Published on : 09/20/2022 – 07:39
Traveling to New York for the United Nations General Assembly which begins Tuesday, the French Minister of National Education and Youth, Pap Ndiaye, has chastised “traces of anti-Americanism” in French politics.
In New York, Pap Ndiaye criticized “traces of anti-Americanism” in French politics on Monday 20 September. The French Minister of National Education and Youth accompanies President Emmanuel Macron to the UN General Assembly and attended an education summit under the auspices of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
He visited two schools in New York, the exclusive French private high school in Manhattan and a new school with a French-English bilingual curriculum in the Harlem district, where African American and East African minorities live.
At a time when 244 million children are still not in school around the world, @antonioguterres calls for an unprecedented commitment from states to education. Through its national and international action, France is fully on board. The mobilization continues! pic.twitter.com/pfdgIBPY75
– Pap Ndiaye (@PapTheDay) September 19, 2022
Back on his journey
At the French high school, Mr. Ndiaye spoke extensively with students who asked him about his career which led him, in his own words, to become the “black prime minister of national education and also with African ties”.
Pap Ndiaye, 56, born near Paris to a French mother and a Senegalese father, is an associate professor and doctor of history, a former student of the École Normale Supérieure, a specialist in the history of minorities, especially African Americans, in the United States and has studied at a university in Virginia.
When asked about his career as a “black student” in France and the United States, the minister replied in a funny way: “Sometimes I am considered too American in France, a little too ‘woken up’, a little too influenced by the United States. , which is sometimes suspect in the French political discourse which often presents very evident traces of anti-Americanism “.
Far right criticism
His entry into government in May sparked numerous political comments and protests from the far right: the National Rally called him a “racist militant” and Reconquest! by Éric Zemmour accused him of having been “accused” by Emmanuel Macron “of deconstructing the history of France”.
The minister acknowledged that being the “black” prime minister of national education in France has a “symbolic dimension”.
“But it doesn’t summarize me. I also think I have the skills, intellectual and academic knowledge to best carry out the missions of this ministry”, he defended himself.
Bilingual course in Harlem
Previously, Mr. Ndiaye opened a partially publicly funded and private donation school, the New York French-American Charter School (NYFACS), in Harlem, which has a bilingual French immersion curriculum.
According to the French embassy, 30,000 students in the United States benefit from a bilingual program in public schools, making it the first in the world of its kind for French cultural cooperation abroad.
“It is very important that the French, historically associated in the United States with the elites of the east coast, are represented by a school like NYFACS in a popular neighborhood where African American and West African families live,” the minister cheered.
With AFP
