The law changed in 2019. Schooling is mandatory from the September of the year in which they turn three. It's too early in my, and most counties', opinions.
My apologies, I missed that part of the 2019 law.
And other countries are entitled to their opinion, but pre-schools in France are in place, under that name at least, since the famous Jules Ferry laws in 1881 (the same who championed a law allowing homeschooling the next year). Opening them to 2-years-old kids happened decades ago and plenty of knowledge was gathered during that time.
I don't trust our current Minister of Education and I didn't speak about the state, only about the teachers: most of them are competent professionals and know how to work with young children.
Except when it's not. There are extreme cases where it's not safe for your child to attend school because your child is Autistic and the school districts in the area you live in believe in restraining your Autistic child when he/she has a meltdown. Now, on the other side of that coin, my town of 20,000 has 400+ families that homeschool and my guess is that 99% of those households teach their kids horrible damaging religion based learning (not my household).
The law is still not voted, but they are speaking about possible exceptions allowing homeschooling in a couple of cases.
And the French law states that children who need help or special cares to attend schools must be provided that help/care. But like a lot of nice ideas, it's not correctly funded (talk is cheap is the motto of ours governments, especially the current one) even for things as simple as buying teachers special masks allowing lips reading.
We don't want ANY relationship between state and religion in France. Is that difficult to understand ?
But we do. Really. And not only in place where some religions are funded by the state (like Alsace-Moselle, because its is still under a 1802 law, because it was part of Germany in 1905) but everywhere else too. The 1905 law is simply saying that in order to treat all religions fairly, the state itself cannot have a one.
But the 1905 law isn't just a law separating churches (the plural is important) and the state, it's also a law organising our freedoms: this is a law that says the state may have to provide religions access to people in public schools, prisons or the army, because, in those places, those people may not have access to their religion if the state was not forced to grant their religions access.
To pick one of those places, that's why you have priests, rabbis or imams (and possibility ministers of other religions) in the army, because soldiers are not always able to go to a place of faith: the place of faith will come to them, so to speak. That's also why the army is the only French administration allowed to know about the religions of its employees: it wants to know which funeral rites it should follow when a soldier is killed during a mission, funeral rites being the last time someone can use their religious freedoms.
And it's hypocritical to say 'We don't want ANY relationship between state and religion' right when our president is building a new relationship with one of them. Honestly, I don't understand how it's legal, under the 1905 law to pressure religious people like Macron is doing right now and like Sarkozy did before. Maybe it is, but it certainly feel hypocritical to act like that while speaking about that law and
laïcité.
Religions are entitled to their opinions (the French Catholic Church is really not shy to use its right to speak its mind) and they are regularly consulted about ethical matters (their advice is not, of course, always followed because at the end of the day, it's the French Parliement that decide what the French law is, not religions) and religions are allowed access to public spaces (funnily enough, after the 1905 was voted, it was easier to organise a religious procession in the street and more of them happened than before). Since 1905, we even have priests, in the priest's clothes no less, as MP, inside the
Assemblée Nationale, voting laws.
This small book, in French, is really good. It's about debunking myths around
laïcité:
https://boutique.ldh-france.org/livres/148-en-finir-avec-les-idees-fausses-sur-la-laicite.html
Also I'd believe in Macron and his ilk if they would actually do some self reflection and look at how prevalent racism and prejudice is in France and actually take steps to fix it. This isn't it.
He did speak, a little, about the responsibility of the state in the current situation during his recent speech, but he also is the president who shut down, quite publicly, a plan build at his demand by
Jean-Louis Borloo to help the poorest cities, among other things who had a bad impact on those cities. The most recent one being a lack of funding dedicated to those cities -- and poor people in general -- in his great funding plan to fight the current recession.
But, yes, you're 100% right: he and other people at his level of power need to stop hiding behind great principles and look at the reality of France. Principles are a nice thing to have, but only if they are really applied and measures are swiftly taken when it's not the case.
www.theatlantic.com
www.adamsmith.org
www.npr.org
www.theguardian.com
