On this Tuesday, November 12 in the morning, with barely opened eyes, the students of a school in Val d'Oise were called into the playground. All the commotion is that we should pay tribute to the soldiers of the 14-18 war and to do this, we did not lack imagination: short speeches, drum rolls, flag raising, singing of La Marseillaise and minute of silence. In a barracks atmosphere, it was with hand on heart and very solemn that thoughts were all directed towards these brave soldiers who died for France.
There are several things to this: it is less the homage as such that is to be regretted than the form in which it was conceived. Without any critical perspective on this imperialist butchery that was the First World War, which sent hundreds of millions of workers to certain death in the name of the interests of a few, the ceremony which could not have been more republican which took place that morning, is a sign once again of the regimentation of minds that the school aims to be. Adhering to a straight and smooth civic morality, adhering to a unilateral vision of the world, such is the project of the school as the bourgeoisie has thought since the Third Republic.
We all remember the civic and moral education classes in which we were drummed with sacrosanct values in order to later be good, docile citizens of the Republic. That morning, it wasn't about anything else: everyone had their role defined, well defined and beware of the absent student who didn't come to sing! Let us have fun believing that if Retailleau passed by, he would have been delighted, this champion of order and discipline, and Genetet would most certainly have applauded with both hands, she who thinks that “to raise the level, we must start by restoring order”.
