tribute to teachers victims of terrorism

The terrorist attack at the Lycée Gambetta in Arras and the death of Dominique Bernard show how much the situation in our high schools has changed. We want to consider our schools as sanctuaries where children and teachers can find themselves outside the violence of society and its prejudices. But over time this sanctuary seems ever more fragile.

Over the past thirty years, around twenty attacks have taken place against teachers. There have been crimes by unbalanced parents, like in 2014, this teacher killed by a mother in front of her students in Albi. There were student killers, including the one who took the life of Agnès Lassalle, again this year. And the hostage taking of this madman in Neuilly in 1993.

And there have been terrorist attacks. In 2012, Jonathan Sandler from the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse died, killed with his two children in front of the place where he taught. In 2020, it was Samuel Paty who was stabbed for showing caricatures of Muhammad to his students in class. And this time, a teacher is beaten in front of his high school while trying to intervene to prevent the attacker from advancing.

In fact, schools and high schools are no longer sanctuaries. These days they constitute what terrorists call “soft targets”. The best tribute to pay our departed is to do our best to preserve them.