The day after

What do we do the day after?

The day after. The day of wonder and contemplation. The day of apprehension and introspection. The day of dejection and courage.

What do we do the day after the year after? What do we do and what will we do the day after every November 13th?

We must remember their names and their lives. We must reaffirm the values ??of the Republic, the “common culture of mutual tolerance and respect”, as the French Minister of Education wrote in the aftermath of the attacks.

We must…

We must also look at the images of “the victims of after”. The list of victims continues to grow. We must ask why teachers can be attacked and why schools still burned in our cities. As if the example of the Bataclan destroyed then rebuilt were not enough to make us all feel fraternally united against ignorance and intolerance.

A class photo of “the friends from before” that could be picturing side by side the terrorists and their victims, born in the same city in the same year, would plunge us back into disbelief and despair.

It is surprising to look at us rewinding and re-watching the video of this minute of silence on the day of the reopening of the Bataclan, as we desperately seek a response to our feelings of impotence.

Yet there is an answer: education again and again, Education is the answer, and it goes far beyond the school and the teachers. Education is the only answer the following day, far from the incantations and “resources” that we hurriedly create in the hope that a single debate in a classroom could repel violence.

Education is the answer. It is an unceasingly renewed response, an individual and collective reply, as fragile as we are.

The fragility that Sting sang of, the “day before”:

“Like tears from a star

On and on the rain will say

How fragile we are, how fragile we are. ”