Ophélie Roque is a teacher. Ella published
Black Mesa
(Robert Laffont, 2023), her first novel, in 2023.
To discover
PODCAST - Listen to the club Le Club Le Figaro Idées with Eugénie Bastié
The question of mental health in our schools remains, still in 2024, a taboo subject.
We prefer not to bring it up, bury the thing under the carpet, or better yet, give an embarrassed smile.
What an idea to approach these things head-on, in everything you need modesty!
And yet, according to official figures, 7% of schoolchildren in France suffer from severe psychological disorders (bipolarity, autism, ADHD, delusional disorders, mental retardation, etc.).
The school wants to be inclusive, this is proclaimed everywhere.
Either.
Moreover, specialized units are established within numerous establishments and several integration systems exist: 12,200 ULIS classes (Localized Units for Educational Inclusion) dot the entire territory for 1,200 IME (Medico-Educational Institute).
What do such figures mean or, to put it another way, do psychiatric disorders interfere with the teacher's routine?
Here too, nuance is essential.
We cannot treat humanity in broad terms without this leading to the worst inhumanity, namely accounting and finicky altruism, concerned not with people but with statistics.
When prepared, integration often goes well.
The other students, accustomed to having one or two so-called “special” students, no longer pay much attention to them and behave with them in the same way as with any other.
In this, we can be proud of the Republican school.
So everything doesn't have to be redone, real successes exist!
But (because there is often a “but”) what to do with borderline cases?
Those that we no longer know from which angle to approach as the limits of their pathology are poorly defined.
In the end, they are the most numerous and the most difficult to manage: undiagnosed and therefore unaccompanied, they are dormant and form so many little pins ready to explode at any moment.
And most often in mid-flight.
I remember a student who, while I was showing a film clip, suddenly began to utter nonsense after nonsense at the sight of an actress over 70 years old, shouting that he was going to shove something into her somewhere.
It took a full day to make him quit this astonishing fad.
We launch awareness campaigns, we dedicate October 10 to the cause, but nothing that really goes beyond the framework of empty promises.
Ophélie Roque
All teachers have experienced, know or will experience such asides.
Invariably.
In certain neighborhoods more than in others, it is constant that poverty is added to poverty.
Each year, too many students with problematic behavior are left in the school system to the detriment of common sense and, sometimes, the safety of other students.
These disturbed children would require, at a minimum, appropriate care.
Faced with “traditional” schooling, they struggle to find their place.
This is because there are only 69,000 places in specialized institutes and we want to believe that our children's classes are expandable.
Furthermore, let us remember that several profiles coexist within the same space which should be mutually exclusive.
Thus, if the "mutic" isolate themselves (certain students will never straighten up and will remain prostrate in their chair, curling up if someone ever touches them), the "possessed" - prey to more or less latent psychoses - begin to invoke the demon in the middle of class, attacking classmates and teachers and damaging school materials (already not always in the best shape).
Let's not kid ourselves, the school does not know how to treat, it can only try to adjust according to varying capacities of adaptation.
Not to mention that there are more murky cases where doubt exists: is the child sick or is he making fun of his world?
In the event of repeated angry outbursts, the question can quickly be considered.
And faced with this problem, which is in no way specific to schools (13% of adults have a psychiatric pathology), nothing is really done.
We launch awareness campaigns, we dedicate October 10 to the cause, but nothing that really goes beyond the framework of empty promises.
No overall plan or project, no clearly assumed policy apart from that of last minute tinkering.
It's up to the school to remedy the 400 school units within the care centers dismantled over the last ten years!
At school, pretend this lack doesn't exist!
At school, replacing specialist educators with contractual teachers trained in slingshots and even, most often, not trained at all!
The rectorates are also fully aware of this.
In each academy, we twirl with the numbers and the young people.
Thousands of reports bringing buried misery to the surface.
What should we do with students for whom school remains unsuitable?
The situation is all the more sordid as at no time is the possibility of treatment seriously considered.
When a concrete case, a little “ugly”, presents itself and it’s “courage, let’s run away!”.
And if the transplant doesn't take place, you just have to forcefully keep them in the system, knowing that once they reach 16, the door closes.
Definitely this time.