“Dying to teach”, or the school facing an existential challenge

2023-10-19 18:41:48

The thirty years of the Gironde publishing house Le Bord de l’Eau are worth celebrating. This October 19, Les Rencontres Sciences Po Bordeaux/“Sud Ouest” is responsible for serving the birthday cake, with the last in a series of three round tables organized on campus: “La République. The Republics”, a vast theme to be explored…

The thirty years of the Gironde publishing house Le Bord de l’Eau are worth celebrating. This October 19, Les Rencontres Sciences Po Bordeaux/“Sud Ouest” is responsible for serving the birthday cake, with the last in a series of three round tables organized on campus: “La République. The Republics”, a vast theme to be covered in 90 minutes by a brilliant Areopagus composed of the philosophers Fabienne Brugère, Vincent Peillon and Serge Audier, the political scientist Yves Déloye and the sociologist Manuel Cervera-Marzal.

Questioned by the students on the tension between republic and democracy, the guests retrace the winding intellectual journey of the two concepts which, in the permanent game of reversals of polarity, have never ceased to attract and repel each other since Greece – democracy – and Rome – the republic – laid the foundations. The twists and turns of history have made the republic a strange and lax object, summoned at every turn and claimed by forces at the antipodes. During the Paris Commune in the spring of 1871, “the Communards claimed to be part of the republic. Adolphe Thiers, who murdered them, too! » underlines Serge Audier.

In this confusion of values, where can we find republican virtues? “At school,” replies Yves Déloye, who makes the institution the guardian of the temple – even if the Vichy state temporarily undermined its foundations. Vincent Peillon shifts into gear and turns up the sound. “School is the place for transmitting republican values, it educates in freedom”, supports the former Minister of Education of François Hollande (2012-2014) who brings the exchange to a very concrete dimension. “Teachers are tired. They are at the front, and have been for fifteen years,” he said. Alone to “learn to think”, a job that “neither TF1, nor M6, nor the social networks, and not even our politicians” accomplishes.

The school “besieged by society”

The shadow of Dominique Bernard, fatally struck by a fanatic on October 13 in Arras, hovers for a moment over the debate. The funeral of the French teacher took place that same morning. And beyond the terrible fate of the person concerned, who fell three years after Samuel Paty, it is the entire institution which is faltering, people worry from the podium. The school “besieged by society” for Serge Audier, stuck between the crushing weight of parents and “the contradictory injunctions of supervision”, in the careful words used by Yves Déloye, has become the place where “to die of teaching” is no longer an empty formula. It is a reality that catches up with daily life in the courtyards. A cold and threatening reality, breaking with the mission embraced by the teaching staff, to be a transmitter of civic virtue. “Invest yourself in public affairs in a selfless way”, as Fabienne Brugère defines it.

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