It will be one year on Sunday October 13 since teacher Dominique Bernard was assassinated in front of his high school in Arras by a radicalized former student. On the eve of this sad anniversary, Dominique Bernard’s wife spoke for the first time. In The World, Isabelle Bernard says she has a responsibility, a fight which she must lead because her husband died in a terrorist attack. Died because a professor of literature, defender of critical thinking.
Herself a college English teacher, the couple was aware that the school had become a target since the death of Samuel Paty in 2020. They talked about it among themselves. Dominique Bernard even told him about the attacker Mohammed Mogouchkov when he was his student: “I have to be careful, I can’t say everything I want”.
Fifteen days before the assassination of her husband, Isabelle Bernard confided to a friend that her husband could very well be killed, according to her, the school underestimates the risk linked to terrorism. However, she does not blame National Education. She nevertheless wonders: what have we collectively missed for young people to reject secularism?
Isabelle Bernard thus launched a literary prize intended for fourth, third and second grade students with, as a theme, tolerance in order to perpetuate her husband’s values.
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