Should I put my child in private? The question crossed my mind when my son, in kindergarten, brought home a form to fill out:
“In order to refine the forecasts for the next school year, please complete the following document:
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My child :
– Will continue his education in elementary school (name of local public school)
– Will not go to elementary school xxx
Many families are faced with this dilemma if we are to believe the very instructive survey on social diversity by my colleague Gurvan Le Guellec, an ardent defender of the Republican school: between 40% and 45% of parents would like to send their children to school in private. Not all fervent Catholics, far from it, but a lot of CSP + and middle classes. It’s one thing to think about it, another to take the leap. When do we decide to no longer play the famous game of “living together”?
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When the daughter of a friend arrived in kindergarten in the public, in Seine-Saint-Denis, the children of sores and those from very disadvantaged backgrounds cohabited more or less in equal parts in the small section. Confident, my friend left her daughter in the same establishment the following year. But at the beginning of the school year, she was surprised to discover that she was the last of the Mohicans. Like a flock of sparrows, the wealthy families had almost all deserted.
Sometimes all it takes is “hear-say” to jeopardize the mix of an establishment. A colleague whose child is my son’s age explained to me that some parents in the northern Parisian district where she lives had already opted for the private sector when going to CP. What does it matter if the neighboring primary school, classified REP (Priority Education Network), has small numbers and does not suffer from any problems while opposite, the classes of the private establishment are overloaded.
Once the secession is recorded, it is very difficult to go back. The fascinating documentary by Romain Icard, “United States: the new apartheid”, recounts how the city of Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s ended segregation in the city’s public high school by enforcing racial mixing by law. Believing it acquired, the judges lifted all legal obligation twenty years later. But thanks to a micro-incident with a black rector, the white families suddenly left. From now on, black students spend their entire schooling without being around a single white classmate.
