A song against middle school level groups, “Where do we put this one?”

On YouTube, the video posted in early March went viral. “The chaos of knowledge” from the De Nivo group sharply criticizes the reform of the Attal government, which wants the establishment of level groups in middle school.

The teaching world is mobilizing again this Tuesday, March 19, 2024. The question of salaries will, of course, be on the table, but many teachers will also take advantage of the opportunity to reiterate all their dissatisfaction with the so-called system of “clash of knowledge” by Gabriel Attal. In their sights, more particularly, the measure concerning the famous “level groups”. A measure, included in the decree published in the Official Journal this Sunday, that the unions would greatly like to see abandoned, just like the De Nivo group whose song “Le Chaos des savoirs” has been creating buzz for two weeks on YouTube.

The group of teachers in Loire-Atlantique actually chose to protest through music. In reaction to this reform, which is very poorly received by teachers who fear the stigmatization of students, the group of teachers from the René-Guy college in the commune of Montoir-de-Bretagne, near Saint-Nazaire, accompanied by colleagues de Nantes and de Rezé, posted on YouTube, on March 2, a video in which he covers the song Les Gens qui doutes by the French singer Anne Sylvestre, renamed Le Chaos des savoirs, the title takes up the expression of Gabriel Attal of the “clash of knowledge”. The lyrics of the song represent the arguments of teachers who are opposed to these level groups, for example: "The groups are 30, we don't even have room to put a stool anymore; there would still be a class where they There are only 15, it’s the bad group.” After several repetitions of the refrain “where do we put this one?, where do we put this one?”; the song concludes with a sentence reflecting the teachers' opposition to the measure: "We don't have the level for the level groups."

The song performed by the group De Nivo had exceeded 25,000 views on the platform on Wednesday March 13. The teachers didn't expect that much, as they explained to Ouest-France: "We said to ourselves that 1,000 views for our little song wouldn't be bad enough..." One of the members of the group, Elena Bascou, professor of French, even confided to the media: “We wanted to get the message across to families.” “Classifying according to a level is simplistic, the students are richer than that,” she added. Monday March 18, the video had 106,000 views.

This controversial reform should come into force from the start of the September 2024 school year in middle schools for sixth and fifth grade students. It concerns French and mathematics lessons and, as the Prime Minister pointed out to AFP, the latter would like these groups to become more frequent than entire classes.