A teacher’s distress – She speaks about ‘Charlie’ to her students who display utter contempt for the minute of silence, provocations…

Original translation by Sassy

From Fdesouche

Minute of silence met with misunderstanding, at times contempt, provocation…, a PEN (Priority Education Network) college teacher of the Grenoble Academy tells of her disturbing day.

On the morning of January 8th, our minister notified us by email of our duty to explain the values of the Republic.  As teachers, it is our duty to explain the facts to our students, to promote contemplation, to help them understand.

“Why observe one minute of silence for people I never knew?”

My first exchange was with my 5th grade class of 12-year old students.  They were very quiet.  Except one who asked me: “Why observe one minute of silence for people I never knew?”  I found this reaction to be violent.  His classmates were also angry. They’re young, certainly more emotional than their elders.  I saw this student’s words were not purposeful.  He was provoking.

I summarized the events: human beings were killed.  To ensure the minute of silence would be observed, I had to ‘take hold of the situation’, or else it wouldn’t have worked. I told them: “Do you realize the victims left home yesterday morning and said to their family ‘See you later’?”

During this moment of silence, I had to rein in those who were amusing their audience through a display of bravado.  After the moment of silence, I felt a heaviness weigh down the class so I moved on to another topic.  I had just seen a few of my muslim students stand up, head lowered, ill at ease for themselves, their families, it must be hard for those who established the parallel.

As to what happened in my classroom, this provocation, it’s meaningless compared to what some of my colleagues had to deal with.  During the minute of silence, in the other classrooms, many students were expelled, some kept on talking, saying horrible things, while others laughed.  A muslim 6th grader outright refused to observe the minute of silence.  All these students, of ‘devious’ behavior, were sent to the principal’s office and to the school infirmary to be given a lecture no doubt different from that which they hear in their home.

Early afternoon, I attended my 4th grade class.  They had just finished a French lesson during which they took part in a lively debate on the subject.  They were noisy, agitated.  I proposed we continue the discussion.  Some said it was a terrible event, calling the terrorists ‘barbarians’.  But one student started to express his disagreement.  I also noticed another muslim female student sitting at the end of the classroom waiting patiently with her hand held up to speak.

“We will not allow ourselves to be insulted by a drawing of the prophet”

“Madame”, she says to me, “we will not allow ourselves to be insulted by a drawing of the prophet, it’s normal that we exact revenge.  It is more than a mockery, it is an insult !” 

Contrary to some, this young girl was not mincing her words, she was not provoking.  Next to her, one of her friends, also muslim, agreed with her words. 

I was upset, I tried to engage on the principle of freedom and freedom of expression.  Then, another group of four muslim students became agitated: “Why do they keep on, Madame, since we already had threatened them?”

Many students tried to calm them down while explaining that Charlie Hebdo treated all religions the same way. Their French lesson class teacher had shown them the photos of other religions mocked by Charlie Hebdo.  But they react according to what they hear in their home.

A division was created among the students

What distresses me, it’s the fracture this tragic event created in my classrooms which are normally well blended in.  The result was a division among the students.  Today, the atmosphere was gloomy, particular.  This 4th grade classroom, usually sympathetic and dynamic, was suddenly divided into two clans.  The sectarians suddenly resurged.  And I am frightened for what will follow.

The school system must transmit our values but we are, at times, betrayed by the parents.  We teach the children our republican values, but once they are home, they ditch them aside.  They don’t trust us, their teachers.  They don’t consider us as their allies but as their enemies.  As a teacher, you ask yourself what they must think of you, of us – the teachers, us – whose mission is to teach them.

We have before us young citizens that entertain such ideas that we must ask ourselves: “Where are we heading?”

lepoint.fr

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

53 Replies to “A teacher’s distress – She speaks about ‘Charlie’ to her students who display utter contempt for the minute of silence, provocations…”

  1. The French were fools yesterday and fools today, to think Muslims are their friends! The Muslim will never be your friend, he would bury his own daughter alive.

  2. She hopefully realises that youths can generally be flippant with such issues. I taught a lesson in english to Slovakian youths about Rwanda. They just shrugged , laughed and took the piss.This was 1997. I realised after why should a white Slovak kid care about black people in Africa.
    The problem with the story is the division. It was always there it just needs a spark to set it off and it was obvious before it began.
    I believe the demonstrations in France and elsewhere make the west weaker. The core issue is once again but with more force, swept under the carpet. The fact that muslims died and helped in the situation ,while a tragedy, ensures to many on the left that their thinking is correct. It is not.
    Individual acts of kindness by a muslim like in the kosher store are human and correct.But like the muslim police officer this man was helping the infidel . The officer was an apostate working against Allah’s will.
    I am once again attacked by ‘friends’ for stating the obvious. They claim all muslims are not the same and it is only a few nutters. The Je suis Charlie demo’s gaurantee to the jihadis that we are all Charlie………we are dead men.

  3. We will see European civil wars pop off one country after another, should ship the Louvre collection to Canada, and the other major Western and Central European collections. Stash them someplace less likely to implode, go Somali, lose their shit, wonder when the the islamo-mini-states declare themselves sovereign and independent.

    I hate the fools that caused this, I want trials for those that facilitated this tragedy.

    • The European civil wars are starting but like all civil wars they take a long time to develop and then one day they will explode and the left will start asking how this happened,

  4. Another thought grasped me whilst I was watching the events unfurl.
    The muslim terrorists were a scouting party or lets say a probing tactic. These 3 men may have been sent in to test responses. Troop and police dispositions, re-action times. Police tactics on the ground , who , where, when etc and all on TV being watched by other cells in Europe or elsewhere.
    Lets say now they know that a particular kosher store after reconnaisance can be taken over with one gunman taking hostages. They know the police cordon distances , crowd control etc. They know that vehicles within the cordon are not removed allowing potential vehicle bombs. They know line of sights that will allow them to target clusters of policemen in groups of ten surrounding the shop. From an ambush point of view the options are limitless. They might even realise now that the President may even walk down the street they want him too. With cameras rolling all the time. It may seem obvious but the media have become their eyes.

    • The French have allowed and enabled several millions such scouting parties. Heck, the very fact that the French, along with every other western nation, purposefully sought out mass Muslim immigration means no government is serious about Islam; only serious about downplaying the more and more bloody obvious.

      Our nations are target rich. There will be fighting in the streets.

      • Yes there will be a lot of blood in the streets and the civil wars will last years, they will not be large scale unit combat but rather attacks like Paris with (eventually) almost all groups fighting using those tactics.

    • Probing attacks like the ones in Paris are useful to let the next wave of attacks be even more deadly and terrorize more people. Someday the authorities will have to react with more then demonstrations.

  5. OT:
    French PM: France without Jews Would be a Failure

    “France without Jews is not France,” he said.
    […]

    However, Valls said before the attacks that the French Republic had been founded on equal rights being extended to Jews, but that was being threatened with an admitted rise in anti-Semitism coming from an influx of Muslim immigrants.

    *********
    How could trillions of dollars be laundered from DC to Saudi Arabia? Why, through Citigroup, of course.
    A clever reader with probably more knowledge of the Middle East than they would care to have put before me a very interesting question. Is the US laundering money to Saudi Arabia through Citigroup in order to “hedge” against, or compensate Saudi Arabia for the drop in oil prices?

    Well, it sure as hell looks like it. I recently tweeted the reportage on the massive derivatives position being accumulated by Citigroup (the parent Holding Company) and Citibank (the bank held by Citigroup HoldCo) – $135 TRILLION. Citi is adding roughly $10 TRILLION PER QUARTER, and the bank is now holding MORE derivatives than the parent HoldCo, which is unprecedented and shocking. Even worse, the bank – the derivatives holdings of which are now “guaranteed” by the FDIC, which is to say the US TAXPAYERS, thanks to the Cromnibus bill – is where the exposure is being added – $9 TRILLION was added to the Citibank portfolio within the third quarter of 2014 alone – the latest available data. Citi is the only big bank that is INCREASING its derivatives position, all the other big banks have modestly reduced their derivatives exposure in the same time period. But Citi is piling it on as hard and fast as it can – NINE TRILLION $ IN ONE QUARTER!!

    Do you know who the largest private shareholder of Citigroup is?

    Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud. Mister Saudi Arabia.

    • France without Jews blah, blah.

      A French Jew should feel cosseted – he’s a living, breathing example of the enlightened France. A vestige of its better self.
      Tra-la.

      That statement would have me packing my bagstout suite.

      But I’m an American. And a Jew.
      “European Jew” post-Holocaust has always seemed an oxymoron to me.

    • Hello there……its me again……Don Laird….

      The barbaric, savage and vulgar Muslim hikes his bedsheet and spreads his cheeks and points to his filthy arse………wash!!!…..he commands………and we do……..giving that same filthy arse a bath with our tongues………..then he points to his boots……..wash!!!!……he commands……and we do………with a mouth and tongue laden with his feces we grovel and lick his boots clean……then he holds out his hand…..pay!!!!….he commands…. and all this whilst he rapes and butchers our women, our daughters, our families and friends, all while he uses our money to smear the filth and excrement of a 7th century lunatic on everything we hold dear, on everything we have poured sweat and spilled blood to build, all while he builds a global network of ass/boot washing centers for his pleasure and convenience, each and every one a monument to our cowardice and our utter humiliation………..and then he laughs and laughs and laughs……

      The solution is quite simple.

      Lay waste to the Islamized Middle East, Islamized portions of Africa and enforce a domestic program of MAID.

      Solution……..NO MUSLIM=NO ISLAM=NO PROBLEM……….

      Quite simple really.

      Food for thought, catalyst for action.

      Regards, Don Laird
      Dogtown Bastard
      Alberta, Canada

      Oh and by the by………they estimated there were over 3 million people marching across France today, with over 1 million in Paris alone.

      I think the internment and deportation camps are soon to become a reality. I can hardly wait.

      The Muslim now has very good reason to be looking over its shoulder, very good reason to be peeking through the drapes into the dark night, very good reason to start perusing travel brochures that sing the praises of Syria……..I can hardly wait.

      On another note. I met with some people tonight in Edmonton. The organizing is moving along well. I can hardly wait.

      • Your words are those of an agent provacateur that discredit my comments and I repudiate your destructive words.

        • @Malca…..

          Obviously your thinking has been impaired by your long plugged colon, I suggest you seek medical advice and, as eyesight is usually the next thing to go, please avoid driving and sharp cutlery until your little “issue” has been resolved.

          Now, be a nice little troll and run along……

          Regards, Don Laird
          Dogtown Bastard
          Alberta, Canada

    • The news about Citigroup is interesting, especially that they are plunging even deeper into the derivatives trade, I will have to try and figure out why they are exposing themselves to so much risk in a time when the worlds economy is weakening.

  6. Hello there………its me again…..Don Laird….

    Its called “murderous indifference”……..a tenet of the Leftist/Liberal, of cowards and of the Muslim.

    Quite simple really.

    Regards, Don Laird
    Dogtown Bastard
    Alberta, Canada

  7. Apparently we got that one witness… So if anyone with some French connections wants to investigate further…

    AP Exclusive: Witness to Paris officer’s death regrets video (yahoo, Jan 11, 2015)
    http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-witness-paris-officers-death-regrets-video-140947541.html

    “The man whose amateur video of a Paris police officer’s cold-blooded murder shocked the world now regrets sharing the footage online, saying he never expected it to be broadcast so widely.

    Engineer Jordi Mir told The Associated Press he posted the video out of fear and a “stupid reflex” fostered by years on social media.

    “I was completely panicked,” he said in an exclusive interview across from the Parisian boulevard where the officer was shot to death by terrorists Wednesday morning.

    The short film immediately became the most arresting image of France’s three-day-long drama, which began with a mass killing at the headquarters of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and ended Friday with the death of four hostages and the three terrorists in two separate shootouts.

    “I had to speak to someone,” Mir said. “I was alone in my flat. I put the video on Facebook. That was my error.”

    Mir said he left the video on Facebook for as little as 15 minutes before thinking the better of it and taking it down.

    It was too late.

    The footage had already been shared across the site and someone uploaded it to YouTube. Less than an hour after Mir removed the video from his page, he was startled to find it playing across his television screen.

    In its unedited form, the 42-second film shows two masked gunmen — brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi — as they walk toward a prone police officer, later identified as 42-year-old Ahmed Merabet.

    “You want to kill us?” one of the brothers says as he strides toward the wounded officer.

    “No, it’s OK, boss,” Merabet says, raising his hand in an apparent plea for mercy.

    Then he’s shot in the head.

    The video unleashed a worldwide wave of revulsion. British tabloids described it as “shocking” and “sickening.” France’s Le Figaro ran a still from the footage on its front page over a caption which read “War.” CNN’s Randi Kaye called it “an unforgettable image forever associated with this horrible attack.”

    The iconic nature of the imagery — rebroadcast again and again — has anguished Merabet’s family. His brother Malek told journalists Saturday: “How dare you take that video and broadcast it? I heard his voice. I recognized him. I saw him get slaughtered and I hear him get slaughtered every day.”

    Some argue that the video plays a useful role by exposing terrorists’ heartlessness. Mir said that one official told him the video helped galvanize French public opinion.

    “For me, the policeman killed, it’s like a war photo,” Mir said at one point, comparing it to famed photographer Robert Capa’s controversial picture of a soldier being shot dead during the Spanish Civil War.

    The video did help cause an outpouring of support for Merabet and his family, with many adopting the tag “Je Suis Ahmed” — I am Ahmed — as a spin on the solidarity slogan “Je Suis Charlie.” As Mir spoke to AP on Saturday, members of the public were still gathering at the site of Merabet’s death to lay flowers and pay respect.

    Mir didn’t even know what he was filming at first. Drawn to his window when the sound of gunshots interrupted his emailing, he initially thought there was a bank robbery in progress. When he spotted the rifle-wielding men in black walking down the street, he assumed they were SWAT police going to help a stricken comrade.

    “And — horror — they’re not,” Mir said.

    As police rushed to the scene, Mir downloaded the video to his computer and then to a removable disk, which he handed to officers.

    Then, he uploaded the footage to Facebook — and to the world.

    Mir, a slight man in his 50s whose parents were refugees from fascist Spain, is still at a loss to explain exactly what pushed him to share the chilling video with his 2,500 Facebook friends.

    “There’s no answer,” he said. Perhaps a decade of social networking had trained him to share whatever he saw.

    “I take a photo — a cat — and I put it on Facebook. It was the same stupid reflex,” he said.

    Mir wanted Merabet’s family to know he was “very sorry,” saying that he had turned down offers to buy the footage and that he wanted media organizations to blur Merabet’s image before running it. But many, he said, just broadcast the unedited footage without permission.

    The AP received Mir’s authorization to run the video on condition that it cut the scene of the officer’s death, which is standard AP practice.

    Mir said that, if he could do it all again, he would have kept the video off Facebook.

    “On Facebook, there’s no confidentiality,” he said. “It’s a lesson for me.””

  8. Egypt student gets 3-year jail term for atheism (yahoo, Jan 11, 2015)
    http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-student-gets-3-jail-term-atheism-152045172.html;_ylt=AwrSyCMGmLJU1UQAe.rQtDMD

    “An Egyptian court has sentenced a student to three years in jail for announcing on Facebook that he is an atheist and for insulting Islam, his lawyer said Sunday.

    Karim al-Banna, a 21-year-old whose own father testified against him, was jailed by a court in the Nile Delta province of Baheira on Saturday, lawyer Ahmed Abdel Nabi told AFP.

    “He was handed down a three-year prison sentence, and if he pays a bail of 1,000 Egyptian pounds ($ 140 or 117 euros) the sentence can be suspended until a verdict is issued by an appeals court,” Abdel Nabi said, adding that an appeal was to be heard on March 9.

    Abdel Nabi said his client’s father had testified against his son, charging that he “was embracing extremist ideas against Islam”.

    Banna’s name had appeared in a list of known atheists in a local daily after which his neighbours harassed him, said Ishaq Ibrahim, a researcher on religion and beliefs at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

    When Banna went to file a complaint against them at a police station, he was accused of insulting Islam and arrested, said Ibrahim, who has been tracking Banna’s case.

    Banna has been in custody since November….”

  9. Official: Islamic State group battle in Iraq kills 30 Kurds (yahoo, Jan 11, 2015)
    http://news.yahoo.com/official-islamic-state-group-battle-iraq-kills-30-122419283.html

    “Islamic State group fighters attempting to retake a town in northern Iraq held by Kurdish peshmerga forces have killed at least 30 Kurds, an Iraqi military spokesman said Sunday.

    The battle for the town of Gwer demonstrates the Islamic State group’s ability to still launch offensives in Iraq, despite a monthslong campaign of airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition. And while an alliance of Iraqi troops, Kurdish fighters and Sunni and Shiitte militiamen have made some gains, their advance remains tenuous at best…”

    • Sad news. I’m following these guys, the Kurds. Every second day or so, I check Internet for Kobane news. If any one people deserves its own country, it’s the Kurds.

      Amazing that ISIS controls 1/3 of Iraq and Syria in such a short time without any air power. We’re not going about this war the right way. We’ll have to create massive innocent casualties. No choice.

      • We aren’t fighting the war to win but instead are fighting the war to win hearts and minds. The first thing you have to do is win the war otherwise winning their hearts and minds don’t mean anything and history shows that the only time nation building works is after you have destroyed the old aggressor nation and proven to the citizens you are willing and able to crush any resistance.

        • Readers here who aren’t from the USA might not know the rest of the phrase about “winning hearts & minds”. But they seem to get the point anyway.

  10. Pamela Geller EXCLUSIVE: Inside the jihad siege of the Paris kosher supermarket

    “In the aftermath of the massacre, Joseph pointed out that during a news report about the attack, Muslim children gathered behind the journalist, happily making the hand signal of firing a gun, making the V sign, and celebrating. “This is in their blood,” Joseph said. “It’s not something that Americans understand. But I’ve been stabbed, I have had a lot problems with them. I know their hatred. These are people whom the Koran commands, very clearly, many times, to kill us. We are supposed to be murdered. Yet I see these people reports on TV saying, ‘Oh well, Jews and Muslims lived side by side for many years in Muslim Spain.’ But you can talk to my, to my grandparents. You can talk to those who lived under Muslim occupations. They were dhimmis, they had to pay more taxes, and the day that the Muslim king wasn’t happy, he’d come in and kill everyone.”

    • Not too surprising, the problem is information overload, intelligence groups get so much info it takes days to weeks for the important ones to be brought to the right people.

  11. Just as everybody in France is trying to come together in this march of solidarity, Bibi calls out to French Jews “Come home!” Kinda tacky, n’est-ce pas?

    But if Hollande takes it as a challenge, “Bin your trash. Control your dogs,” he may actually do something to make France a safer place for everybody.

    French army may protect Jewish sites, community leader says

    Jewish group decries Israeli government’s ‘Pavlovian’ calls for emigration; kosher market victims to be buried in Jerusalem

    http://www.timesofisrael.com/french-army-may-protect-jewish-sites-community-leader-says/