Marie-Estelle Dupont, clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, has published
Freeing yourself from your toxic self (
Larousse, 2017) and
Discover your superpowers at the shrink
(Eyrolles, 2015).
FIGAROVOX. - A call for a national strike for January 13 has been launched by Snuipp-FSU, the first primary teachers' union, and SE-Unsa in the face of
"the indescribable mess"
of the new health protocol. Do you understand their anger?
Marie-Estelle Dupont. -
Yes!
I not only understand their anger, but I see their exhaustion.
The stress they have undergone from the start, the accumulation of fatigue linked to the permanent changes, the feeling of being pushed to the wall after decisions announced the night before for the next day, the lack of consultation, the refusal to 'hearing testimonies sometimes contradictory but all real, yes that generates anger.
The teacher is not intended to tick PCR test checks.
It is heavy.
The teachers no longer have the necessary availability to think about their primary mission.
Adults should not scare children, but deal with their own fear.
Marie-Estelle Dupont
We cannot say
"we take care of everything"
and in reality not anticipate and inform about nothing, not plan the necessary number of replacements and ventilation of the classes.
It is an epidemic and there are no replacements while the isolation is usually 10 days?
Make children wear the mask rather than clean the air?
The State wanted to centralize the management of the crisis, restraining the actors in the field, and now we are told on the CO2 sensors that it is up to the municipalities to do it?
This is not experienced by the teaching staff as a simple negligence, but as an inconsistency and a contempt for reality.
On the other hand, we must really reassure about the low lethality of the disease, remind teachers that they are vaccinated and that if they are not, it is not for the children to protect them but for them to show the example of courage, which consists in overcoming your fear. The students are not plague victims, the data shows that they transmit little: the teachers do not touch the students. Adults should not scare children, but deal with their own fear. A teacher is an exemplary figure. There are also a large number of teachers who deplore having to behave like phobic, hysterical and obsessive adults when they love their students, their profession, and would like to focus on learning.
Adults must convey the idea that learning and thinking outweighs exaggerated fear.
The working population, therefore still quite young, and what is more is vaccinated, is not likely to end up in intensive care if the interested parties do not present co-morbidities.
Since the start of the school year on January 3, students had to be tested three times in four days if a positive case was detected in their class. An update of the health protocol has since been carried out: students no longer have to complete a new complete course if a new positive case appears in their class within less than seven days. Are you satisfied with this streamlining of the protocol? Is it sufficient ?
It is painful to note that it takes strikes for the mountain to give birth to a mouse.
The very minor relief that has taken place shows that the damage to children's health does not count for decision-makers.
The chaos in families, the abuse brought about by this delusional obsession with the virus to the detriment of the physical and mental health of all age groups, all this does not seem to matter.
Only the risk of school disorganization and social movement makes them react.
The flu and the bronchiolitis never shut us out of class.
Marie-Estelle Dupont
We have forgotten our duties towards minors: to take care of their health and their learning. This school chaos degraded both. A society which disrupts the school for a disease which does not seriously affect the children is a sick society. The flu and the bronchiolitis never made us close a class, a little outfit all the same. We teach children that at the least risk we should shut up at home. What values! We do not protect the teachers or the hospital. We move the problem. It is costly for everyone and the number of teachers burned out as a result of this loss of meaning is colossal. A blind patient, high school teacher, told me that despite her disability, she was forbidden to remove her mask. But where are we?
Read also "What errors of reasoning push us to 'sacrifice' children in the management of the Covid-19 crisis?"
Any relief is good to take, but it is especially urgent to get out definitively from this inversion of values where children undergo the anxieties of adults when it is up to adults to raise (in the etymological sense) children.
We can reassure teachers, equip them and respect them without using minors as an adjustment variable that we shift according to the risk of social movement.
The unions, however, support a harsher health protocol. Do you understand their claims?
The FCPE and the teaching staff are alerting to the need for CO2 detectors, air purifiers and ventilation work.
Also requested is the supply of FFP2 masks in order to ensure their protection against the great contagiousness of the Omicron variant (which I would remind you that it is not more virulent according to scientists than a simple flu).
These requests are relevant if they allow teachers to feel reassured and students to be free from their ordeal and to breathe freely.
Again the physiological and psychological damage to the students is criminal.
From an early age, we observe delays in speech in kindergarten related to wearing a mask in adults.
Marie-Estelle Dupont
The school meant to be a place of learning and social interactions should not turn into a place of fear and panic for children. Everyone has their place: a child is the responsibility of adults who must keep their cool. The school is not a pole of health, the virus should not be a pretext for senseless mistreatment such as bad points awarded, humiliations if the mask is under the nose in the courtyard, as evidenced by the dozens of messages that I receive from parents or teachers alarmed by these behaviors.
I invite teachers to discern in their demands what is common sense, and what becomes unnecessary and dangerous pressure on their students.
We must not lose our discernment when it is our mission to teach critical thinking.
A fifth grade teacher told me recently: “I'm exhausted from this obsession with Covid-19 and the way some colleagues oppress students for a mask under their nose.
What loss of dignity and what irresponsibility towards those entrusted to us! ”.
Do you think that the restrictions (masks, barrier gestures) concerning children should be lifted?
I will shock some but be clear: yes, and urgently.
The mask for children is extremely violent. It is a physical and psychological abuse, with discomfort when the students keep it for climbing in a closed environment or during judo at 7 years old. WHO has reminded you of this. And I have explained many times all the pediatric, dental, psychological, ophthalmological, cognitive, emotional and psychological elements that show, with supporting figures, the damage caused by the mask. The studies are numerous and the difficulties of concentration are major, which adds work to the teachers. From an early age, we observe delays in speech in kindergarten related to wearing a mask in adults. Also I think every teacher should wear the mask if he only wants to, because a lot of them,aware of the loss this represents for the relationship with the student, and the discomfort (migraine, fatigue) that this inflicts on them, would like to withdraw it.
Children start to denounce each other when one of them is wearing the mask badly!
Marie-Estelle Dupont
Speech therapists and psychologists are overwhelmed by this damage.
The health emergency has changed.
It is the health of minors that is at risk.
Read also Covid-19: WHO criticizes the strategy of rich countries and calls not to vaccinate the youngest
Harassment, fear, obsession with the virus, the idea that children are dangerous, that the other is a danger, that touch is bad, all of this shapes a society that cannot be a whole.
This generates mistrust, paranoia, climate of denunciation.
Children start to denounce each other when one of them is wearing the mask badly!
We condition them to be the worst version of a human being: sick and bad.
School phobias, learning disabilities, the chaos linked to the eviction of students or the closing of classes, the symptoms that we see both in town offices and in child psychiatry are terrifying, and I weigh my words.
Children who are sad, scared, anxious, who sleep poorly, have temper tantrums, develop eating disorders, become de-socialized, are addicted to screens, and start thinking terrible things like "I'm going to kill my grandmother" , "I don't kiss mom so as not to touch her", "I don't want to touch my satchel if mom hasn't cleaned it before".
Seeing the face and touching yourself are essential elements of survival in society.
Marie-Estelle Dupont
I sometimes have the painful impression that the country has become a family that mistreats its minors, where the hypochondriac delirium of one parent and the hysteria of the other would help to sacrifice childhood.
They are transmitted fear, guilt, and dehumanization: seeing the face and touching oneself are essential elements of survival in society.
We cannot survive in isolation.
The areas of the brain related to social skills atrophy as the wearing of the mask lengthens.
Even a dog doesn't wear a muzzle eight hours a day.
They are turned into desocialized psychotics, depressed people, or future violent adults.
The child psychiatric wave is not decreasing, it has not stopped increasing for a year.
Marie-Estelle Dupont
The figures speak for themselves: children are absent from services linked to Covid-19, but psychological consultations and child psychiatry hospitalizations have exploded. (25% of pediatric hospitalizations are now in child psychiatry, suicide attempts among children under 15 have increased considerably, certain child psychiatry services have seen admissions multiplied by three or four last year). The child psychiatric wave is not decreasing, it has not stopped increasing for a year. A little 7-year-old patient who fainted in yoga class, another 9-year-old student to whom the teacher said "if you want to breathe, go to the bathroom" ... It's time to put an end to decisions that everyone is making against each other and terrorize our little ones, who take it upon themselves but crack.
I want us to manage between responsible adults, parents, teachers, childcare professionals and decision-makers, considering that the child's needs are sacred and that we can imagine all the solutions, but not distance education or wearing a mask.
Massive testing has no point other than creating panic and exhaustion.
How to protect teachers? Should vaccination be made compulsory for this professional category?
They already are! All those who want it and a large number who do not particularly want it are vaccinated and can give the boosters. They must not forget their ethical principles and the heart of their profession. All adults have a duty to children: not to make them carry their fears. Let the frightened teachers wear the mask and get vaccinated, but nothing is asked of the children. This irreversibly degrades their development. The teachers who come to see me in consultation see this damage and, personally, are more than fed up with the mask. For them, it is an inversion of the values specific to their profession.
We must all take our responsibilities and assert their best interests.
Parents educate and decide, teachers teach, doctors treat.
And the school is not a health center or a prison yard.
