Laïcité in the French Public School System : an exception française ?

Abstract

Laicite in the French public school system Laicite in the French public school system: an exception francaise ? Mireille le Breton, Stanford University Is laicite an exception francaise ? Throughout the twentieth century, laicite went from legal—founded in the 1905 law on the separation of churches and state, to constitutional, as embodied in the first article of the 1958 Constitution, which reads: La France est une Republique indivisible, laique, democratique, et sociale. On March 15, 2004, in the name of laicite, the Parliament (Assemblee Nationale and Senat) passed a controversial law, which reads: Art. L. 141-5-1. : Dans les ecoles, les colleges et les lycees publics, le port de signes ou tenues par lesquels les eleves manifestent ostensiblement une appartenance religieuse est interdit. (Le reglement interieur rappelle que la mise en oeuvre d'une procedure disciplinaire est precedee d'un dialogue avec l'eleve.) In the context of the 2004 law, this paper discusses the tensions at work within the laic idea/1 and its institutional implementations in today's French public school system, in a France which seems to be oscillating between being une et indivisible and plurielle et divisee . The republican laic school system is an urgent issue to address, as it is the place where today's children will become tomorrow's citizens. Guy Bedouelle's Une Republique, des Religions, which takes the form of a witness account, shows how the perennial French antagonism between Church and State (that is, the Catholic church) no longer stands, and how a dialogue between various religions has sprung up on French soil. It is true that inter-religious dialogue has long been established and is ongoing, but the relationship between the newly emerging form