Continuing to teach after trauma.

INTER DE FRANCE – ON DEMAND – PODCAST

Let us recall. On 16 October 2020, a history and geography teacher was murdered by a radical Islamist in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines), after being the target of a hate campaign for having shown caricatures of Muhammad during a civic education course on freedom of expression.

Four years later, France Inter journalists Sara Ghibaudo and Sonia Princet are revisiting the terrorist attack that claimed the life of Samuel Paty in a podcast of eight episodes, each half an hour long. This is important to emphasise because the long period of time allows us to pay tribute to the man he was, to listen to the teachers, pupils and parents of the Bois-d’Aulne school and to tell the story of the team that was put in place before the attack and to question, in the latest episodes, how it is possible to continue teaching when the school is clearly becoming a target.

Educators, the two journalists first recall a few events, including March 19, 2012, when the jihadist Mohammed Merah killed four people, including three children, in front of the Ozar-Hatorah school in Toulouse. They also say that many of their interlocutors preferred to change their names, that the fear is widespread but present.

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The first episode offers a portrait of Samuel Paty, a discreet 47-year-old man, an attentive father, a professor at a quiet university who had chosen to put himself at the service of teaching and the reflection he wanted to make his students, at the beginning of the 2020 school year, on press freedom. How then did a student known for her difficulties lie to her parents, accusing the teacher of discrimination against Muslims, pushing her father to denounce Samuel Paty on Facebook and to ally himself with Abdelhakim Sefrioui, radical activist, notorious anti-Semite and founder of a Sheikh-Yassine Collective, a pro-Hamas movement.

How videos posted by Abdelhakim Sefrioui escalate tensions to the point that Samuel Paty files a defamation complaint and takes precautions for his safety (episodes 2 to 4). How Abdoullakh Anzorov, a young Muslim of Chechen origin, decides to act by murdering and decapitating Samuel Paty (episodes 3 and 5). How some teachers will never return to the university when others discover with horror the involvement of certain students in the drama (episode 6) and how the murder, on 13 October 2023, of Dominique Bernard, a French teacher at an Arras university during a jihadist attack, highlights that all teachers are now potential targets (episode 7), and what remains to be thought and done (episode 8).

In this latest episode, Sonia Princet points out that, since 2020, the principles of secularism have been questioned more frequently. This is confirmed by a parliamentary report published in March 2024. As Sara Ghibaudo recalls, “When we say that 0.2% of secondary and high school teachers have been threatened with a weapon, that represents 900 teachers, or four per day.” A harsh observation but one that must be heard and listened to.