SAINT-OUEN-L’AUMÔNE, France — On a recent morning at the Lycée Edmond Rostand in this largely middle-class suburb of Paris, Céline Cauvin, a history and geography teacher, was leading high school students in a discussion about freedom of the press.
“Do you have the right to criticize a religion? Yes or no?” she asked. The 15- and 16-year-olds, from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, thought hard. Yes, they said, you do, but within limits. Ms. Cauvin wrote on the board: Racism. Defamation. Inciting hate. “You can attack someone’s opinion, but not his person. Do you understand the nuance?” she asked.
Ever since three French jihadists from Paris’s more working-class suburbs killed 17 people in attacks in the Paris area last month, France has been gripped by conversations like the one in Ms. Cauvin’s classroom. The French government has responded to the attacks with heightened security, but it has also turned its focus to something fundamental to France’s understanding of itself as a nation: its schools.
The attacks have placed teachers on the front lines in a country where schools are seen as responsible not only for reading and math, but also for instilling moral values, citizenship and the concept of the rule of law. Teachers say that is a tall order, and one in which families and pop culture should play a role, instead of relying on top-down discipline from the centralized state.
–
Other teachers at the school said that a few students had expressed ignorant enthusiasm for the Charlie Hebdo killers. “One kid said, ‘That was well done,’ as punishment to have caricatured,” said Emmanuel Husson, whose students are ages 9 to 11. “But after discussion, they realized soon that this isn’t how you resolve these problems in France. There’s the law of France. There’s a difference between drawing and using weapons.”
In late January, the students at Marie Curie published their own newspaper about the attacks. In charming scrawl, they asserted their rights. On one drawing depicting a shooting outside the kosher supermarket, a 10-year-old named Olivia wrote: “I have the right to sing. I have the right to play. I have the right to write. I have the right to live. I have plenty of rights, but I don’t have that of killing innocents!”
Laure Fourquet contributed reporting from Paris.
A version of this article appears in print on February 11, 2015, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: French Teachers, on the Front Lines. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
