A teacher at a French secondary school has sparked debate about the treatment of school groups in French museums after a warder at the Musée d’Orsay told her party of 93 pupils to “shut their mouths” during a visit to the Paris museum. The French Minister of Culture, Audrey Azoulay, has also been drawn into the row, and requested that a report be drawn up on the incident and its aftermath.
Marianne Acqua, a teacher at the Maurice Utrillo de Stains school in Seine-Saint-Dennis northeast of Paris, has posted a statement on her Facebook page which describes the controversial visit to the museum earlier this month. She writes that she saw a museum staff member shouting “Shut your mouths!” at her students “for no apparent reason”.
The warder in question eventually summoned a colleague who, according to Acqua, also emphasised that the “students’ behaviour was highly problematic”.
Acqua writes on Facebook that her pupils come from a school located in a disadvantaged “education priority zone” (Zep, zone d’education prioritaire). “We see other school groups making a noise… and observe that nobody is reprimanding these [pupils] who are mainly white, middle-class and Parisian,” she writes.
Earlier this week, Azoulay commissioned a “report on the lessons to be learned from the incident” so that a “better relationship can be built with this school”. She also asked the museum to clarify its provision for school visits.
Meanwhile, museum officials say in a statement that they “regret how the dispute developed. The actions of the warders helped calm the situation and the group was able to continue its visit.” A spokeswoman tells us that “the museum wishes to organise a meeting with the teachers and this class in January, in a calm atmosphere, to hear the students' feelings and open a constructive dialogue”.