But this one is different for me, in a way that I can’t really explain. Just like I never did for previous attacks. And I’m grateful, so incredibly grateful for what they gave me.

I don’t believe many of my classmates truly understood or remembered this, but I do. To doubt, not as a conspiracy believer, but with empathy, by recognizing that even the best people are flawed. The teachers ensured that we learnt to think critically, to doubt. But I think being confronted to all of their different opinions was much more helpful than being taught with complete neutrality. Sometimes they gave us their own opinions, even though they weren’t supposed to. No matter how biased the curriculum might be, many of my teachers made sure we didn’t just learn blindly, but that we understood bias was everywhere, even in the lessons we were taught. “their profession, the most beautiful there is : to create free citizens.” “ leur métier, qui est le plus beau qui soit : faire des citoyens libres.” No matter what one might think about our president, one cannot disagree with his words: The same teacher who, I have no doubt, will adress these new events with my little sister and her classmates once they come back from break. In particular, the face of my former history teacher who was once telling us about freedom of speech even as, whilst we were still oblivious to it, somewhere else in France the building of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper was being attacked because of the caricature of Mahomet it had released. Today, that teacher wears the face of all of those I once met in a classroom. The crime which, for his murderer, justified beheading him? Having handed out caricatures of Mahomet to his students during a class on freedom of speech.Īs soon as I heard, this morning, once I finished watching the report on the news, I went to my room to light a candle. Yesterday, in a city near Paris, a History and Geography teacher was killed.

D'un monde à l'autre by Pierre Bottero