The series of tributes to Samuel Paty continues this Saturday.
One year to the day after the assassination of this professor, tributes are held in the Val-d'Oise where he lived, in the Yvelines where he taught, and in Paris where his family will be received at the Élysée, the headquarters of the Presidency of the Republic.
At 10:30 am, in the entrance of the Ministry of National Education, "a plaque which will forever pay homage to Samuel Paty" is inaugurated, in the words of the Minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer.
Prime Minister Jean Castex and other members of the government are present alongside the parents and family of Samuel Paty.
On Friday, countless schools, colleges and high schools honored the memory of the history-geography teacher, brutally murdered on October 16, 2020, stabbed and beheaded, for showing caricatures of Muhammad to his students during a class on freedom of expression.
It was in a street in Eragny-sur-Oise (Val-d'Oise) that the attack took place, just a few hundred meters from the teacher's college.
Residents of this town of nearly 16,000 inhabitants where Samuel Paty, father of a little boy lived, meet in the middle of the morning.
Neighbors and friends are expected there, according to the town hall.
He "wanted to change things through ordinary action"
At the beginning of the afternoon, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines), during a rare speech, teachers from the Bois d'Aulne college where Samuel Paty taught will deliver a speech, in particular in front of students and parents, the former principal of the establishment and the Minister of National Education. At 3 p.m., the town hall of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine unveils a book-shaped monument in one of the city's central squares. Samuel Paty's family will then be received by Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée. Finally, a square located opposite the Sorbonne, rue des Ecoles, will be renamed Square Samuel Paty, during a ceremony that the mayor of Paris wants to be simple and collected.
In an interview with La Croix this week, one of Samuel Paty's sisters, Gaëlle, describes him as a teacher "who did not seek to revolutionize the whole earth" but "wanted to change things through ordinary action". For a year, the traumatized teachers of the college of Bois d'Aulne, solicited by the media, have remained silent. But the commemoration approaching, seven of the fifty teachers of the college agreed this week to tell Liberation and France Inter "their Samuel Paty", involved with his students and always ready to debate with his colleagues: "a human being like the others "And not" the kind of myth "that the attack made him become in spite of himself, said one of them. After the attack, many teachers at the college called for work stoppages."Up to fifteen teachers may have been absent simultaneously," indicates the rectorate of Versailles (Yvelines), which has put in place a hotline until the end of October.
"I would have liked to get to know him better"
During the tribute in the establishment, students will recite slams written around freedom.
On Friday, they were invited to read poems about their teacher.
“Those poems were good, but it makes me think it would be good to be with him again.
I would have liked to get to know him better, ”said a 14-year-old student, who had Samuel Paty as his head teacher last year.
The college community was also struck by the fact that five students, aged 13 to 15 at the time of the facts, were indicted on suspicion of having designated the teacher to his killer.
The attack was "an upheaval in several respects" and its "repercussion remains considerable", notes Jean-Jacques Brot, prefect of Yvelines.
From a security point of view, "this involved a leap in the thinking of all the services, whether it be the Ministry of the Interior or National Education, in terms of information, analysis or forecasting" .
