Tribute to Samuel Paty: schools in Toulouse and the department are getting organized
The schools of Haute-Garonne, from school to high school, are preparing to organize a commemoration, this Friday, October 15, in homage to Samuel Paty, this professor assassinated a year ago at the end of his college. Conflans-Saint-Honorine (Yvelines).
The principals of the colleges, the principals and the principals of schools of Haute-Garonne received, a week ago, the letter from Jean-Michel Blanquer who wishes that, Friday, October 15, “in each school and each educational establishment , a tribute be paid to Samuel Paty both by the staff and by the students ”.
It will indeed be a year, on October 16, 2020, that this history and geography professor was assassinated by a stabbing terrorist and beheaded shortly after leaving his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines).
Ten days before this tragedy which provoked strong reactions in France and abroad, Samuel Paty had shown two caricatures of Muhammad from the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo during a moral and civic education course on freedom of expression .
Tools for teachers
In Toulouse, on October 18 and 21, 2020, thousands of anonymous people gathered at Place du Capitole to observe a minute of silence. For next Friday, the Minister of National Education leaves the choice to the establishments of organizer “a time of meditation, and devotes an hour of lesson [ce jour-là] a time for discussion, the content of which will be left to the choice of the teams according to their respective situations and taking into account in particular the age of the pupils ”.
The question arises, in particular, in elementary schools where teachers “need additional teachers of time given the scope of the subject”, had noted last year unions (Snes and Snuipp-FSU).
Teachers have tools to reflect on freedom of expression: a video by the former minister and abolitionist lawyer for the death penalty Robert Badinter, the “Letter to the Teachers” by Jean Jaurès, read by rapper Oxmo Puccino, “To Arms! “By Claude Rouget de Lisle, read by Abd al Malik, the” Letter to Monsieur Germain “by Albert Camus, read by the singer M, etc.
262 situations of attacks on secularism
Since January 2019, the Toulouse Academy has ordered a “civic hub” structured around a “regal square”. Either the coordination of “teams specializing in the management and monitoring of situations which have caused attacks on the values of the Republic, harassment or cyberstalking, violence in schools or problems encountered during checks in schools and establishments outside the contract or instruction in families ”.
The civic center attests to 1,000 people trained, to “262 situations of attacks on secularism transformed by the Valeurs de la République team since March 2018 and 94 situations of racism and anti-Semitism since January 2019.”