Charlie Hebdo Attack Puts Schools Under Scrutiny

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-attack-puts-schools-under-scrutiny.html

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SAINT-OUEN-L’AUMÔNE, France — On a recent morning at the Lycée Edmond Rostand in this largely middle-class suburb of Paris, Céline Cauvin, a history and geography teacher, was leading high school students in a discussion about freedom of the press.

“Do you have the right to criticize a religion? Yes or no?” she asked. The 15- and 16-year-olds, from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, thought hard. Yes, they said, you do, but within limits. Ms. Cauvin wrote on the board: Racism. Defamation. Inciting hate. “You can attack someone’s opinion, but not his person. Do you understand the nuance?” she asked.

Ever since three French jihadists from Paris’s more working-class suburbs killed 17 people in attacks in the Paris area last month, France has been gripped by conversations like the one in Ms. Cauvin’s classroom. The French government has responded to the attacks with heightened security, but it has also turned its focus to something fundamental to France’s understanding of itself as a nation: its schools.

The attacks have placed teachers on the front lines in a country where schools are seen as responsible not only for reading and math, but also for instilling moral values, citizenship and the concept of the rule of law. Teachers say that is a tall order, and one in which families and pop culture should play a role, instead of relying on top-down discipline from the centralized state.

“In France, schools have historically had a decisive role in the fabric of the republic and the fabric of citizenship,” said Michel Lussault, the president of an advisory board of teachers that helps the Education Ministry develop curriculums. “That’s the great thing about the schools of France, but also the burden.”

Last month, following news reports that some students in troubled urban areas had refused to participate in a nationwide minute of silence for the victims of the attacks, Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem unveiled a proposal, already in the works, for amped-up civics classes under the lofty title “Grand Mobilization of Schools for the Values of the Republic.”

The new civics program would allow schools to take disciplinary action against students who snubbed school values. Last month, there was a national uproar after a school questioned an 8-year-old who refused to participate in the minute of silence.

“They’ve confused citizenship with obedience,” said Véronique Decker, the principal of the École Marie Curie, a primary school in Bobigny, a working-class suburb northeast of Paris.

In recent weeks, much of the debate in France has fallen into a binary of “Je Suis Charlie” — “I Am Charlie,” the shorthand for defenders of liberty of expression — and “I Am Not Charlie,” those who find offense in the cartoons that satirized the prophet Mohammed, but who generally don’t condone the killings.

Many teachers see that divide as troubling. “What poses problems to teachers and students and France itself is, can we be something else other than Charlie or not Charlie?” said Mathilde Levesque, a high school teacher in Aulnay-sous-Bois, another working-class suburb of Paris. “The problem is much more vast, and it’s not new,” she added.

After the attacks, Ms. Levesque said that some students were upset that the outpouring of support for free speech seemed to run up against their disapproval of the caricatures of Mohammed. “They said, ‘We were already the forgotten of the sociopolitical system, and now they trampled on our values.’”

French news reports often cite teachers who say they face similar resistance from Muslim students when they teach about the Holocaust. Such instances have contributed to unease among Jews in France, though Dominique Trimbur, the director of education at the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, which supports Holocaust survivors, said he believed the vast majority of schools had no trouble teaching the Holocaust.

More often, teachers say they encounter young minds asking the same difficult questions the rest of the country is facing: Why can’t I wear a head scarf in school, but I can on a school trip? (Because France’s 2004 law forbids conspicuous religious symbols inside public primary and secondary schools.) Why is it O.K. for Charlie Hebdo to print cartoons satirizing the prophet, but the comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala is on trial for hate speech?

Mr. M’Bala M’Bala, who has a huge following among young people in France, is standing trial for remarks he made in 2013 lamenting that a prominent Jewish journalist did not die “in the gas chambers.” The comedian was detained and released last month after saying on his Twitter feed, “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly,” comments prosecutors said indicated sympathy with Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris.

Many students are far more familiar with Mr. M’Bala M’Bala and pop culture than they are with the nuances of French legal history. Teachers, and Mr. Valls and Ms. Belkacem in their speeches to the nation, expressed concern that students were increasingly swayed by conspiracy theories and misinformation on the Internet.

Ms. Cauvin gave her class a handout suggesting valid sources. It also included the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from 1789, and suggested possible essay topics on various French laws passed since the Revolution, such as the law on the separation of church and state (1905), women’s suffrage (1944) and the law on religious symbols in school (2004).

High school students receive 17 hours of civics instruction per school year, and it is often taught by history and geography teachers. The government’s new proposals include training 1,000 teachers to teach “moral and civic” topics and “laïcité,” the French concept for state secularism, from elementary through high school. They would also require schools to talk with parents and possibly take disciplinary action if students are seen as disrespecting French values.

The students seemed to enjoy Ms. Cauvin’s class, and said it was one of the few where they did not just listen to lectures. “I like the fact that we can debate,” said Camille Prabong, 15.

“I like that in civics class we look at news events, like Charlie Hebdo, for example,” added Lucas Seillant, 16. “That let me understand the law about religion in France.”

Public school teachers, who have limited flexibility to veer from the program set for students nationwide, said the government’s proposals for more civics education did not seem to advance the curriculum much and did not account for the extra class time needed.

“We absolutely have to get to the point that it’s normal that a Frenchman is called Mohammed ben Youssef,” said Ms. Decker, the principal of Marie Curie in Bobigny.

Other teachers at the school said that a few students had expressed ignorant enthusiasm for the Charlie Hebdo killers. “One kid said, ‘That was well done,’ as punishment to have caricatured,” said Emmanuel Husson, whose students are ages 9 to 11. “But after discussion, they realized soon that this isn’t how you resolve these problems in France. There’s the law of France. There’s a difference between drawing and using weapons.”

In late January, the students at Marie Curie published their own newspaper about the attacks. In charming scrawl, they asserted their rights. On one drawing depicting a shooting outside the kosher supermarket, a 10-year-old named Olivia wrote: “I have the right to sing. I have the right to play. I have the right to write. I have the right to live. I have plenty of rights, but I don’t have that of killing innocents!”