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`La Marseillaise' to be compulsory for French children

From this autumn small French children will be taught to call for the impure blood of their foes to water their fields when learning La Marseillaise, the national anthem, becomes compulsory in primary schools.

A circular from the education ministry to mark the return to school after the long summer holidays on Friday says primary schools "offer the teaching of civic education which compulsorily includes the learning of the national anthem and its history."

Since 2002 teaching about France's major national symbols (anthem, flag, national day) has been part of the primary school curriculum. But the words of the anthem were not routinely taught.

Teachers have not been overwhelmed with enthusiasm for teaching words that begin with a call to arms and refer to enemies come to cut the throats of the audience's sons. According to Gilles Moindrot, general secretary of one teachers' union, the initiative is "ridiculous" compared with the need to fight against failure in school, though he agrees it is "legitimate to give children the feeling they belong to a community."

But he warns that "a presentation without any historical backup would be dangerous" given some of the words in the anthem's 12 bellicose verses.

For Luc Berille, general secretary of another teachers' organisation, the decision is "ideological and not pedagogical" and he compares it to recent legislation advocating a "positive presentation of colonialism." He thinks it would be "an exercise of parrots consisting of repeating incomprehensible words if it is not placed in a historical context."

The song was composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle and was originally known as the marching song of the Rhine Army.

It was renamed La Marseillaise after it was sung by revolutionary forces from the southern port of Marseille as they marched into Paris, and became the official national anthem in 1795. Banned several times by Napoleon and Napoleon III because of its revolutionary overtones, the anthem was finally reinstated in 1879.

Several countries require the national anthem to be taught in schools. Belgium, Britain and the Netherlands, among others, do not, and in Spain it was abolished because of the memories of the Franco dictatorship it awakened.
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