PARIS: A French court on Friday fined a preschool teacher for having beaten a three-year-old child in class, a case that sparked nationwide anger and a shocked response from the then-education minister.
Video footage of the incident, filmed by a parent at the school in central Paris, went viral after it was posted online.
The 52-year-old teacher was given a 3,000-euro ($3,140) fine, half of it suspended, after admitting to having lost her cool in the incident last September.
Prosecutors had asked for a four-month suspended sentence.
The court opted not to record the fine as a criminal conviction, ruling that the teacher had been under intense pressure and that it had been a one-off incident.
But she was ordered to pay 1,600 euros to the mother of the child concerned.
The incident happened on September 3, the day after French pupils returned to school from the summer break.
At the time, the then-education minister Nicole Belloubet described the images filmed as “terribly shocking and unacceptable,” adding that she had immediately ordered the teacher’s suspension.
After Friday’s ruling, the teacher’s lawyer Laurent Hazan told reporters that his client was “relieved.”
In court, she said the girl had been having a meltdown in class worse than any she had seen in 30 years of teaching.
The girl had thrown a chair, which had nearly hit another child, she added.
But of the blow, she admitted, in tears, “I lost my cool,” and offered her apologies to the child and her family.
Court convicts preschool teacher of child-beating that shocked France
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Court convicts preschool teacher of child-beating that shocked France
- Video footage of the incident, filmed by a parent at the school in central Paris, went viral
- The 52-year-old teacher was given a $3,140 fine, half of it suspended
Monumental art displayed in shade of Egypt’s pyramids
- “There is an estimate that it’s more or less five million people reached by the message of the Third Paradise”
- A thousand small cylindrical acrylic mirrors planted in the sand compose a Morse code poem imagining a dialogue between Tangun, the legendary founder of the first Korean kingdom, and an Egyptian pharaoh
CAIRO: Installations by renowned international artists including Italy’s Michelangelo Pistoletto and Portugal’s Alexandre Farto have been erected in the sand under the great pyramids of Giza outside Cairo.
The fifth edition of the contemporary art exhibition “Forever is Now” is due to run to December 6.
The 92-year-old Pistoletto’s most famous work, Il Terzo Paradiso, comprises a three-meter-tall mirrored obelisk and a series of blocks tracing out the mathematical symbol for infinity in the sand.
“We have done more than 2,000 events all around the world, on five continents, in 60 nations,” said Francesco Saverio Teruzzi, construction coordinator in Pistoletto’s team.
“There is an estimate that it’s more or less five million people reached by the message of the Third Paradise.”
The Franco-Beninese artist King Houndekpinkou presented “White Totem of Light,” a column composed of ceramic fragments recovered from a factory in Cairo.
“It’s an incredible opportunity to converse with 4,500 years — or even more — of history,” he told AFP.
South Korean artist Jongkyu Park used the measurements of the Great Pyramid of Giza to create the geometric structures of his installation “Code of the Eternal.”
A thousand small cylindrical acrylic mirrors planted in the sand compose a Morse code poem imagining a dialogue between Tangun, the legendary founder of the first Korean kingdom, and an Egyptian pharaoh.
Farto, better known as Vhils, collected doors in Cairo and elsewhere in the world for a bricolage intended to evoke the archaeological process.
Six other artists, including Turkiye’s Mert Ege Kose, Lebanon’s Nadim Karam, Brazil’s Ana Ferrari, Egypt’s Salha Al-Masry and the Russian collective “Recycle Group,” are also taking part.
