French High School Protests Are a Justified Response to Systemic Educational Neglect
Source: William Bouchardon. "High School Protests Have French Establishment on the Ropes." October 7, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
French high school students are protesting because their schools are falling apart—literally, with collapsing ceilings and contaminated water—and there aren't enough teachers, especially in poorer areas. Instead of fixing these problems, the French government has cracked down on the protesters with police force and tried to blame a political party, even though wealthy officials send their own kids to elite private schools funded partly by public money while neglecting the public system most people depend on.
Conclusion
The French government's violent repression of high schooler protests is unjustified, because the protests stem from legitimate, deep-rooted grievances about a deliberately underresourced and unequal public education system that the political establishment has failed to address.
Premises
- School buildings in working-class suburbs are dangerously dilapidated, with documented cases of collapsing ceilings, rats, water leaks, fecal matter in tap water, and extreme heat (78% of surveyed schools recorded over 30°C), yet renovation efforts remain minimal and underfunded.
- There are severe staff shortages, with half of schools missing at least one teacher at the start of the year, rising reliance on undertrained contract teachers, and the lowest teacher job satisfaction among OECD countries, partly due to low pay.
- Educational inequality is structurally embedded: early-career, less experienced teachers are disproportionately assigned to disadvantaged schools, and there is a strong correlation between social background and academic achievement, among the highest in the OECD.
- Publicly funded private schools (receiving billions in state money) serve far more advantaged students and far fewer disadvantaged students than public schools, yet face no government pressure to diversify despite this funding leverage.
- The political elite making education policy are personally disconnected from public school realities, having attended elite private schools themselves and enrolling their own children in them, leading to reforms that worsen rather than improve the public system.
- Despite a projected decline in student population that could allow for smaller class sizes without cutting teaching staff, the government instead prioritized austerity, cutting thousands of teaching positions and slashing climate-resilience renovation budgets.
- Rather than engaging with these substantive grievances, the government has responded to student protests with repression and political accusations against a left-wing party, rather than addressing the underlying issues.
Assumptions
- Material conditions in schools (building quality, staffing levels, class size) are a primary and legitimate driver of student protest, rather than external political manipulation.
- Government funding decisions (e.g., subsidizing private schools, cutting teaching positions) reflect deliberate policy priorities rather than unavoidable budget constraints.
- The social/class background of policymakers meaningfully shapes their policy choices regarding public education.
- Violent police repression of protests is an illegitimate response regardless of protest tactics (e.g., blockades), when the underlying grievances are valid.
- Public sympathy with the students (as claimed) is evidence that the grievances are objectively legitimate, not merely popular.