It's a strange affair that is shaking up a high school in the Mantaise region, in Yvelines. An investigation was opened following “threats” made by a student to one of his teachers. The facts date back to October and concern a second grade class. During a French class devoted to “representations of hell” in poetry, a student speaks up and asks his teacher if she has any images of this subject in Islam. After a few days of reflection, she replied that she had done research, seen photos, but that she would not distribute any of them.
According to 78actu.fr, a shocked high school student then spoke, making a currently incomprehensible conflation: “Madame, you mean that you saw the prophet with women in hell? » Before, later, being threatening: “What time do you finish today? I think on Tuesdays you finish earlier? And on Thursday too? Take care of yourself when you come home this evening…”
After a call from the teacher to the student's family, the student ended up apologizing a little later. Even if a “provocation” of a teenager is not excluded by some close to the case, the Versailles rectorate has been contacted. “We have initiated certain measures and a disciplinary procedure has been launched,” it says. The student will therefore soon be summoned before a disciplinary council. The professor is on sick leave.
This affair occurs in a delicate context for this establishment. Recently, intrusions had required the intervention of the police. It is for all of these facts that a preliminary investigation was opened by the Versailles public prosecutor's office, even if no link has been demonstrated between these two cases. Beyond the particular situation of this high school, it also questions the difficulties of exercising in certain establishments.
Just a year ago, in Issou, another town in the Mantes region, a few parents, alerted by their children, themselves heated by the rumor, blamed a teacher who had made the mistake of… showing a painting of nudes dating from the 17th century. Almost at the same time, in a middle school in Mantes-la-Jolie, it was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that appeared in the WhatsApp discussions of some parents, unhappy that Hamas had been described as terrorist by a magazine proposed to the study by a teacher.
By multiplying, this type of event further complicates the work of teachers, some of whom are subject to self-censorship. “Since Samuel Paty, the climate has clearly changed. It was already sensitive before, it became stronger afterwards, a high school teacher analyzed in recent months. Subjects like gender equality, sexuality or the crusades have become complicated. For some students, the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State is a law against Muslims! So colleagues refuse to broach the subject. »
