Quixotic Quagmires

I do not know how things are in other countries. But in Denmark, when I follow the coverage of the unrest in France on our two public-service television broadcasters, the explanation I keep hearing is this: France has spent years cutting back on upper secondary education. Classes are overcrowded. Add teacher shortages and excessive centralisation, and young people take to the streets. That is only half the truth. And when you peddle half the truth, you are, as we know, also peddling half a lie. Here is what can be pieced together from the French quality press and the official figures. France’s public spending per upper-secondary pupil is above the OECD average. That should complicate any account which treats a lack of money as the whole explanation. There is some truth in the criticism: some lycées have large classes, and the French education system is centralised and bureaucratic. One example worth mentioning is Parcoursup, the higher education admissions platform. I suspect it would be a strong contender in any international competition for bureaucratic opacity and unnecessary stress. But, as I have already said, this is only half the truth. The other half concerns what teachers and school leaders are being asked to endure. I admit that this is anecdotal. But recently, a math teacher from Metz described in a long and serious post on X how the teachers simply burn out at the most problematic high schools. We need to dig deeper into this constant attrition of skilled high school teachers. Why are schools being left to carry so much of the burden? French politicians are no different from politicians elsewhere in Europe. They want as many young people as possible to complete upper secondary education and go on to higher education. For the usual reasons: education is supposed to break the cycle of inherited disadvantage, while higher education is supposed to raise productivity. I find those arguments only partly convincing when these benefits are treated as automatic consequences of expanding access. In my view, France faces a problem we also know in Denmark: schools are being asked to compensate for failures of integration and basic socialisation that extend far beyond the classroom. The danger is that, instead of institutions civilising their pupils, disruptive pupils end up barbarising the institutions. No school can function properly if it is expected to tolerate young people who turn up unprepared, have no interest in learning and spend their time causing trouble and destroying the learning environment. It is hardly surprising that such conditions can wear teachers down. They cannot reasonably be expected to shoulder the entire responsibility for correcting mistakes that the French political elite has spent decades making. La France Insoumise and other radical organisations have encouraged the protests and blockades. Mélenchon has called for non-violence. However, this formal appeal for moderation appears symbolic when the LFI mayor of Saint-Denis simultaneously allows himself to be photographed among demonstrators and calls their actions justified. Le Point has meanwhile reported on mobilisation by Étudiants musulmans de France and its cooperation with RED Jeunes. The former is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood milieu in a French Interior Ministry report; the two organisations helped establish the anti-Islamophobia collective Génération EDR, whose links to the antifascist group La Jeune Garde are also described by Le Point. That is the kind of convergence I mean by Islamogauchism in practice. The flags also deserve attention. Palestinian, Moroccan and Algerian flags have appeared at some of the protests, including scenes of disorder. To me, this is another indication that, for some participants, the agenda extends beyond class sizes and school budgets. We do not yet know the full picture. But what concerns me is the apparent convergence, within parts of this movement, of several forms of radicalism: Antifa activism. Decolonial ideology. Islamogauchism. Islamist networks that have learnt from the left to speak fluent woke. That is why I do not think it entirely misplaced to speak of an “Islamogauchist intifada” when describing this radical current within the French protests. The wider protest wave has already spread to Belgium and Italy. The Danish public-service coverage I have seen gives me far too little of this side of the story. Two questions: Is it the same elsewhere in the Western world? And if so, why?