“Racist deviation from secularism”, “neocolonial gloubi-boulga”,…. A national campaign by the Ministry of National Education to promote secularism in schools has been debated on social networks since its launch on Thursday.
This campaign, launched on the Internet and social networks, must be disseminated in schools and through posters. It was presented Thursday by Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer during his traditional back-to-school press conference.
“Xenophobic deviation from secularism, based on a colonial imagination”
On one of the eight posters, which shows a little white boy alongside a little black girl, both in the water hanging from a pool edge, we can read: “Allow Sacha and Neissa to be in the same bath. This is secularism ”.
We recall that secularism is therefore the religious neutrality of the State. Twenty years of drift later, we come to this neocolonial bloubiboulga. pic.twitter.com/zdjUlSe45C
– Mona Chollet (@monachollet) August 26, 2021
“By mixing religion, skin color, supposed geographical origin (…), the poster campaign is on a dangerous slope, that of a racist and xenophobic deviation of secularism, based on a colonial imagination”, denounces the South union Education in a press release, asking to give up deploying it.
The CGT-Educ’action meanwhile denounced on Twitter a “scandalous campaign”, mixing “clichés and instrumentalization of a concept apparently poorly digested”.
Scandalous campaign of the ministry on secularism. Poncifs and instrumentalization of a concept apparently badly digested … We can only fear the content of future staff training on this theme! pic.twitter.com/Q4ns2e51rJ
– CGT-Éduc’action (@cgt_educ) August 27, 2021
“This campaign is made to unite”, pleads Blanquer
“This campaign chooses to include the story of secularism in the daily life of students by relying on its concrete, indisputable and shared effects, as they experience them every day at school, college and university. high school, ”the ministry said in a statement. “Let’s not look for new controversy, this campaign is made to unite and to remind people that secularism is at the heart of the French social pact and that we must all respect it”, also recalled on RTL the Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer
On Twitter, for the Snes-FSU history-geography group (main secondary school union), “this series of posters (…) will once again disrupt the work of teachers who are striving to understand and apply this principle of the Republic in its most precise definition (historical and legal) ”.
When we discuss in class the #secularism, we already have enough to do to deconstruct the misconceptions, prejudices, clichés circulating throughout society (and counter the moldy debates of the media and the political world), we do not need our hierarchy to add more.
– SnesFSU History-Geography Group (@HGSnesFSU) August 27, 2021
On the side of the policies, the regional councilor of Ile-de-France (PS) Jérôme Guedj regretted, on Twitter “a campaign (…) hallucinating”, which succeeds “the feat of presenting secularism without speaking about religions, separation of the Churches and the State, legal protection for believers and non-believers ”. Florian Philippot, leader of the far-right movement “Patriots”, said on the same network that the posters had “absolutely no connection with secularism. And if Blanquer thinks so, it’s serious. Just state communitarianism. No more no less “.