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By Lucien Libert
PALAISEAU, France (Reuters) – A school teacher whose body, face and tongue are covered in tattoos and had the whites of his eyes surgically blackened said he was prevented from teaching in a French kindergarten after he a father complains that he scared his son.
But the teacher, Sylvain Helaine, 35, still teaches children ages six and up, saying that after an initial shock when seeing him for the first time, his students see beyond his appearance.
“All of my students and their parents were always good to me because they basically knew me,” said Helaine, who estimated that she has spent around 460 hours under the tattoo needle.
“It’s only when people see me from afar that they can assume the worst.”
He said that last year he was teaching kindergarten at the Docteur Morere primary school in Palaiseau, a suburb of Paris, when the parents of a three-year-old boy complained to education authorities. They said their son, whom Helaine didn’t teach, had nightmares after seeing him.
A couple of months later, school authorities informed him that he would no longer teach kindergarten children, he said. “I think the decision they made was quite sad,” Helaine said.
A spokesman for the local education authority said an agreement was reached with Helaine to remove him from teaching kindergarten. Students under the age of six “could be frightened by their appearance,” the spokesman said.
Despite the setbacks, Helaine said she would stick with her chosen career. “I’m an elementary school teacher … I love my job.”
He said he started getting tattoos at age 27 when, while teaching at a private school in London, he had an “existential crisis.” Since then, he said, “Getting tattoos is my passion.”
He said he hoped to show his students that they should accept people who are different from the norm. “Maybe when they are adults they will be less racist and less homophobic and more open-minded,” he said.
(Written by Christian Lowe and Lucien Libert; edited by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
