Seine-Saint-Denis: poor teachers facing adolescent violence

Professors denounce the lack of an institutional response to a problem they consider old.

A high school student stabbed in the middle of a class, another beaten up on leaving lessons, hammers and knives found in school bags … In Seine-Saint-Denis, teachers are helpless in the face of violence and denounce the lack of response institutional to an old problem.

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September 30, 9:30 am at the Paul-Eluard high school in Saint-Denis. A 19-year-old student pulls out a knife and injures a 16-year-old friend. For lack of nurse, it is a student who exerts a compression point on his injuries while waiting for the arrival of help. A year earlier, in Les Lilas, Kewi, 16, died after being stabbed on the sidelines of a PE class during a brawl between neighborhoods.

For Jérôme Martin, French teacher at Paul-Eluard, “a new milestone has been crossed” this year. “We no longer have the means to spot problems, to anticipate”, he regrets, “I have never seen so many colleagues cry since this return”. The unions of Seine-Saint-Denis called for a strike day on Tuesday to demand the recruitment of teachers, but also nurses and social workers. In the poorest department of mainland France, the situation was further aggravated by the Covid epidemic and teachers upset by the assassination of Samuel Paty on October 16.

“Worn out” teachers

“The phenomena of violence (in schools) have been stable since we began to measure them at the end of the 1990s, but a fringe of establishments have concentrated the highest levels of violence for twenty years”, notes the sociologist Benjamin Moignard. The rectorate of Créteil affirms it, “the acts of violence between young people of the department (…) were less numerous” since the beginning of September than “the preceding years”.

“What is new is not the violence but the level of exhaustion of the teams. In all the territories, but especially in the most segregated, the teachers, worn out, have the feeling of being abandoned by the institution, which poses big questions ”, estimates him Benjamin Moignard. For the academic, “the politicians are quite cautious to take this problem head-on” and “Seine-Saint-Denis needs a ” Marshall ” plan, no measuring sticks”. In October 2019, after the publication of a parliamentary report which highlighted the under-staffing of Seine-Saint-Denis in terms of public services, the government announced 23 measures.

“Here, we combine everything”Camille, teacher at the vocational school of Alembert d’Aubervilliers

Camille (first name changed) is a teacher at the vocational school in d’Alembert d’Aubervilliers, where Kewi was educated. But also Djadje Traoré, 19, stabbed to death in November 2019 near his home in Saint-Ouen. Looking tired, she explains having found a hammer in the bag of one of her students in October. She tells of the pervasive violence, the computers that don’t work, the “students who can’t see on the blackboard because they don’t have glasses” and “those who wear their sneakers in slippers because their feet grow too fast for the wages of their parents”.

“Here we add everything”, sums up this thirty-something, referring to colleagues who “lose their appetite” and those who “drink too much” when they come home at night. A year after the death of the two students, the teachers feel that “almost nothing” has changed. “In addition to work, we fight with our institution, it is not possible”, breathes Camille.

A phenomenon that affects the “small middle classes where ” virilism ” is valued”

“Pupils who distress and drop out, parents who are afraid, teachers under stress: the psychological and social consequences of this violence are significant”, worries researcher Marwan Mohammed (CNRS). In his eyes, the roots of violence between rival neighborhoods are firstly linked to inequality, segregation and discrimination.

“It is a phenomenon which first affects the working classes and the small middle classes, where ” virilism ” is valued and where strength allows access to a social position, according to an honorary logic”, describes- he. “This phenomenon will be repeated for a long time to come if we do not reduce the pool of young people who have failed at school”.

At the beginning of October, at the Lycée Paul-Robert des Lilas, where the alleged murderer of Kewi was educated, a student was beaten up at the end of class “simply because he lived in the wrong city”, testifies Gabriel Lattanzio, an English teacher of the establishment. A case that ended “with five stitches”, he said, and “the instruction given to teachers not to talk about it”.

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