Showing caricatures of Muhammad to teach freedom of expression, "it's something that I could quite have done with my students, it's nothing delusional", reflects out loud Frédéric, professor of history. geography in a high school in Saint-Ouen, in Seine-Saint-Denis.
“But I ask myself, continues the same: to what extent will I still be able to do it?
Are we going to censor ourselves?
"
The question, mixed with emotion and a certain fear, "freezes" this teacher from the Parisian suburbs, as it froze a number of other teachers, incredulous, on Friday evening at the announcement of the attack which cost his life to one of their colleagues in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
Assassinated "because he taught freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not to believe", explained on the scene of the unthinkable Emmanuel Macron, before having these words, expected of the school world: "I want to say this evening to all the teachers of France that we are with them, the whole nation will be there today and tomorrow.
"
VIDEO. Emmanuel Macron in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine: "A characterized Islamist attack"
Already, the shock wave of the attack has spread, in the minds of the 800,000 officials in the classrooms.
Will we be able to teach tomorrow like yesterday?
And how to react, there, right away?
The holidays, which begin this Saturday, will disperse for two weeks a school world which will have, these days, a great need to exchange.
"We say to each other that something must be done, but we don't know what ..." admits Frédéric, stunned.
“We are stunned, and in mourning, our first thoughts are for his family of course.
The question of knowing what we can say in class now also arises, ”adds Christine Guimonet, teacher in a high school in Cergy-Pontoise and president of the association of history and geography teachers (APHG).
Restricted educational freedom?
Of course, the teaching of freedom of expression is part of the programs, and as such, it should not suddenly disappear from the notebooks of middle and high school students.
“We talk about it during moral and civic education, but also in history on various occasions, for example when studying the French Revolution and the emergence of the opinion press,” explains Christine Guimonet.
However, if the concepts are imposed by the programs, the tools used to explain the concepts fall within their pedagogical freedom.
It is this that could be constrained by the fear of violence.
"I refuse to give in, but yes, that's what is at stake," admits Philippe Watrelot, teacher of SES in a high school in the suburbs of Paris, and former director of the Educational Notebooks, widely listened to in the teaching world.
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So, if some teachers choose to show their students the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, for example, many others prefer less hot news content.
Christine Guimonet, with her high school students, draws on caricatures… from the 19th century, relating to the battle between the Catholic Church and the anticlericals.
"Drawings far more violent than those of Charlie Hebdo", underlines the professor.
But much less likely, too, to offend the sensitivity of the students, or that of their parents, and create incidents.
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Decapitated teacher in Conflans: the political world angry and in shock
According to the annual report of the National Education on the Values of the Republic, published on Tuesday (October 13), “teaching challenges” represent 15% of attacks on secularism recorded in schools, on a par with the wearing of ostentatious religious signs, and below “suspicions of proselytizing” (24%).
Overall, of the 935 cases reported between September and March, 22% were caused by parents.
