« French students, Religion and School : the ideal of Laïcité at stake with Religious Diversity »
Résumé
After a qualitative survey, 103 interviews and questionnaires were conducted in 8 schools. The same interviews have been conducted in 8 european countries (REDCO project). The three main results of these surveys conducted in France are, in our opinion, the following:
1) Religion is a marginal issue for the majority of students: it is an issue they don't talk about much and that doesn't seem to worry them tremendously.
2) Not only do students in France accept by a large majority the principle of laïcité at school, but they assert it, they have made it their own by internalising its main rules: neutrality and objectivity of the teachers and what they teach; minimum visibility in the school context of the different cultures each student identifies with, implying in their view a certain discretion in displaying the signs of these cultures;
3) The students accept that religion is discussed at school, provided that it is done objectively and neutrally, via approaches taking the multiplicity of religions into account. In other words, from the students' point of view, we observe that religious education is no more an issue, provided that the course material does not attempt to proselytise and focuses on historical and cultural dimensions of religion.
1) Religion is a marginal issue for the majority of students: it is an issue they don't talk about much and that doesn't seem to worry them tremendously.
2) Not only do students in France accept by a large majority the principle of laïcité at school, but they assert it, they have made it their own by internalising its main rules: neutrality and objectivity of the teachers and what they teach; minimum visibility in the school context of the different cultures each student identifies with, implying in their view a certain discretion in displaying the signs of these cultures;
3) The students accept that religion is discussed at school, provided that it is done objectively and neutrally, via approaches taking the multiplicity of religions into account. In other words, from the students' point of view, we observe that religious education is no more an issue, provided that the course material does not attempt to proselytise and focuses on historical and cultural dimensions of religion.