One and a half million students, out of a total of 6.7 million, began to return to primary school on Tuesday after eight weeks of interruption, despite protests. The extremely strict health protocol imposed by the Ministry of National Education, at the request of the teacher unions, allows the reopening of 86% of the schools but sometimes promotes an excess of zeal and worry, as in Toulouse, Nice or Paris.
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In Toulouse, a national education inspector sent a letter to parents of caregivers on May 5 announcing that they should leave their children in special schools. A decision motivated by the desire to "not cause a mixing of children who would not be in agreement with the sanitary conditions required" . In another letter addressed to parents of students in Nice, it is explained that "children whose parents have a priority profession will not be able to join their usual class or take their recess in common".
Caregivers' children are stigmatized and discriminated against with drastic measures of social distancing from other pupils who are disproportionate
Lamia Kerdjana, President of Jeunes Médecins Île-de-FranceA father doctor was meanwhile heard this week by a Parisian school principal that his children would be sidelined. Since then, these parents, shocked, did not take off. “The children of caregivers are stigmatized and discriminated against with drastic measures of social distancing from other pupils who are disproportionate. In the absence of symptoms, they have no reason to be forced out of their class and no study has shown that they are more transmitters of the coronavirus than other foster children, " argues Lamia Kerdjana, president of Jeunes Ile-de-France doctors and anesthetist. She fears that these attempts at eviction will make a splash of oil. France applauds the doctors every evening at 8 pm because they put their health and that of their family in danger but their children must "especially not be mixed with the rest of the population" ...
“Quasi-military” organization
Admittedly, some 30,000 children of caregivers were taken in during confinement by the French Ministry of Education but in conditions close to a simple daycare center, without education, "having to catch up with their often exhausted parents the program that the other students did over water, ”she regrets. "Have we returned to the time of leper colonies when they are healthy children?"
The National Union of Nurses-Anesthesiologists sent a letter to the Minister: "The Toulouse note is a catastrophic message sent to the entire French population and especially to the comrades of our children: some French students are no longer frequentable. This decision, which seems to be guided more by irrational fear and approximation than by enlightened or ethical scientific arguments, goes against the republican values of fraternity and equality ”, underlines its president, Christophe Paysan.
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The Ministry of National Education denies any desire to set these students apart and refers to "local overinterpretations of the health protocol already settled by the rectors of Nice and Toulouse". The union of young doctors nevertheless filed on Monday an appeal for interim measures against a Toulouse response deemed still "unclear". “Beyond our children, I worry about all the students, adds Lamia Kerdjana, because the health protocol is excessive. Some schools prohibit children from moving from their seat. It's almost military! We have to play down the situation. Child psychiatrists are concerned about what adults do to students. Normally, if you wash your hands regularly and avoid touching your face, that's enough! ”