The art teacher at Bellevue College in Toulouse would not have thought that the nudity of Greek statues shown in class would cause such a stir. It was Toulouse teacher and whistleblower Fatiha Agag-Boudjahlat who drew attention to the case in September 2020, reports the daily La Dépêche. “In a high school in Toulouse, a young man, grandson of an imam, defied an art teacher who dared to show Greek statues (naked) and went so far afterwards as to declare that the Kouachi brothers had been justified (the terrorists who carried out the attack on the editors of Charlie Hebdo magazine, editor’s note). Disciplinary committee in charge, the punishment will surprise you,” she wrote on Twitter.
The disciplinary committee did not consider it necessary to expel the student from school and was content to exempt him from art classes, where the altercation had taken place. Fatiha Agag-Boudjahlat said in another tweet that the teacher was not “supported, not even by a large part of her colleagues, because the child in this middle class school comes from Mirail”, a district of Toulouse largely made up of social housing.
The facts of the case were confirmed by the Toulouse school board, which states that the case was closely examined by the “values of the Republic” and “radicalisation” officers, as well as by the office of the academic supervisor. Even the public prosecutor, Dominique Alzeari, was informed, which led to the schoolboy being questioned by investigators from the Toulouse police station, resulting in the case not being investigated further. The school’s disciplinary council decided to suspend him on probation.