The tribute to Samuel Paty, "a major challenge" for teachers

INTERVIEW

The start of the school year promises to be complicated for teachers on Monday.

Between the health and security context, the teachers will also have the heavy task of assisting the students during the tribute to Samuel Paty, the history and geography teacher beheaded for showing caricatures of Muhammad in class.

A minute of silence will be observed in all schools in France, from primary to high school.

Ensure that

But teachers could be confronted with recalcitrant students, as after the attack against Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. The researcher and historian Sébastien Ledoux, who defended a doctoral thesis on the duty of memory, explained Sunday evening on Europe 1 this "major challenge" that awaits teachers.

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"We have to talk about this violent death with a lot of pedagogy"

Sébastien Ledoux taught ten years in Grigny, in the Paris region.

He investigated for three years the school world for three and found, after having collected many testimonies, many tensions during the homage to Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. A scenario that could be repeated on Monday.

"You have to keep in mind that we are facing a major challenge in front of this minute of silence. The minute of silence creates a community of mourning, which means bringing in the students. There are different ages, since it goes from elementary school to high school. You have to talk about this violent death with a lot of pedagogy. You have to know how to talk about this violent death, which touches the heart of the education system ", explained the researcher.

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"You have to be ready to have students who do not feel concerned"

"The difficulty for the teachers will be additional since it is about a teacher who was assassinated. They could be confronted with pupils who do not feel concerned", fears Sébastien Ledoux.

"You have to organize this and be ready to have students who are not concerned with you. It could be, for example, students who will say: 'he looked for it', as we heard during the attack. of Charlie Hebdo. A student can also turn his back, or he withdraws or apart during meditation ", took the researcher as an example.

But Sébastien Ledoux calls not to make these recalcitrant students into Islamists in the making.

"There is a whole range. If the students do not feel concerned, we should not attribute to them for all that sharing an Islamist ideology. Beyond the minute's silence, we must come back to the question of secularism, freedom of expression, "he advised.