The trigger was the incident on Wednesday the 28th of February at the Ravel Lyceum: a headmaster was threatened with death after he reminded female pupils that she must remove her headscarf. According to these headmasters and headmistresses, disputes of this kind are anything but unique.
It is important to show solidarity, confirms Nicolas Bray, representative of the SNPDEN trade union in Paris: “There are colleagues who are regularly threatened in their jobs and we support everyone by means of this campaign. It is the issue of secularism that is under attack. There are recent attacks that can be noted.”
There were 163 school headmasters out of 380 (Paris intra-muros). They had come to react to the death threats received by the headmaster of the Lycée Maurice Ravel. They denounced the attacks by parents and the false accusations of Islamophobia. BFMTV
On Monday, more than 170 head teachers from high schools and secondary schools in Paris, representing around half of the schools in the capital, gathered in Sorbonne Square. They demonstrated their support for the headmaster of the Lycée Ravel, who had received death threats after asking a pupil to take off her headscarf at school. Nicolas Bray, headmaster of the Fénelon high school and academic secretary of SNPDEN-Unsa Paris, the largest union for education management staff, summed up the mobilisation by telling Le Figaro: “It’s not ‘Je suis Charlie’, but we’re here to make the point that it could happen to any of us.”
On Wednesday the 28th of February, the headmaster of the school in the 20th arrondissement of Paris was threatened with death on social media after he asked a pupil to take off her headscarf.
At the weekend, the unions representing school headmasters in Paris called for solidarity and expressed their concern about the death threats received by some colleagues for applying the principles of secularism. They pointed out how quickly the accusations spread via social networks, putting these professionals at risk. The unions declared that such methods were unacceptable and welcomed the support of the Ministry and the Academy of Paris. Kamel Aït Bouali, headmaster of the Collège Thomas Mann (Paris 13e) and academic secretary of the Sgen-CFDT, told our colleagues: “The trigger is Ravel and the violation of secularism. I have no evidence to confirm that it is a provocation, but we are talking about a BTS student who should have known the rules for a long time.”
Another example of the threat to teachers is the threat posed by social networks, such as at the Lycée Colbert (Paris 10e), which was the focus of media attention after Gabriel Attal banned abayas in the school. The high school had been blockaded and banners unfurled to denounce “state Islamophobia” after a teacher spoke about a student wearing a long dress and the education team decided to talk to her about it. “But it went in all kinds of channels on social media,” says Isabelle Brochard, the school’s headmaster.
These social networks are often behind such an escalation of violence because, according to the head of a college in the 11th arrondissement: “Social networks and the information they provide are a source of controversy. The power of the internet is greater than that of the national education system”. At the meeting, many headteachers also reported threats they had received following disciplinary committees. One headmistress of a high school in the 15th arrondissement said she had received threats from a parent who had told her that he knew her address and would track her down.
Lucie Pitiot, headmistress of the Cité scolaire François Villon, shared her experiences after the Ravel case on social media. “You don’t get up in the morning and think you’re going to receive a death threat. But that’s exactly what happened to me on February 12”, after a pupil was expelled from school and a parent came to her colleagues to tell them that he wanted to “kill her”. Despite receiving support and filing a police report, she said she had not been walking alone on the street for 18 days and only travelled by car. Laïcité : la multiplication des menaces de mort envers le corps enseignant dénoncée par les directeurs d’établissements parisiens – Valeurs actuelles
Good God, what kid of parents are these? Before each semester each parent should be made to read, sign and agree to a few simplew school rules.,
If they don’t agree.find rivate schools. And all private schools must be licensed, and agree to the standards of french law and customs. Parents who fail to abide by this should be subject to fines. Muslems must be made aware that they live in France,not some Muslem country. The full weight of French law should be brought to bear, if not, goodbye France as a nation.