Simply their portrait in black and white. Simply this sentence: “Four years ago, Samuel Paty, one year ago, Dominique Bernard”. And two wreaths of flowers “We do not forget”. Without hatred, without slogans, without demands. Simply a tribute to two men “murdered because they were teachers”.
Wednesday October 16, 2024, under a low and gray sky, at the call of Snes-FSU, the secondary education union, the teachers – around fifty – saluted the memory of Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard. “A complete crime against humans and knowledge”commented Jean-Michel Dejenne, vice-president of FCPE 06, who came in support.
“Knowledge, liberation from constraints, critical thinking”
Patty, Bernard, “this is the public school targeted for what it represents”soberly commented Jean-Paul Clot, teacher and departmental secretary of Snes-FSU, Place Garibaldi, before the procession walked symbolically to the olive tree of the Masséna high school. “Our two colleagues fell under the blows of Islamist terrorists because they were teachers of the secular public school. The school they defended is the one which aims for emancipation through knowledge, liberation from the shackles and critical thinking “, he said. They were bulwarks against obscurantism.
A word for the three other victims of Arras
Samuel Paty was 47 years old. A history and geography teacher in a college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in Yvelines, he was beheaded on October 16, 2020 for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his students. A year ago, on October 13, 2023, Dominique Bernard, a 57-year-old associate professor of modern literature, was killed while trying to protect his students, within the Gambetta-Carnot school group, in Arras. Three other members of the establishment’s staff were injured: a PE teacher, a security guard and a maintenance worker. Nice teachers included them in their tribute.
