France: No Samuel Paty school after backlash

No one at the school "The Eucalypts" in the village of Ollioules, near the Mediterranean coast in southern France, wants to talk to the media anymore. Sandra Olivier, maths teacher and member of the teachers' union SNES-FSU turned down DW's interview request via text message: "We would like to regain a peaceful atmosphere," she wrote.

Local mayor Robert Beneventi from the center-right party Les Republicains (LR) also declined our enquiry. It had been his idea to rename the middle school after Samuel Paty, a history teacher beheaded by a radicalized Islamist near Paris in October last year.

But Beneventi had to drop the plans — after they had met with resistance by teachers, parents and pupils. It's a backlash that has caused a heated debate and shows how divided French society is when it comes to secularism.

"I wanted to honor this teacher who was killed in such an atrocious way," Beneventi recently told regional TV channel France 3. "It would have been an important symbol for our Republic," he added.

The attacker, identified by authorities as being of Chechen origin, beheaded 47-year-old Paty after he had shown a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in class. The cartoon was from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was attacked by gunmen in January 2015, killing 12 people in and around the newsroom.

'This would make us a target'

But for the school to be renamed, its governing board needed to agree. That board includes representatives of the teachers, parents and pupils. A majority of them were against the new name, according to an online poll, so the mayor dropped the plans.

Olivier justified the refusal in an interview with France 3. "Of course, we want to honor our colleague, but not like this. This would make us a target. And we should avoid that," she said.

She added that Paty didn't have any connection to the village and that the school's street had already been rechristened after Arnaud Beltrame, a gendarme killed by an extremist gunman after taking the place of a hostage during a supermarket attack in Trebes in 2018. 

"Giving our school Paty's name would add another tribute on top of that — and bestow upon this place a very sad connotation, although children come here every day."

Commentators call refusal a 'disgrace'

But the news of the refusal triggered angry reactions. Commentators called it a "voluntary surrender in the face of danger" and "a disgrace." Iannis Roder, head of the observatory for education at the left-leaning Jean Jaures Foundation and himself a history teacher in Saint-Denis north of Paris, thinks the teachers are crawling to fear. "The Islamists are winning the battle over ideas, as the teachers are not even showing up for the fight," he told DW. 

A recent survey by polling institute Ifop commissioned by Roder's foundation and Charlie Hebdo bears witness to a certain degree of apprehension amongst teachers; 42% of those interviewed admitted they had self-censored at least once in class when talking about religion, to avoid problems.

"I understand that people don't want to risk their lives, but since the attacks in 2015, we no longer live in the bubble of security we had been in for 70 years," Roder stated.

"And public servants have an obligation to defend the values of the Republic," he added.

Then, he went on to quote a speech from 1938 in Parliament by Winston Churchill, who later became British Prime Minister: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war."

The then-back-bencher was commenting on the Munich Agreement, through which the UK, France and Italy had ceded the Sudetenland territory to Adolf Hitler's Germany. But the agreement did not prevent Germany from starting World War II.

A growing rift in French society?

However, Mihaela Alexandra Tudor, lecturer in media sociology at the University of Paul Valery Montpellier 3 in southern France, says the teachers' and parents' refusal is the symptom of a growing rift within French society.

"People are losing faith in politicians and think the latter are using symbols such as renaming schools to promote their own careers — even if that puts teachers and pupils in harm's way," she said to DW.

"Plus, not everybody seems to agree with France's very strict definition of secularism any more, some fear the only objective is to stigmatize Islam. We need to urgently update that definition," Tudor said.

The researcher thinks a bill on republican values, which is currently going through Parliament, could at least be the beginning of a nationwide discussion on the topic.

Even though some think the legislation will actually further stigmatize Muslims. The draft law is to tighten control of mosques and imams. Threatening or intimidating public servants would carry a fine and a prison sentence according to the bill.

Samuel Paty schools elsewhere

Ollioules seems nevertheless to be an exception for now. The town of Beziers, 300 kilometers (186 miles) further west, will rename an elementary school after Paty. They will renovate an existing school and re-open it under the new name in autumn 2022.

The town of Cap d'Ail, about 180 kilometers east of Ollioules, rebranded its Saint Antoine elementary school just a few days after Paty was assassinated. The new nameplate will go up in June. Cap d'Ail's mayor Xavier Beck says the decision was a matter of course — despite an online petition opposing it was signed by more than 300 people.

"We have to defend our civilization and democracy by loudly proclaiming our ideals," he told DW. "We need to stand our ground in the face of terrorism."

One crucial difference

There is, of course, one crucial difference with regards to Ollioules. Unlike with middle schools, city councils don't need the go-ahead from the school's governing boards to rename elementary schools.

Mayor Beneventi has meanwhile announced he still intends to pay tribute to Paty in his town by renaming another location after the teacher —  just not a middle school.