French teachers afraid to offend after jihadist murder
Nearly half of French secondary school teachers are avoiding or downplaying subjects such as sexuality, the Holocaust and evolution to avoid angering Muslim pupils, a survey suggests.
Questioned in December, two months after a teacher in the outskirts of Paris was beheaded by a young jihadist, 49 per cent of teachers said they had steered clear of subjects that upset pupils to avoid creating a “scene”.
Samuel Paty, 47, was killed by a terrorist after he showed pupils caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in a lesson on freedom of expression.
The Ifop study, published in Charlie Hebdo yesterday, showed self-censorship by teachers had risen by 13 percentage points since a similar poll two years ago. In areas with high.
