French teachers afraid to offend after jihadist murder

Charles Bremner:

Nearly half of French secondary school teachers are avoiding or downplaying subjects such as sexuality, the Holocaust and evolution to avoid angering Muslim pupils, a survey suggests.

Questioned in December, two months after a teacher in the outskirts of Paris was beheaded by a young jihadist, 49 per cent of teachers said they had steered clear of subjects that upset pupils to avoid creating a “scene”.

Samuel Paty, 47, was killed by a terrorist after he showed pupils caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in a lesson on freedom of expression.

The Ifop study, published in Charlie Hebdo yesterday, showed self-censorship by teachers had risen by 13 percentage points since a similar poll two years ago. In areas with high.