Deflection of religious debate in French classrooms on the rise following Paty beheading

To avoid possible incidents in the classroom, 49% of teachers in France say they have self-censored their teaching methods when dealing with religious issues.

The Prime Minister, Jean Castex, and the Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, during the tribute to Samuel Paty, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, on November 2, 2020. Thomas Coex/ REUTERS

According to a survey carried out by Ifop published this Wednesday, for the Jean-Jaurès and Charlie Hebdo foundation, auto-censorship among teachers has been steadily rising since 2018.

The report, which comes nearly three months after the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty by a religious fanatic in the Paris suburbs, focuses on "the challenges facing secularism and the religious rhetoric experienced by teachers in the school environment" and is the first part in a series of three surveys on the subject.

The Ifop study was carried out online from 10 to 17 December, using a sample of 801 first and second level teachers across mainland France.

Nearly half of the secondary teachers questioned profess to have already self-censored in their approach to discussing religious questions in order to avoid a possible “scene” in their class, which marks an increase of 13 percentage points over the past two years.

Laïcité : près de la moitié des enseignants se sont déjà autocensurés, selon l'Ifop https://t.co/15tzgpYsLM

— Europe 1 🎧🌍📻 (@Europe1) January 6, 2021

When asked about Samuel Paty's decision to teach a course on freedom of expression based on press cartoons, three quarters of the teachers questioned (75%) say they support him, 9% believe he was wrong and 16 % prefered not to comment.

The Ministry of National Education had indicated in early December that it had identified nearly 800 negative incidents in schools during the national tribute to Samuel Paty, of which 17% were related to the justification of acts of terrorism.

The educational institutions reported that 44 people in total were expelled for “glorifying” terrorist acts, 286 were reported to the police and 136 brought before public prosecutors.

Samuel Paty, who taught a class on freedom of expression, was killed and beheaded by an Islamist terrorist on 16 October 2020 after showing students cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed published in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The teacher’s murder sparked a torrent of outrage that prompted President Emmanuel Macron to crack down on Islamist extremism on French territory.