A rigid incarnation of the religion has taken root in many classrooms, threatening the liberal values of France. It serves as a warning
Twenty years ago, the story that a bunch of teenaged French pupils had protested they were “shocked” by their teacher showing them a 1603 painting of five nude women would have caused hilarity across the country, not fear. “What are they complaining about?” would have been the universal guffaw. But the teachers at the Jacques Cartier secondary school in Issou, west of Paris, have known otherwise for years. The scenario that unfolded in a French literature classroom last week has happened many, many times across the country in the same kind of state sink schools. It has, in the last three years, led to two of their profession being murdered by pupils or friends of their pupils, abetted by many parents supposedly roused to outrage by some sort of infringement to strict religious “morals”.
