One of the avenues envisaged by the government is the establishment of a 12-day cohesion course for second-year students, during school time.
“Students need school, they don’t need SNU”, tackle Thursday, May 18 on franceinfo Sophie Vénétitay, the deputy general secretary of the SNES-FSU union, about the Universal National Service. One of the avenues envisaged by the government is the establishment of a 12-day cohesion course for second-year students, during school time. Several teachers’ unions were received this week at the office of the Secretary of State for Youth, Sarah El Haïry, to discuss this track. SNES-FSU representatives went there on Tuesday 16 May. Further meetings are scheduled for Monday.
franceinfo: In your opinion, is this cohesion internship a good idea?
Sophie Vénétitay: It is a very bad idea that this experimentation of the SNU, with its generalization in the long term, in particular because we are on an organization on school time. You have to measure what that means. There, in the project that is put forward by the government, that means removing twelve days of lessons from students. We believe that we do not advance a society by taking away hours of lessons from students. Students need school, they don’t need SNU.
You know the arguments of the executive: to promote social diversity. The melting pot begins at school. It cannot marry, even in a piecemeal way, with the idea of Universal National Service?
Once again, there are rhetoric from the executive and there is reality. In the project that was presented to us this week by the two ministries concerned, we have the idea that a class will go to an SNU centre, but a local SNU centre, which means that it will not there should be mixing between students from different regions. I remember that a few weeks ago, Sarah El Haïry said that the great virtue of the SNU was to be able to bring together young people from Loiret and Alsace. Here, that will not be the case. And then, there is still also a limit which is very important: today, as it is designed, the SNU is only open to young people of French nationality. This means that our students, and we have some, who are not of French nationality, will not leave on SNU times, will stay in high school. I let you imagine what that means in terms of stigma, and in terms of social cohesion. I don’t see how you can do worse. (…) We can clearly see that this is one of the very many dead ends of this project, and that we are very far from the objective of social cohesion, diversity and mixture of youth which is however announced by the ‘executive.
Wearing the uniform, raising the colors to the songs of the Marseillaise… Do you think that French youth today need this symbolism?
French youth, it does not need symbolism. French youth, they need school, they need prospects for the future, they need emancipation. And all that happens at school. We finally have the impression that behind the UNS, there is this idea that young people should be supervised, should be taken in hand for the transmission of the values of the Republic. All this is done at school and for that, we must put resources in the school, in the colleges, in the high schools. It is necessary to give prospects for the future to the youth rather than trying to format them in a SNU which ultimately is doomed to failure as it is presented.
It’s about volunteering. Is this the basis of voluntary work on the part of the teachers, on the part of the students as well?
Yes, there, we are talking about volunteering for the year 2023 2024. Afterwards, we know that Emmanuel Macron has not given up his desire to generalize the SNU in the long term. But we have to realize that for teachers, volunteering is still a form of instrumentalization, since to push us to accept this mission, we are dangled with a bonus within the framework of the Teacher Pact. Finally, we are given a bit of a financial carrot to try to remove reluctance, as if we could be bought off to engage in something that is contrary to our values. We can clearly see, here again, on the one hand, all the cynicism of the executive, but also the fact that they are somewhere a little stuck in moving forward on this project.
Will this project come to an end and will actually be presented at the start of the next school year?
For the moment, we have no more information, except that the Minister of National Education should bring together all the trade union organizations by the end of the school year. Presumably, Emmanuel Macron will certainly make announcements on July 14 (…). But in any case, the government seems determined to move forward once again at all costs, whatever the cost, in defiance of students and teachers.