Question 11478 — teaching

Summary

Mr. Jérôme Legavre alerts the Minister of National Education about the development, under the pretext of citizenship, of measures integrating the armed forces into public schools. They gave rise to multiple abuses and unacceptable violence perpetrated against children and young people. To cite only the most recent: Dijon, April 2025: during a “defense and citizenship rally”, among the workshops offered, was a simulation of “violent demonstration” opposing “protesters” and “police forces” equipped with gendarmerie shields. November 6, 2026, during another “citizen rally” organized in a vocational high school in Fontenay-sous-Bois, students had to “put themselves in the shoes of inmates”, starting by emptying their pockets as if they were entering prison, before having to do push-ups, with a baton on their back for one of them. On occasion in another “role play”, a teenager put on the protective equipment of prison staff while other students attacked him. One of the latter then found himself “pinned to the ground”, “handcuffed face down” and “pinned to the wall” by prison officers, said a teacher, reporting two injured at the end of this role play. That the school is the scene of such events is quite simply intolerable. And these are not accidental drifts or slippages. These devices give the army an “open table” to interfere in educational establishments and exert pressure on young people to recruit them. At the very least, they appear to contradict the principle of equality between all children with regard to the right to education and freedom of conscience, necessary to establish a framework conducive to transmission of knowledge. For decades, a multitude of systems have developed (cadets of the republic, ropes of success, defense classes, high schools and committed classes, etc.) which have in common the targeting of children from working-class and rural neighborhoods, or those experiencing academic difficulties, or even vocational students. The current Minister of National Education himself got excited, emphasizing that "the number of CDSGs has been multiplied by three in five years", starting to dream of sections of excellence "Defense and national security": "such sections, throughout the duration of the high school student would allow long-term monitoring, an anchoring in time of the relationship with defense as well as an enhancement of the commitment via the baccalaureate option "national defense". The deputy is alarmed by the fact that the budgets devoted to public schools are called into question every year, that this year again 4,000 teaching positions should be eliminated, even though public schools are responsible for transmitting to all children the knowledge and means to exercise their independent thinking and critical thinking, in order to enable them to fulfill their rights and duties as citizens in all equality, in their fullness. Conversely, the army budget progresses over the years. Particularly strikingly, it is planned (and claimed) that this budget will double, in amount, between 2017 and 2027. Already, the massive financial flows carried out between the State budget (taxes of the population) and the arms multinationals can be considered indecent, at a time when public schools, hospitals and social housing, are left abandoned when they are not not knowingly destroyed. The MP therefore wishes to question the Minister on the substance of the problems posed by the profusion of school-army systems. The Head of State and ministerial circulars are telling the population about an “army-nation link” that urgently needs to be “strengthened” in the service of “national cohesion”, to spread a “spirit of commitment” to schoolchildren. The Ministry of the Armed Forces praises the system of “defense classes” which today concerns nearly 900 classes, which “contribute to the construction of the educational paths (...) of each student. (...) The objective is to make Defense teaching concrete (...) The defense class promotes the appropriation of republican values ​​and develops the culture of commitment.” The violence recalled above underlines the inanity, in substance as in form, of the “educational” argument. All this, at the very least, raises the question... What "national cohesion" is sought when it is necessary to fight every week in establishments so that absent teachers are replaced, or that the hours of support notified to students with disabilities are respected? To take just this example, in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, it is the equivalent of a year and a half of lessons which is lost on the education of each young person due to the lack of staff to replace teachers when they are absent. What national cohesion is there when, every year, tens of thousands of young people, even though they hold this first university degree, the baccalaureate, are deprived of their right to access the training of their choice in higher education? What “culture of commitment” really wants to favor a State which bludgeons and takes into custody young people when they mobilize against the destruction of their right to study, or against a reform to destroy pensions in agreement with 90% of the population? What “citizenship” when the vote pronounced by the immense majority in July 2024 against the policy of social injustice of the various governments of Emmanuel Macron, is trampled in the eyes of all ? What “educational path” corresponds to the unspeakable violence committed against children during a “citizen rally” in a vocational high school in Fontenay-sous-Bois? What is the purpose of all this? As various studies point out, we are witnessing an ever-increasing promotion of the “spirit of defense”. The excessive use of the terms “rearmament”, “threat”, “hybrid” by the Head of State in all the domains aims to instill permanent concern regarding an alleged threat, which would be (in essence) poorly identified but present in everyday life. “Defense and consequently the spirit of defense imply the designation of an enemy whose representation is essential to the constitution of a military and even more generally social ethos necessary for the effectiveness of the first and the permanence of the second”. (in The Spirit of daily defense, 2002). The loads of insults poured out against the population of immigrant origin or French people of Muslim faith seem capable of serving this objective. Conversely and in reality, the commitment which mobilizes a large part of the youth is not against an imaginary enemy, but against social inequalities, against attacks on democracy, against the annihilation of the Palestinian people. THE Martial declarations proclaiming the need to “regenerate” a youth that must be “recivilized” are not only farcical. They aim to legitimize and once again strengthen the offensives launched against schools and public services, against freedoms and democratic achievements which hinder excessive exploitation. In a study published in 2022, among the middle school students surveyed participating in a defense class, only 49 % of them did it by choice. This itself constitutes a major problem. But we should listen to them: 96% of them considered that school is a place for learning knowledge and 91% that it is the place where we prepare for our future. These college students are not replacing the army with school. He asks him if he commits to stopping these multiple partnerships of army interference in schools, in order to leave young adults the choice of their life, their profession and their commitments.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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