Among his first trips after his re-election, Emmanuel Macron chose to go to Marseille this Thursday, accompanied by his new Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, to visit a “school of the future”. The Head of State affirmed that during the next five-year term, “the base that we have built over the past 5 years will be consolidated”. For the editorialist of Europe 1 Nicolas Beytout, director of the newspaper Opinionthis first visit coupled with the revelation on Islamist outfits at school will make it possible to learn more about the profile of Jean-Michel Blanquer’s successor.
Pap Ndiaye, a very controlled character
Watching Emmanuel Macron make this declaration, flanked by his brand new Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, who thinks roughly the opposite of Jean-Michel Blanquer on many points, we watched the face of the one who takes the reins of the ‘National Education. Not a sign, not a shudder, just a few slight nods, but nothing conspicuous. No doubt is possible, failing to be an experienced politician, Pap Ndiaye is a very controlled character.
The problem is that we are still looking for the deep reason why this history professor was appointed to this position. Was a leftist profile needed to dredge up the Mélenchonist vote of the teachers and bring them back to Macronist lands? Is it because a minister cataloged on the left will have an easier time swallowing the pill of the school reform wanted by Emmanuel Macron? In any case, on this point, the will of the re-elected president seems intact: as he said during his electoral campaign, the experiment launched in Marseille after the start of the school year in September last year will be gradually extended to all of France.
In the schools (and only the schools for the moment), the directors of establishments will acquire a certain autonomy to recruit their teachers and to test new methods, inspired (this is the objective) by the base and not instilled from the top. Nothing too bad, in reality, but the word “autonomy” is a scarecrow to the population of teachers, more attached to average everything rather than to individualize.
Islamic outfits at school, a revealer of Ndiaye’s thought
The newspaper Opinion revealed Thursday that National Education is facing an epidemic of Islamic outfits worn by students, girls or boys, who ostensibly want to display their religious posture. And as the movement is gaining momentum, as we see emerging shortly after the burkinis affair in the municipal swimming pools of Grenoble, this affair does not at all look like a coincidence. And there is no doubt that this subject will reveal the real thought of Pap Ndiaye.
When he was a teacher or headed the Immigration Museum (his last post before joining the ministry), he signed several writings on the existence of “structural racism in France” or on wokism, which he s is committed to trivializing. What will he do, what will he say on these subjects, now that Emmanuel Macron, reacting to this information, has affirmed that he wants clarity and truth to measure the importance of this phenomenon, and that the law of the Republic would be applied: no religious sign whatsoever in our schools. It will be interesting to watch.
But it’s still incredible to think that we are only a week away from the legislative elections, and that we are still wondering on many issues what Emmanuel Macron really wants to do. There was no campaign, neither for the presidential nor for the legislative elections, and one of the only points on which the outgoing president had been clear, retirement at 65, he is in the process of stepping back, with positions of more and more blurred.
The main members of Borne’s cabinet marked on the left
Do we have clues? Yes, we can unearth them one by one, every day buried in the gray lines of the Official Journal. It is the publication of the names of the members of the ministerial cabinets, that is to say the teams of senior civil servants who come above the administrations to support the minister in his political choices and the implementation of his policy. The profile of a ministerial office usually says a lot about what the minister wants to do.
But what do we see? That where Edouard Philippe had surrounded himself with right-wing collaborators, the main members of Elisabeth Borne’s cabinet are all clearly marked on the left. They all served during the Holland quinquennium, and all have a thick social or ecological veneer. What does Macron want? After the “and right”, it could well be the turn of “and left”.