Teachers' Points of View on the Anti-Cult Fight and the Real Dangers for Minors

Teachers’ Points of View on the Anti-Cult Fight and the Real Dangers for Minors

CICNS received two testimonies from teachers following our commentaries (1 and 2) on the latest guide of the MIVILUDES: The protection of minors against dérives sectaires. These “field” points of view clearly put into perspective the needs of minors today and the dramatic absurdity of the anti-cult fight which, besides tarnishing the reputation of thousands of people, diverts attention from the realities.

Testimony of G. Professional status: specialised teacher. The testimony draws on experience within a support network for pupils in difficulty.

A reflection I want to share with you concerning the latest MIVILUDES guide on children. It comes from my experience and that of my two colleagues of the support network in meeting parents and teachers across more than ten state schools (the sector often shifted) from 1994 to 2009.

What I describe is the fruit of attentive observation but certainly does not have the value of a scientific study.

Beyond the irreducible individual educational specificities, we had come to consider that family educational models could be classified into three modes of functioning, each representing roughly a third (this division fluctuating according to geographical location).

The first third of families carries a precise model of education, there is an educational will, a reflection and an idea of the means to employ to implement it (this model can be alternative, but also, sometimes, a model of classic social success or a more specific one (families of musicians, of sportspeople…). Often these families, because they have ideas and defend them, have frictions with teachers. For our part, we considered that these were families one could work with, because one had an interlocutor who had his own coherence.

Another third of families pursues, without its being deliberate, a traditional model adjusted by the mood of the times. One carries on with the model of the education one received, with small adjustments. These are often families in which the extended family ties are active. The milieu is often rather reassuring for the child (and the teachers), one sometimes meets a certain inertia there.

The third third (which may be only a quarter or a fifth depending on the place) is much more worrying. These are the lost families, where the people, who find it hard to live for themselves, are overwhelmed by the commitment that a child’s education demands, where the child is experienced as something cumbersome (which does not call the emotional attachment into question) and where, in fact, his accompaniment is incoherent and sometimes insufficient.

It is this last “third” which is really worrying for the children (and their parents), all the more so as it seems to be gaining ground.

The families of the spiritual minorities, those the MIVILUDES targets, belong to the first third and, for those, as an actor in the field, there is no cause for concern. (That is why I believe the “MIVILUDES guide” will on the whole be a flop in the circles of those who work with children in difficulty, but there will indeed be a few people (?) to cling to it and to create situations bearing useless suffering.)

If the people of the MIVILUDES were really concerned to help children potentially “in danger”, they should look in the direction of the children who really live in difficult conditions, and reflect on the help that could be brought, first of all, to their parents.

Testimony of Catherine D. Professional status: Principal of a Collège

Across all my pupils, I have never had realistic concerns about pupils who might have been victims of a cult movement (teacher for 19 years and principal for 14). As far back as I search, I find nothing.

For an anecdote, I remember a family which chose, mid-schooling, to remove its daughter from the collège and have her follow distance courses because she was ill at ease in her class. Having learned that the family belonged to a particular Church, we worried a little, but it had no foundation, after some research. At the same time, I was hiring, with the greatest pedagogical happiness, someone I later learned belonged to that same Church.

I think back also to another example closer in time, of a family “with particular remarks and behaviours” which evidently has ties in a movement (unspoken) but of which I do not know whether it belongs to an esoteric or a far-right movement.

In every case, their children are shaped by the family beliefs and practices, but not to the point of being in any danger, shaped in a certain direction, certainly, but no more than others in other directions. Let us look at the “formatting” of children in National Education, declared healthier: we forget that we inflict a fair amount of pain on children through a lack of respect (language, marks, social discrimination, etc.). Let us sweep before our own door.

On the other hand, what is interesting around this recent example are the remarks of the collège’s administrative and school-life team: I was all but required to make a declaration of a child in danger, because “all the same he must belong to a cult” and “can you imagine, the children, etc.”. Until we dissected what we knew, the rumours, the real dangers, and what we were being told on TV.