Editorial – Class 8 | L’Economiste
How did we get there? A student murdering his teacher with an axe. This is not an isolated case. In a number of cities, teachers (especially in middle and high schools) have been insulted, pushed around, and assaulted inside their classrooms, by those they are supposed to be guiding towards success. The image of the “ prophet-like ” teacher is long gone!
Today, a latent, accumulated violence reigns in our schools. This fury did not appear out of nowhere. Its underlying reasons are well known: an interweaving of social, economic and educational factors… The weakening of the moral authority of the teacher and the loss of prestige of the profession, on the one hand, and the crisis of values, coupled with the complacency of certain parents, on the other, give rise to an explosive cocktail: frustration, anger, and despair, often erupting in the absence of decompression valves.
And our schools are not equipped to deal with these situations. They still lack mediation mechanisms to prevent or resolve conflicts within schools (the Minister has promised monitoring units). This is one of the levers we urgently need to activate to prevent scenes of ordinary violence from turning our schools into hotbeds of delinquency.
We’re not far from the scenario of the infamous film “Class 8”, where we hear this chilling line, in broken French that betrays the shortcomings of the training: “ We, the students, find ourselves in a boat lost at sea with no direction»”.
In the age of “ quality schools ”, it is vital to re-establish the moral authority of the teacher. The (re)sacralization of the school, and the empowerment of families, are also projects that can no longer be allowed to drag on. Otherwise, nothing but ruins will remain.
