In the column they have just published, the executives of the French Pediatric Society call for the return to school of children taking into account “both the need to maintain essential barrier measures, and the reality of childhood , made of spontaneity, games, laughter and crying. " The child psychiatrist, Stéphane Clerget, is much more measured.
What do you think of the positions taken for or against the return to school for the well-being of children?
STEPHANE CLERGET. It is not in a month and a half, before summer, that kindergarten or elementary school children will be ruptured if they do not go to school. Especially since they now have the opportunity to see other children with progressive deconfinement: friends, cousins ...
But family, friends, it's not school ...
School, right now, is not school! The essence of education today is to enforce health rules. We will see next week if it is more fluid but if the little ones are surrounded by teachers stressed because a student will have touched an object or will not have respected the physical distance, this can generate school phobias, make pass the message that school is a scary place.
So you do not agree with the Minister of National Education who explains that we are more at risk at home than at school?
In terms of the coronavirus, this is false. Children can also be carriers of the disease. On the other hand, for those who are ill at home, who live in situations of impoverishment, the return to school is interesting. But for the others ... They are more free at home than at school right now. Paradoxically, children were more independent during distance school than middle school or high school students. Moreover, it is especially the teenagers who are asking for the return to their establishment, and they are more able to respect the barrier gestures.
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Are the children not asking for this return?
They are not against it, but they are good with their parents. And then to say that the teachers did not know how to maintain the educational link at a distance, I find that contemptuous. Some may not have played the game, but many have done incredible work.