Brigitte Macron in Switzerland: The first lady who likes to go back to school

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Brigitte Macron has two passions – besides her husband, the president, of course. The first is cultural life. She is good friends with French Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak (44), who was once an advisor at the Élysée. Her second passion is the one that has defined her professional life: school. She also wants to raise this issue in Switzerland, where the French presidential couple will arrive this Wednesday for a two-day state visit. The issue is crucial in a country still traumatized by the October 13 murder of a teacher in Arras, committed by an Islamist youth who attended the school there, where he later returned to commit crimes.

Brigitte Macron is 70 years old – and wants to go back to school and sit behind the blackboard. She is familiar with this, as she has taught French and literature at renowned Catholic secondary schools throughout her professional life. First in Amiens at the Lycée La Providence, where she met a certain student named Emmanuel Macron. Then in Paris, at the exclusive Lycée Saint-Louis de Gonzague.

Your latest pet peeve? The fight against bullying at school, a drama tragically illustrated on September 5 by the suicide of a young teenager in Poissy, near Paris. On Thursday, the First Lady traveled with the French press to launch the new campaign at a high school, aimed at raising awareness among young people and adults about victims of bullying.

Cult of the diploma

Ask any father or mother of a Swiss family living in France: both will tell you that they do not understand the cult of the diploma, the academic competitive spirit taken to extremes in the best schools. ‘The School of the Republic’, as politicians like to call the French education system, aims far more at excellence than at developing students, and much more at teaching theoretical knowledge than later skills in the labor market. The French-Swiss essayist François Garçon laments: “This country is obsessed with the elites. Being a normal student is almost unacceptable.”

The very talented “Manu”

Brigitte always saw it differently and incorporated it into her lessons. During one of her theater courses in Amiens, 15-year-old Emmanuel (24 years her junior) crossed her path. The gifted “Manu” was not one of her students. But he was in the same class as Laurence Auzière, one of the daughters of the current First Lady, who has three children from her first marriage. “The school factory was not his thing at all,” writes journalist Maëlle Brun in her biography “L’ affranchie .” (“The liberated”).

She would undoubtedly have liked a dual system à la “Suisse” with more apprenticeships. “She belongs to the generation of teachers who have seen how their classes have changed, even though she always attended middle-class schools,” the journalist said in a debate on radio station RMC when her book was published. «More children of Islamic faith, more failures at school, more social inequality, more violence in schoolyards… When Macron was elected president in 2017, she knew France much better than him. Your barometer is also the level of school fatigue of the families.” The story goes that at the beginning of the school year, teacher Brigitte Macron demanded to see all the students’ parents. Without exception. There were no excuses, not even for the busy ones like luxury billionaire Bernard Arnaud, 74, whose daughter learned French in “Franklin,” the nickname of Saint-Louis de Gonzague high school.

A second Minister of Education?

So is the First Lady a second Minister of Education? That’s not wrong. And perhaps not unnecessarily in a country where everything goes back to the president anyway. “It is true that I sometimes texted Brigitte to get a response from Emmanuel,” admitted former minister Jean-Michel Blanquer before leaving the government in 2022. Roselyne Bachelot, former Minister of Culture and politician with legendary directness, confirms this to us and is annoyed by it at the same time. “The good thing about her is that she is committed to school and cultural issues. She works hard, Brigitte! She will be interested in teaching in Switzerland,” the author of “682 Days,” her memoir as a minister during the Covid pandemic, told us at a dinner in Geneva. ‘What’s more disturbing is that Brigitte tends to view all of us as her students. Some of her comments are less well received by students like me, who are the same age as her.”

Welcome to Switzerland!

Brigitte and Emmanuel: the teacher and the student. The First Lady hates this shortcut made by all French people and the media since she entered the Élysée Palace in May 2017. “People think I’m watching over him, but that’s a mistake. My students weren’t so distracted…’ she laughed on the train to Strasbourg on a campaign day in October 2016. She and candidate Macron traveled by TGV to the Alsatian metropolis for his first-ever election event. We had met next to each other. As soon as they got off the train, the two spouses separated. He takes a bath in the crowd and then goes on stage. She visited a school and talked about the start of the new school year.

Source: Blick