Professors and teachers from Hérault are mobilizing to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. At the initiative of the teachers of Joffre high school from Montpellier, they wrote a column which collected 80 signatures. This Friday, January 5, 2024, seven signatories presented to the press the reasons for their mobilization.
Laurence Peter-North is a professor of history and geography at the Joffre high school in Montpellier. For her, teachers should not remain indifferent to what is happening in Gaza: “as teachers, we cannot be insensitive when we see the number of miners dying there and schools being bombed. We cannot act as if we were indifferent, as if it was normal that there will soon be 1% of the Palestinian population dying under the bombings. On the Israeli side, there too, it is the civilians who are toast. Other professions also reacted as firefighters, caregivers, and that was important for us to do.”
Sabine Raynaud is a teacher at the Sigmund-Freud school in Montpellier. She is one of the first people to have signed this column: “France is an essential arms supplier. Currently, what is sent to the civilian population in Gaza and the West Bank is sent in particular by the French army. The government has just voted for a spectacular increase in the budget of the armies , which has the consequences of taking these billions from the budgets of public services, including that of National Education. All that is taken to give to armaments are fewer positions, less money to operate the school and the hospital, and we are obviously against that.”
Addressing the Israeli-Palestinian question in class
Laurence Peter-North’s students sometimes ask him questions questions about the war between Israel and Hamasshe tells us how she treats him in class: “Personally, I tended to go through information. How to get information? Explain that you shouldn’t settle for videos that are not sourced or not serious. What type of media to use, compare the media, see if they say the same thing or not. Secondly, we come back through the teaching content. The Israeli-Palestinian question is addressed in the final year, but also from the first class. To understand what it’s happening, you have to be armed with knowledge, and that’s our job as a teacher.”
The signatory teachers and professors plan to gather this Saturday afternoon, at 2:30 p.m., on the Place de la Comédie in Montpellier to demand an end to the fighting in the Gaza Strip. Another rally in support of the Palestinian people is organized at 5 p.m. in Montpellier, still on the Place de la Comédie. It will be the 12th gathering since the attack on October 7, 2023.
2024-01-06 18:04:48
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