In the Paris suburbs, most high schools are schools of social decline. The first problem is the ethnic mix: there is no mixing. In my première class, for example, all the pupils have an immigrant background. They feel forgotten and abandoned by the Republic and, in response, they turn to Salafism. They are looking for meaning and find it in this all-encompassing religion that has an answer to everything or almost everything. The Muslim Brotherhood is proselytising, some communities are proving compliant. And conversion to Islam is easy and quick. What is the outcome? For the last ten years or so, the school, which is a mirror image of society, has become permeable to these religious zealots. The abaya – a veil that covers the whole body except the face, hands and feet – has become commonplace there. More and more girls dress in it, sometimes even putting on Saudi-style hoods and gloves when they leave school. Fifteen years ago, this kind of clothing did not happen.
They are small signs that, taken together, reveal a worrying social climate. I witnessed an argument between two students where one accused the other of bringing tagada sweets to class. The sweets were not halal because they contained pork gelatine… Or the mother who refused to let her daughter take off her gloves in chemistry class. It was also the teenager who, after reading a text by the thinker Condorcet, bravely exclaimed: “Education is not for girls!” It is this student who, after watching a report on forced marriages in India, declares that “women are on earth to obey men” and the class did not contradict her. Or these two girls who turn up covered in a full veil for a school trip to the museum. When I ask them to take off the veil, as no conspicuous religious signs are allowed, I am accused of “racism against Islam”.
Yes, this is a new phenomenon that can be explained by both religious pressure and the rise of social networks. Some students are more likely to believe what they see on Facebook or TikTok than what is written in a textbook or newspaper article, regardless of how well-known and legitimate the medium is. In class, they contrast their truth with scientific knowledge. Some topics prove to be highly inflammable, especially in science. If you teach a course on sexual reproduction or astronomy, you clash with their beliefs. Once I handed out a text by Immanuel Kant to my class, “What is Enlightenment?”. In it, the philosopher reminded us that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around. The following week, a student came back waving the Qur’an and quoting a passage that said the earth, which is at the centre of everything, is fighting with the sun for supremacy. I retorted that religion should not throw reason overboard, but she went home offended and angry. Sometimes I am discouraged. Le Parisien