Can the school remain a protected sanctuary? Decryption with sociologist Jean Viard, after the death of a Spanish teacher in a high school in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, stabbed by a student in the middle of class, on February 22.
After this week marked by the death of a Spanish teacher in a high school in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, stabbed by a student in the middle of class, one wonders in social issue, with sociologist Jean Viard, how and why schools are no longer the sanctuaries they once were.
We obviously have in mind the assassination of Samuel Paty, this violence which affects teachers or students, violence regularly reported in the news. To begin with Jean Viard, decryption of this notion of sanctuary, for the school, of an inviolable place where the worst cannot exist.
franceinfo: When we talk about school, is this notion of “sanctuary” still an appropriate notion?
John Viard: Well, the assassination of Madame Agnès Lassalle, obviously, echoes Samuel Paty and there is a risk of mimetic aftershocks, as there often is, in this kind of situation. So there is a resonance there that traumatizes us all, because normally school is a place of sanctuary. At the same time, if you look at the colleges, the schools, the work that we have done for 20 or 30 years, to put up gates, so that everyone cannot enter, you have to use your card to enter, you has, little by little, also made these places more protected, open, of course, they are places of democratic reception, but regulated. I think that has to be said.
But, one simple thing must be said: there is some violence around the school. It’s difficult to give figures over the long term, but recent studies at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation show that there are approximately 7% of teachers who say they have already had physical attacks, 45% of teachers who say they have been insulted.
This week on franceinfo, we looked at this problem to show that there has not been a major increase in violence in the past four years, but that there have been more striking facts…
Here, there are these facts which are striking. Afterwards, it’s true that there is no doubt a report from parents who often have a tendency to think that teachers are somewhat at their service. So when the kid gets a bad grade, it’s almost like we wouldn’t “hire” the teacher. There are certainly tensions there.
And then there are tensions too, because we have democratized education, that is to say college for all. As long as the college was basically very socially selected, there was perhaps less tension. There, the colleges are very hybrid, there are children from different backgrounds. There is also a youth who can be in ideological conflicts, in particular on secularism, on the colonial narrative, etc. I don’t think we should be completely naive either. It is clear that there is a youth in conflict there.
Is it important that these schools reflect society?
But yes ! Including talking about it. The question is that we have to be able to talk about it, for example about secularism. But after school, it’s like society, like nightclubs, like bars. There are points of tension, there are very different people. The big problem with school is that it has to be hybrid and tolerant. You have to be tolerant of children’s differences. There is the huge problem of children who are bothered by others. Remember this young man who committed suicide recently, because the others attacked him by saying that he was homosexual. There are also these gender phenomena.
We are in a time when I believe, we are much more tolerant, and this is the fundamental movement. Our young people today, in my opinion, are much more tolerant than my generation, because they were brought up with kids of all origins, of all colors, at least in most republican schools. This is not absolutely true everywhere, since the schools are by district, but overall all the same, the college for all, in my opinion, has made a huge mixing of cultures. We can clearly see the tolerances, jokes among young people, etc. Basically, I think they are more tolerant than the generations before, but there are points of tension and violence.
So it’s a little overused today, to say that the school is a sanctuary?
There is never an absolute sanctuary, as long as it’s life, where there are students who don’t succeed, students who don’t get along with their teachers, there are children who are good at everything except in one subject, they feel like the teacher is mad at them, etc. School is also a place of tension, it’s also a place where you repeat a grade, you can be punished, it’s not heaven on earth either, but I think when you see the teachers, more 80%, they are happy with their profession, happy with their work, but there are indeed points of tension. But I think you have to be very careful about them, and you shouldn’t exaggerate them too much either.