At the college of Bourg-Lastic, a village perched on the Auvergne plateaux, about sixty kilometers from Clermont-Ferrand, in Puy-de-Dôme, it all started with a moral and civic education course given to the only middle school third class last winter.
A lesson given by history and geography teacher Jean-Emmanuel Dumoulin: “What tipped me off, remembers the latter, is that during the course, we debated whether or not we could criticize a religion. And a student told me : ‘Sorry, we’re not going to talk about that, because we’re going to fight.’ At that moment, it clicked and I thought we were going to learn to… debate instead.
>> Assassination of Samuel Paty: Pap Ndiaye pays him an early tribute to the Assembly to the applause of the deputies
Debating, therefore agreeing to exchange your points of view and using your freedom of expression. This is precisely the theme of the Samuel-Paty prize, which will be awarded on Saturday October 15 at La Sorbonne by the Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, in the presence of Mickaëlle Paty, one of the sisters of the murdered history and geography professor. two years ago after showing caricatures of Muhammad to his students. The question that the students had to answer for the first edition of the prize was: “Are we still free to express ourselves?”
The ten 4th and 3rd year pupils who took part in the project recorded a fifteen-minute podcast in which they first present freedom of expression, enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, as well as the legal limits of this freedom: “Insults, defamation, contempt, calls for crimes and misdemeanors, calls for violence, advocating terrorism and Holocaust denial. All of this is prohibited. By remaining within this legal framework, we are therefore free to express themselves. However, things are not that simple.”
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Then, one of the college students, Antoine, recounts a personal experience. Member of the Bourg-Lastic college web radio station, Radio M, he felt censored when the history-geography teacher who supervises them asked him to correct a chronicle. It was about the guitarist of the group Motörhead. “My turns of phrase could suggest that I was encouraging listeners, mainly college students, to take drugs, like the guitarist”, concedes Antoine, who understood that in this context, he was breaking the law. After debates and discussion with the teacher, and his classmates, he finally modified his column.
“I did not feel that my freedom of expression was affected. I understood the limits. You can say what you want, provided you respect this law.”
Then in the podcast, the college students take the example of press cartoons, and caricatures of Charlie Hebdo, that they studied. They can shock, offend, but should we, for this reason, not talk about them, not show them? It is Jade, one of the schoolgirls, who answers this question: “Freedom of expression is not limited by one’s susceptibility. Because otherwise, we couldn’t say anything without offending someone. And therefore we couldn’t express ourselves freely.” One of his comrades completes in the podcast: “There would always be someone to feel offended. And no more criticism would be tolerated. No more debates, no more discussions and ultimately more democracy.” “The role of a press cartoon, according to Solane, it is to make people think about a subject, to debate, without contravening the laws that regulate freedom of expression.”
At the end of this group work, some have changed their behavior, especially on social networks. Fanny explains that she tries to take more into account the opinions of others, while ensuring that “don’t offend anyone, don’t discriminate either. We sometimes don’t necessarily realize what we’re saying or writing”. Antoine, he believes that he tended to defame in his columns written for web radio. “Since then, I don’t do it anymore”he assures.
Hearing these words, on the microphone as in the podcast, Jean-Emmanuel Dumoulin’s eyes light up. “When I see that they have understood what freedom of registration is, its limits, the importance of debating, but also of listening to the points of view of others, being able to change their minds, not not lock yourself in your own certainties, it’s still not nothing in the mouths of 15-year-old teenagers. I tell myself that I haven’t wasted my time.
For their podcast on freedom of expression, the college students are rewarded: they finish in second place for this Samuel-Paty prize. And they weren’t expecting it at all. So we hear a lot of pride and restraint in Clément’s voice: ”It really surprised me and I was happy that all the work we did before paid off. Me today, I’m happy. I think I don’t realize it yet, it will be Saturday instead.”
Saturday afternoon when the ceremony promises to be very moving for him: two years ago, he was “upset” by the assassination of Samuel Paty, killed for having “taught his subject”, after showing caricatures of Muhammad in one of his classes. Through their podcast, Solane hopes to have paid tribute to him: “He made his class work on a caricature, like us, we did. Suddenly, he was working on this freedom of expression, and it was after that that he was assassinated… So me, I find that the podcast and its course have crossed paths.” A parallel that also noted, and decided to distinguish, among the 40 projects received, the Association of History and Geography Teachers who created this Samuel-Paty prize.
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“Our shock, we wanted to try to convert it into something positive to make sure that we remember him thanks to the work he could do with his students, explains Christine Guimonnet, the general secretary of the association. This is not a contest to mourn the death of Samuel. It’s a competition to show through what our colleagues are doing, with their students, what he could have continued to do if he hadn’t been assassinated. We wanted to create this competition to pay tribute to one of ours, because Samuel is one of ours.”
Herself a history and geography teacher a few kilometers from the former college of Samuel Paty, she feared that over time, her assassination would gradually be forgotten, explains Christine Guimonnet, the secretary general of the ‘association.
“We are in a very volatile society, where information is chased by another. It crossed our minds that his assassination could be forgotten.”
Christine Guimonnetat franceinfo
“That Samuel finally who accompanies us every day, that he didn’t die for nothing, that’s this price, continues Christine Guimonnet. And to do this prize, this work, is to say no to religious fanaticism and obscurantism, and yes to knowledge, yes to the reflection and development of students, yes to knowledge.
The association of history-geo teachers closes registrations for the second edition of the prize this Saturday. His theme: “The infox, what dangers for democracy?”