This text analyzes the context and the terms of the minute of silence at School decided by the President of the French Republic following the terrorist attack against the journalists of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on 7th January 2015. The stake of this traditional ritual was to honor the dead and assert a cohesive national community around its values. The testimonies of the actors of school community attest the plurality of individual reactions and positions developed in a collective institutional framework (National Education staf, students…), which retranslates successively a ritual marked by its verticality and its performative function