She takes off the mask but does not give up. Convinced that “wearing a mask is harmful to learning and that it is appropriate, despite the news Covid-19 epidemic wave announced, to take new measures ”the teacher
Anne-Claire Rossignol decided on November 8 to no longer wear the mask for class. This gesture resulted in her being immediately suspended from her duties by
National Education. Since then, this French teacher in a college in Gouvieux in the Oise has been working to regain the right to teach without a mask.
Complicated learning in children
“The teaching profession must be recognized as a profession exempt from masks, just like TV presenters or lawyers, for example,” she pleads. The risk she denounces is scientifically recognized: the mask greatly complicates learning in children.
A year ago, psychologists were already sounding the alarm on the harmful consequences, in the more or less long term, of wearing a mask for children from 6 years old, in a tribune in Release. In June, the French Pediatric Society called for an end to wearing masks at school.
Finally, on Friday, on France Info, the president of the medical commission of Public Assistance – Hospitals of Paris (APHP), Rémi Salomon, also recognized that “the mask disrupted the learning of language and reading for teachers and children ”.
No response from the rectorate
For its part, the Ministry of National Education believes that wearing a mask is essential to stem the announced fifth wave and has also made it again compulsory for all primary school students from Monday, November 15.
“When I warned my superiors, on October 19, that I intended to teach without a mask to teach fully, I had no response,” explains Anne-Claire Rossignol today. Until she received, the day of her gesture, a measure of temporary suspension from the rectorate who summoned her to explain herself, on November 15. She risks the disciplinary council to be removed from the public service.
At 45 years old, the teacher assures us that she will go to the end of her process, “supported by the children and the parents”. “I wouldn’t have done this until the majority of people and children were vaccinated. Today, we must reassess the risk-benefit ratio for students when we realize that the epidemic will last and become cyclical, ”she said.
“The discomfort that already exists will increase”
And the teacher knows what she is talking about. The town where she teaches is located next to Creil, where the epidemic was detected and revealed for the first time in France, in February 2020. “We were the first to undergo confinement,” she recalls.
According to Anne-Claire Rossignol, alternative solutions exist. “We can put the students at a distance, air classes regularly, she suggests. Anyway, if we persist with masks, for teachers, as for children, the discomfort that already exists will increase. “