The school dress code revolt dividing France
Jean-Michel Blanquer is a French university professor and political researcher who has made a career as a senior official in the French Ministry of Education. He is 56, and dresses classic style, he has rarely been seen in public wearing anything other than a dark suit, white shirt and tie. Occasionally, he has been disheveled and revolutionised his image at a conference by taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves to give a sense of closeness to his audience. Today, since he was appointed by Emmanuel Macron in May 2017, he holds the highest responsibility in that Ministry, on which the formation of future generations of free and equal Frenchmen depends.
These days, Blanquer and his boss at the Elysée Palace are trying to mediate a social dispute that nobody would have imagined just three weeks ago when the school year began in the high schools. At the time, a stormy return to the classroom was predicted due to the spread of the coronavirus, but the controversy has now reached the clothing of students in primary and secondary schools and at universities.
It was a circular from the directors of educational centres that aroused students, especially female ones. The circular called for decorum in clothing, since the end of summer and the high temperatures encouraged young women to wear very short and tight clothes, leaving tattoos, piercings and underwear visible. Even the eternally progressive French Republic is not capable of assimilating such scenes at school.
Blanquer was explicit in his first statements on the subject: "The school is not a place like the others. You don't go to school like you go to the beach or the disco. Everyone must understand that you go to school or to high school dressed in a republican way”. And since he uttered these words, he has revived the youth struggle against standards of decorum in dress, making the social battle in schools one of the most talked-about issues at dinner time in all homes with people in academic stages. Not to mention the teachers, who must enforce the rules by returning students who look too provocative during school hours to their homes.
The main question the veteran politician has raised is what it means for him to dress in a republican way. Delacroix's 'Liberty Leading the People' left the breasts of the woman flying the tricolour flag, an image that has symbolised the Revolution and the First Republic. Appealing to those aesthetic values, Blanquer does not seem to have got it right. But, even so, his proposal for decent clothing in schools sends a message to French youth that is in line with what Macron said last summer when statues and national symbols were shaken in the United States by radical anti-racist extremism: historical monuments will not be demolished in France. And he was right.
There is one way of behaving that defends republican values, and that is to have the utmost respect for the institution where the students are receiving their education, the pillar of what they will be in the future. Naturally, young boys and girls have understood this statement in a different way. Those who at 16 or 18 years old do not stand up to what they consider an attempt to manipulate their incipient individual freedom do not have blood in their veins.
But it is not unreasonable to think how these young people will think about this same controversy when their sons and daughters go to school and have to abide by the rules of coexistence. Even chauvinism is not capable of curbing their hormones, but in the name of the Republic that protects and defends them, that promises them a full life and well-being, the authorities are asking them to reflect on how they should go about their duties, now and in the future while they are French citizens.
It remains to be seen how the issue will end in the next few days; one can guess at the protests and rebellion of young people, many of whom in France always hold up the mirror of that "forbidden to forbid" of May '68. We should not rule out a greater, sexy revolt by teenage girls to challenge the political power with the logical rebelliousness that always, in the long run and as the years go by, gives way to greater pragmatism even in the way we dress.