“Sanctuate the school”: how can we go further than this pathetic incantation?

2024-04-18T15:09:00.341Z

Highlights: The word sanctuary has been misused in public education. The word sanctuary is used to refer to the holiest place in a religious building. National Education would therefore be fideist and public schools, denominational? Surprising! But if that is the case, what would we worship in this place? What deity could this be in question? Of the "Supreme Being's dear to Robespierre? Of "the goddess Reason and the god..."? The Academy tells us. So the school would be a holy of holies? The beating heart of a religion? Surprises! Nobody knows what the word sanctuary means. But we must go beyond this pathetic incantation. We must ask: What is the holy place in this building? And what deity could it be? And why is it called a'sanctuary' in the first place? We need to ask ourselves: What does it mean to call a school a'sanctuary?'

CHRONICLE - What the use of the word sanctuary first reveals here is the ignorance of its definition and the multiple misinterpretations to which its misuse leads.