France to 15 year old girl: wear a shorter skirt or you can't get an education

boing
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[quote=“iom666, post:40, topic:56414”]
No exterior sign of religion is allowed. No cross,no burka, no long robes, no Kippah, no Sikh knives or such.
[/quote] Honestly asking, do you really think she would have been as likely to be sent home were she not brown?

If there’s no explicit list of what French public schools deem religious attire - and if there were it would by definition be discriminatory against the specific religions the attire of which is specified, since it would thereby exclude any other religions - then who decides what is and is not religious attire? Even if someone’s professed religion prescribed long skirts, that person might wear them merely because they prefer to dress modestly. If you counter that they prefer to dress modestly because they’re of that religion, then any behavior, even as innocuous as being shy, could likewise be punished.

So following my first question to you, does the prevailing legal interpretation of the French Constitution therefore allow non-Muslims to wear long skirts out of modesty? If so, how is that not discriminatory? If not, where is the list of explicit prohibitions which includes banning long skirts for all students? Seriously curious, not just asking rhetorical questions.

[quote=“iom666, post:40, topic:56414”]
SECULARISM is a critical principal of the French CONSTITUTION, just like free speech is part of the American constitution.
[/quote] I don’t think many people are opposed to that. It’s how the school (and perhaps the French courts, I don’t know the precedents) chose to interpret it, i.e. in a way that certainly appears to be discriminatory, which is causing the furor, IMHO.

Constitutional principles are great. But, even if this wasn’t a case of discrimination against a minority, fanatical adherence to a specific dogmatic interpretation of any rule without the benefit of context and the prudence of asking whether it’s the right thing to do, and whether it’s the right way to do it, leads to the spirit of the rule being sacrificed for the letter of the law.

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Welcome to Boing Boing. Since I see you made your account for this one thread, I hope you realize that we’re an active community here and that you’ve come to participate in good faith, not just to troll this particular thread.

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I don’t have really much to comment (here), but only this to contribute:

![PDD]( “Seriously it has nothing to do with race, we’d have done the same thing to the Catholics and Jews, honest we swear it hasn’t got anything to do with France’s racism problem, you’re just being TOO SENSITIVE, stop crying Islamophobia LA LA LA LA LA LA FRANCE IS A SECULAR COUNTRY LA LA LA LA LA STOP BRINGING YOUR IDEAS ABOUT AMERICAN RACISM HERE THEY DO NOT APPLY LA LA LA LA LA”)

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Napoleon was the first to proclaim the separation of the church and the state (can even say churches today). It became law in 1904.
It has so far be left to the discretion of school principals, mayors, administrators to enforce it or not.
I don’t expect you to catch up +100 years of French secularism in a forum post but it is the law.
If you are shocked by this then you’ll be shocked that a Muslim woman can’t wear a veil in an ID card, driving license photos. It is the law. Don’t immigrate in a country if you don’t want to know and respect its laws.
What many French journalists said during January is that the French republic school education has actually failed to educate many youngsters on the French history, laws and principles, and in particular secularism. 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants of Paris French suburbs did not assimilate the French secularism principal because the school system failed to teach it to them, so there is literally a schism in the French society where some youngsters just don’t know the law. And don’t forget: nul n’est supposé ignorer la loi.

This doesn’t cause furor among the French. This where you are wrong.
We are used to this. My parents wanted me to have a catholic education so they did put me in a private catholic church. If you go to public school you can expect a fair education for free, but at the condition you don’t show religious signs. It causes furor for those that take things out of their historical context and don’t want to apply the law because they don’t like it.
Be careful: Secularism and dogma just don’t belong to the same sentence. One represents the state in France and the other represent the church, and they’re separated in France. I know some folks have a hard time warping their head on what it means (please see the links below in my other response).

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Hello, in good faith you cannot put up such an article and not say a word about the historical context.
And the historical context is that the French republic has been secular since 1904.
I know for a fact that many folks will express furor at this article because they don’t have a clue of what the separation of the church and state means.

So please have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state and in particular the French section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_French_law_on_the_Separation_of_the_Churches_and_the_State
Now the historical context is set.

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Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

True, ignorance of the law is no excuse. I’m not shocked, but it does make me wonder. Furor was probably an unnecessary hyperbolic term to describe either my reaction or the general reaction

I seriously deliberated whether to even comment on this story because I don’t believe it’s my place to tell the French people how to govern themselves. But I do think discrimination that singles out particular races, genders, cultures or even religions more than others or in biased ways is a human rights issue that transcends political borders. In the balance, this looks like the second, though I concede the possibility that I may be wrong about that.

Dogma is a word that predates the Church(s), and refers originally to a philosophical belief, not necessarily one rooted in religion or other supernaturalism. It’s used, among other communities, throughout the scientific world to describe accepted models and their interpretations. It’s not even in and of itself anathema to reason, unless, as I said, one follows it blindly. Laws, including constitutions, must be interpreted. I don’t know the French legal code. I do know that no law can encompass every circumstance where it might come to bear. You cited the freedom of speech protected by the US Constitution as an analogy. Even I, who consider that freedom one of my country’s most important, recognize that it does not give license to slander, or to shout fire in a crowded theater. Courts and officials don’t merely decide if to enforce the law; they must decide how to do so. They must interpret it.

But I digress. The question I still have is, does the prevailing legal interpretation of the French Constitution allow non-Muslims to wear long skirts out of modesty? That is, do the administrators prohibit different attire for different students depending on which religion the administrators believe the students to believe in?

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Explain how an ordinary, off-the-shelf ladies’ dress is an irrefutable sign of religion.

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It’s oddly comforting to see that schoolboards attract fuckwits outside of America as well.

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It was a stretch, but I couldn’t resist. :smile:

I first read your comment as “to re-enter competition for the pedant”… and my immediate reaction was “how dare someone try to out-pedant me!” [And yes, I’m aware of the dodgy grammar in all of that.]

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No no, you’ve got it backwards. Conception begins with male arousal.

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Some other article I did read in French say that the girl actually had a veil but was used to remove it to enter school. She did on that day and yet the principal snapped at her and banned her once and a second time recently.
Did the principal overreacted? I don’t know but the ‘rectorat’ (education ministry) does support the principal’s decision, so an appeal may be difficult.
I defend the French secularism but I can’t stop myself from laughing at some of the pictures in the video of the link below: some (former) ministers (woman) are/were actually wearing very long robes during their office times. Even the prime minister wife herself has a long robe, so you can appreciate the irony.
Same thing for some woman in Disney’s cartoons. Should those movies be banned as well the internet asks? But Disney’s movies aren’t paid by the tax payers’ money. That’s what makes all the difference.
If you want a free public education you need to respect the rules.
http://lci.tf1.fr/france/societe/les-internautes-defendent-la-collegienne-exclue-a-cause-de-sa-8601786.html?xtmc=robe&xtcr=3

And you still can wear a veil and long robe in the street. There’s not the problem, there is still freedom in France.
But if you want a FREE public education in France paid by the tax payers’ money you need to respect the rules of secularism. There, I nailed the context right I think.

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Are circumcised French boys allowed to use public school gym showers and locker rooms?

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Send him home! https://doctore0.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/pope-robes.jpg

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Except, I think that absolutely should be the case in schools. If every child was perfectly capable of being full versed in all the intricacies of religious systems and, with no external input, arrived at their position independently, then you’d have a point, but they don’t.

Parents and peers put huge pressure on kids to conform to some expected norm, and it is this that should be resisted. This is the primary argument for school uniform - it’s not about stopping people showing individualism, but it is about allowing plausible deniability (with a slight misuse of the phrase) to kids that don’t want to do what their parents or peers expect them to - “But mum, I’m not allowed to wear this headscarf at school.”. Kids that want to express their individuality in a way that doesn’t challenge this basic position will always find a way to do so.

I know plenty of people who act out entirely different (culturally religious) lives at home to when they are with their (secular) friends. I strongly suspect it was because they were given the freedom of a truly secular environment at school.

The problem France has is that they tend not to have school uniform. So this rule is enforcing some sort of cultural uniformity. Then we start getting silly arguments about whether something is overtly representative of a particular view point that we might want to release people from at school.

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I can’t get behind the idea that parents should not be able to raise their children according to their family customs and traditions. I very much doubt you will find the public will to enact such a system either.

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Ah, cultural relativism. People should be free to oppress their females as much as they want - it’s their culture, who are we to say differently!

Also, what about the freedom of children to throw off their cultural expectations? To be clear, oppression need not be illegal to be distasteful.

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I think your hammer slipped.

By the logic displayed an individual at this particular school would be allowed to wear a kippah, so long as they were not Jewish & the kippah bore no markings indicating religion. Think about it.

That’s how off-base the decision to get punitive on this girl was & why the xenophobia is so obvious.

BTW, justifying pretty much anything via the money of the taxpayer is a tell.

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That’s a bit of a mis-characterization. While I find religion distasteful, I find telling people how to raise their children even more so (with the obvious exception of abuse). If oppression becomes abuse, then society has an obligation to stop it. If you characterize making your children go to church every Sunday, wear a yamaka on Sabbath, or eat too much food on Sept 21 as oppressive abuse, I can’t agree with you. Such tradition links us to our heritage and is a source of comfort and pride for many people. We, as a society, have no right to use the force of government as a means to compel people to abandon their culture in favor of a secular life.
We all, each of us, must find our own way in life. If that way is to insist that while a child is a child they behave according to family tradition, who are we to say otherwise?

A child is free to do so but a parent is equally free to insist otherwise. When the child reaches majority, they are no longer a child and can make their own life choices. That for the past 100 odd years we have infantilized adults past the age of maturity is another problem entirely.

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But that’s not what this is about. It’s about merely creating a space in which everyone is free to explore things free from their cultural expectations. Its got nothing to do with how parents bring up their children, except insofar as if a child feels obligated by their parents to wear certain clothes to school, that is abuse.

The individual complaining about this issue is not the oppressed here; she’s just indignant she can’t express herself as she wishes at school. The oppressed is her peer that now feels she has to wear a long skirt lest she be shunned (or worse) by her family.

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You just condemned every parent in all places as abusive.

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