“Maybe I'm paranoid but I don't want to be a target.
That's why I absolutely don't want my name, or even my first name, or my age to appear.
We will therefore call him Pierre and simply say that he has been a history teacher in a public high school in the suburbs for many years.
Like all his colleagues called to resume classes on Monday, he will be on the front line in front of his students for the minute of silence in tribute to Samuel Paty.
During the All Saints holidays, Pierre thought "every day" of the teacher, beheaded at the end of his lessons because on October 6 he had used two caricatures of Mohammed from Charlie Hebdo as part of a moral and civic education course on freedom of expression.
“It deeply moved me to imagine how Samuel Paty must have suffered and to tell myself that even while he was in his classes, his death was already scheduled.
So yes, I will obviously talk about it, because it is fundamental, ”says Pierre.
But he did not forget the students who, in his own establishment, had whistled or were openly chatting during the minute of silence following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in 2015. The teacher knows from experience that the exercise will be delicate and is like a "balancing act".
"Today we are paying for the ideology of the wave and the cowardice of our hierarchy"
Pierre, history teacher in a public high school in the suburbs
He himself was confronted a few years ago with threats from a student after having organized a course around this notion: "Can we laugh at everything?"
"" I had started from the French Revolution by showing caricatures of the king and the clergy, then I had mentioned Charlie Hebdo caricatures relating to priests, rabbis and a woman devoted to Mohammed, recalls the teacher.
At the end of the course, a young girl came to tell me that it was a shame and that she would not stop there.
I had spoken to my principal who left me to deal with the problem on my own.
"
The loneliness of teachers, Pierre has felt it for too long.
"We are paying today for the ideology of the wave that has endured for thirty years and the cowardice of our hierarchy," he asserts.
At each incivility, each time a teacher is threatened, pushed around, insulted or stoned, the institution goes to bed and nothing happens.
"When we talk to him about the promises of support from Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer, Pierre sighs:" He swells his pectorals but we do not believe it for a moment.
Monday and the following days, as always, we will be absolutely alone in front of our students.
"
Why not appeal to the citizen reserve?
Established in 2015, it is made up of people who work alongside teachers and educational teams for the transmission of the values of the Republic.
“I never asked for them,” Pierre admits.
And maybe some teachers hesitate like me to do it because they fear that by openly calling on someone from outside to intervene in their class, it will disqualify their authority vis-à-vis their students.
"
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Rather than a person who comes to support him in class, Pierre rather imagines the obligation for families who arrive in France without knowledge of the precepts of the Republic "the obligation to follow French history courses and training in French. principles of secularism ”.
"Because the words of teachers are increasingly disqualified and do not weigh heavily in relation to what some children can hear in their families," said the teacher.
While he and his colleagues are supposed to discuss the concept of secularism on Monday, he already knows what he will say to his high school students: that it is a question of defending "the freedom to believe or not to believe" and that "our institutions are there to ensure freedom of worship ”.
"I will ask them this question: do you know many countries where everyone can practice their religion as they wish, whatever it is, without being threatened?
But I will also remind them that the separation must be watertight between private and public space.
"
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Does he see himself talking about the cartoons?
"On condition of putting them into perspective of the history of France and to speak in depth about the law of 1905", he answers.
As for religions, which are part of the history program, the teacher believes that the subject should be approached in the most neutral way possible to avoid being caught up in the controversy: “Never theology or proselytism but study of religions as a historical object.
"If he mentions Islam for example, he will explain to his students who do not always know it, that there are" several readings of the Koran "and that there are two different branches," the Shiites and the Sunnis " .
Explaining, deciphering, reframing, recontextualizing… this is how Pierre plans to discuss the events of the past few days next week.
But he knows that this speech "will have no effect on some of the students".
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ff
Pierre evokes “a slippage”, a “breaking point” that occurred in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, almost 20 years ago.
"At the time, I heard some students of Muslim faith say that Bin Laden had won."
When discussing certain questions of history, in particular the Shoah, or the day after the attacks perpetrated against Charlie Hebdo, the teacher hears other sentences spoken aloud as
we are about to finish the job
.
He then thinks of "provocation" but over the years notes the omnipresence of the religious fact in some of his classes.
At each start of the school year, some of his new students ask him about his origins and his religion.
"Like they need to put me in a box and see if I'm with them or against them."
In this case, the teacher does pedagogy, tells them that "religion is intimate, private" and that he himself does not have to put forward his "political or philosophical ideas".
If the history teacher has not given up following the program, he now avoids certain sensitive subjects: "I am not a hero and I admit having a tendency to skip the sequences on religions because it drifts all the time on Islam.
" Colonization ?
“When you hear a 15-year-old kid telling you he's here to collect what the settlers have stolen, you feel overwhelmed.
"" There is systematically a questioning of science, of the theory of evolution;
continues the history teacher.
Recently, two students in their twenties told me:
do we really have proof that the Earth is round?
"
When the teacher tried to organize a debate around same-sex marriage or abortion following the death of Simone Veil, certain reactions from students left him speechless: “I heard:
those who abort, they are whores
or
queers, it is shit: in religion, two men cannot love each other.
Everything is regularly brought back to religion and there are now young people who assert that the laws of God are superior to the laws of men.
"
Why not summon the parents in the event of a slippage?
“They still have to come when they are summoned,” says the teacher.
It is more and more difficult to touch them and we see them less and less at the parent-teacher councils.
Pierre feels all the more destabilized since he belongs to a generation where, he says, “secularism was an established cause”.
“I did not have secularism classes when I was at school and today I have the impression that the more we talk about it to certain high school students, the more it produces the opposite effect.
As if the word secularism now caused rejection.
To hear the teacher tell about his daily life, we feel a form of despair.
"Disillusioned me?"
No, rather realistic.
For one or two years, it is true that I sometimes leave my classes wondering what the point is but I continue to adore my job and I know that I must continue to exchange calmly, deconstruct certain ideas or pseudo arguments captured on social networks.
But what impact can I have, myself, in my class during an hour of class?
Talking is essential, but two people need to be able to talk.
"
"Bringing together the main principles of daily life"
Camille, history and geography teacher in a high school in Angers (Maine-et-Loire)
It is the ball in the stomach that Camille, 39, a history and geography teacher in a high school in Angers (Maine-et-Loire), will go to class this Monday morning.
“The older of my two boys begged me not to show any cartoons for fear that it would get me into trouble.
I have no plans to do so.
"
However, Camille will recall the facts, why it is necessary to talk about it and will show his students a video, provided as educational support by the National Education, which explains French law, prohibiting defamation, insult or incitement to hatred but allowing blasphemy.
“I always relate these notions, which may seem a little too abstract for the students, to concrete facts or situations they know in their daily life.
For example, when I approach the Shoah, I never fail to remind you that a few kilometers from Angers, during the war, there was a transit camp for the Gypsies.
I also always give examples of the different situations, in terms of legislation, in the countries within Europe.
This allows us to compare the freedoms we have in France, vis-à-vis Poland for example with regard to abortion.
"
The teacher also takes care to always place her 1st, 2nd and Terminale general and technological students in an active situation in their documentary research.
“I would like to remind you of the importance of relying on reliable sources and of not simply going blindly to a few sites on the Internet.
The debate is also in the spotlight in her classes, with a dose of self-deprecation and humor that Camille likes to use.
“Sometimes it ignites quite quickly, like when this student of Turkish origin threatened me directly about President Erdogan.
I quickly put it back in place so that it does not deteriorate by reminding him that I was relying on historical and verified facts and that freedom of expression in Turkey was, in fact, not the same. nature than here.
"
"Dialogue and remind people that religion is private"
Sonia, professor of history and geography in a college in the Lille area (North)
Before the minute of silence observed this Monday morning, Sonia Laloyaux, 45, professor of history and geography for 6 years in a college in a town in the Lille metropolitan area (North), will pin the poster to her class board. which has been circulating for several days on social networks: “I am a teacher, I defend freedom of expression.
And she will apply the method on which she already relied in 2015 after the Charlie Hebdo attacks and those of Bataclan and Hyper Kosher: let the students speak and answer all their questions and emotions.
"This is, in my opinion, what is most effective," explains the teacher, also vice-president of the association of history-geography teachers of the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais. .
If the words have difficulty in coming, I have a few cartoons on hand, like the ones I showed in 2015, to remind people of the context, the law on freedom of expression, the principle of secularism.
"
When the program addresses potentially sensitive themes, Sonia Laloyaux takes the initiative to defuse any possible tension.
“I have in front of me students with very different origins and beliefs.
For religions, I explain right away that I am in no way there to judge, that faith is something private and that the choices of the students in the matter do not concern me.
I remind you that my role is to explain the history of religions.
"
Another technique for calming the teacher's current atmosphere is to ensure that this story is valued.
“I try to highlight the riches that these beliefs have been able to bring over the centuries, the links that bring them together.
This usually removes any unnecessary tension.
One of the few times that a problem has emerged, it is a parent rather than a student that Sonia has had to face.
"A father made me understand that there was no question of his son doing research on the prophet Mohamed," she recalls.
I simply sent him a note to remind him of the role of school and that the assignment requested was documentary work like any other.
His son did and I never heard back from his father… ”