indignant.
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Symbolically, this also poses a problem for him: "My son was told that the return to school would take place in September," recalls the father. "Adults spend their days asking children to respect what they are told to do, and here we do not respect what we have told them."
Then, he believes that this new change is a "source of anxiety for children who have already had to adapt" to confinement, even though one of the reasons cited for returning to class, namely the lack of connection social, is, according to him, a false idea. "The social bond still exists," he says, with the other children in the village where they live.
"It's absurd"
"What is complicated for parents is that we have moved, 15 days before the end of the school year, to a change of instructions," confirms Céline Sierran director of an elementary school in Nantes. According to her, "if the resumption had been compulsory from May 11, things would have been different". Contrary to papa, however, she considers that it is "important that all children return to school", although she understands the families' distress, "to counter inequalities, and above all so that they" can say goodbye to their teacher, to their classmates, to end this very difficult year for everyone. "
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Mathias de Breyne nevertheless believes that the government's request is not logical, for only two weeks of school, "knowing that in reality there are 4 days left". According to him, "this is also where it is absurd: often parents do not put children in school the last week of lessons, and often we do not work - we see it every year." The father finally said "for a total reinvention of the French school", on Scandinavian models.