“The young people are the same here as in public education”, affirms the general secretary of Catholic Education

Philippe Delorme calls for “getting away from ideological postures”. He doesn’t think we send our children to private school to escape violence. According to him, we must “cultivate an education in fraternity”, a project at the heart of Catholic teaching.

“The young people are the same here as in public education, we will never be safe from such a tragedy”, reacted Sunday April 7 on France Inter, the secretary general of Catholic Education Philippe Delorme, after the attacks, sometimes fatal, of three middle school students in one week, in Montpellier, Tours and Viry-Châtillon. In the latter case, a 15-year-old teenager died after being attacked by several people as he left his school. An investigation was opened for “assassination” and “violence in meetings near a school establishment”.

These attacks “necessarily question our society”. According to him, “we really need to get out of ideological positions and work together on the ground, territory by territory, to understand and fight against these absolute tragedies.” He calls for “cultivating an education in fraternity” who is “at the heart of our educational project” in Catholic teaching, so that “young people, among themselves, move from respect to love of others”. It is “long-term work“, he admits.

School a “sanctuary” yes but “open to the outside world”

After these attacks, Emmanuel Macron called on Friday for the school to remain “a sanctuary” face to “a form of uninhibited violence among our adolescents”an expression that Philippe Delorme understands as the “enables students to study in good conditions, so that they feel protected from external attacks and protected within the establishment itself”. But, nonetheless, “the school must be open to the outside world and our students must be educated towards this openness. Otherwise, we turn them into young people who are narrow-minded and who will not reach out to others.”

If the three recent attacks all took place in public establishments, “he does not think that it is to escape public education that one enrolls his child in Catholic education.” He speaks of adherence to the educational project of Catholic teaching and “note that a certain number of Muslim families choose us because they know that in our schools, we can talk about God.”

A parliamentary report, co-written by Renaissance MP Christopher Weissberg and his LFI counterpart Paul Vannier, presented Tuesday to the Committee on Cultural Affairs and Education at the National Assembly, points the finger at the financing of private schools. Philippe Delorme responds to criticism, explaining that “if we have approximately 12 billion euros for private education, we have 112 billion for public education, that is to say 11.4%, while we educate 17% of students . And we can also show that a private education student costs the taxpayer half as much as a public education student.”