What on earth is happening in France?

[DangerQuakeRhinoSnake]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9zrdmxp4vy6o

This has really shocked me, awful reports coming out of France. I'm unsure as to exactly why the students are protesting and attacking teachers, and what the govt is going to do about it. Presumably this has been brewing for a while. Are people just angry in general and looking for excuses to riot?

Looks so close to societal breakdown from what I've seen online. Very scary and very sad.

Don't bring your racism and generalisations into this thread please.

Also you need to remember that France was a colonial power who had no qualms about imposing its own way of life and use the resources of muslim countries like Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and it can't really complain that some people from these countries then chose to settle in France.

Those people are not 'immigrants'. They were born in France/are French citizens who should not still be facing appalling racism and discrimination.

😆 I am in France. My neighbours’ children are in the protests at their lycee.
Go on sell me a bridge.

In French schools, teachers teach and that’s it. They don’t deal with lateness, don’t cover classes, don’t deal with SEN or discipline or pastoral care, don’t do playground or lunch time duty, don’t supervise morning or afterschool clubs. There is an entirely separate administration of ‘supervisors’ who do all these roles - the vie scolaire.
Middle school students whose teachers are absent go to ‘permanence’ which is a kind of supervised study hall. High school students can go to their common room, or leave school, of a teacher is absent,

Yup. And primary shool pupils get shared out amongst the other classes and are expected to quietly sit and occupy themselves (occasionally someone might give them a worksheet but in our experience its rare).

My then 8 year old spent about 60% of one school year at home with me cos his teacher was absent so much and he absolutely detested being sent to other classes to do sod all. He started inventing migraines so I would come and get him.

After a while, I had an agreement with the headteacher that I would wait until his teacher arrived before leaving. If she called in sick, then I would take DS home with me. Sometimes the teacher would call in sick ten minutes after the start of school....!

Disclaimer: this was in an overseas territory. I'm not sure mainland France would be this bad.

Don't even get me started on autism. I was a nanny for a little boy who was quite obviously autistic from a young age.

The parents weren't wealthy by any means but they just needed a bit of respite. He started at maternelle and it was a horror story.

It was awful really because he wanted desperately to fit in. Everything he said was. "Ma maîtresse" and "L'école?"

Then she, the teacher he loved so much, shut him in the cloakroom and forgot about him one day. I was standing outside the school to pick him up and he just didn't come out.

Thankfully, he did have a friend called Duncan who tried to tell me and his mum and we had to go in.

Found him locked in what was essentially a cupboard. The absolutely casual attitude the teacher had when we went to get him was horrible.

"Comportement. Il as les problèmes de comportement."

Meanwhile, he had gone from beside himself with crying to the thousand yard stare of a political prisoner.

In the end, his family went back to Ireland.

Then about two years ago, I went on a course to validate being a childminder legally and when we did the autism module or lessons it was so backward it was cruel. I distinctly remember a bit where it was blamed on, "Coldness of the mother" and it might be a good idea to take the child into a corner on their own, put bookcases around the child to isolate them from the others and overstimulation.

And learn, "Comportement."

Like you could thrash the autism out of them.

Tell me why English students way outperform those in France. In fact they are way ahead of every EU country, apart from Estonia.
Sorry, but France is declining rapidly and you are pretending the education system is better than ours.
Wake up, for goodness sake.

Who is pretending it is better than the Uk system?
On the contrary, on the French radio I have heard many people discussing the falling standards and how they could be fixed.

This year they changed the way the national exams said at age 15 are graded, making it more demanding amd harder to get a good grade. Because the government says standards are slipping.

@Redheadedstepchild that is heartbreaking.

As I said above, SEN are not always well received in French schools. My kids' first school was terrible for it. The children had to fit in a box and if they didn't they were just left behind.

Their current college/lycee is much better. It has a mainstream section and a SEN class and where possible they mix them (e.g. sport) to be inclusive.

My son has ADHD and dyspraxia and needs extra time in exams (he is in mainstream). The school accepted it no question, despite the fact that he is very clever and top of the class (they rank children in France so we know its true). DS was embarrassed but the deputy told him that he is entitled to extra time to show his full potential, even if without the extra time he would still get better marks than the others.

Pretty patronising

Pretty accurate I would say.

What makes you say that?

Are you saying that the majority of the students protesting don't know that the school buildings are in a bad state? That absent teachers arent replaced for months on end? That parcoursup (equivalent of ucas) is really complicated and unfair? That school days are long and the workload unmanageable?

Yes there are thugs that have jumped on the bandwagon who don't care about what students are protesting against. But that doesn't mean the students are unaware.

I would estimate that less than 50 % are protesting against long work days, old buildings, absence of teachers, parcoursup etc. Then we got 40% that want to skip school and think that protesting is fun. And 10% who want to fight against authorities.

This % change depending on area (socioeconomics) and school (traditional vs vocational high school). And ofcourse there are thugs that are not even in the school system that come along with the 10% to fight and vandalise.

In some areas it's really bad (like in poor Seine St Denis with the leftwing major who likes violence) and then we got the private schools (subbed by the state so less expensive than the UK) where there are no protests.

This is a different matter and it sounds like Education in France is in dire straits (and good on students and teachers for protesting).

However, people seem to forget that "education standards" does not equal "high grades". Grades are the only thing UK schools care about. There's no time in the curriculum for enrichment or even discussion. For education, basically.

Oh yeah, and the colour of socks students wear...

No time for enrichment?
So PE, tutor time, PHSE, Citizenship, after school clubs, sports clubs, School trips etc are not part of enrichment?
Our schools do very well.
I am assuming you are Euro obsessed and won’t admit that our schools are actually pretty good?

A lot of people on MN.

Yes my mate who was an investment banker from the U.S. and had worked in London too moved to Paris and was shocked at how openly racist they were against those of North or Black African origin. They didn’t realise his own friend group is like the UN and his colleagues made a lot of awful remarks in boardrooms in front of him.

A friend he made in Paris who works in the same industry was mixed race and French and eventually left for Canada because he was sick of being denied career opportunities based on racism.

The fact that my friend who was an American immigrant to France, faced less prejudice than an actual French man is shocking.

And I’ll add to that France was actually collecting money from these former colonies until quite recently. Which is absolutely mind blowing.

Mainly the riots is just explained as the French gonna French.

French protests always look quite alarming to us as their police forces tend to have a more confrontational approach to crowd control and protests rather than our deescalatory and policing by consent approach.

I've not actually seen the police on any footage so far (but I haven't seen any more footage in the last couple of days tbf)

Agenda Free TV (YouTube) are running live coverage of Paris at the moment. All still going on at the moment.

Kicking off in Belgium now too.

And we were told it was all about poor resources, poor equipment and lack of teachers and funding in the education sector.

But if that’s true why is Belgium also now in flames and seeing riots. They don’t have education issues do they?

The reality is this is about an entire generation or two of people who have no connection to and no affiliation to the country they live in and supposedly have citizenship of. And that is also very true of the U.K. And unless we do something about it we will get the same problems here very soon.

Thanks for the update @Justinthekitchen I had no idea. 😔

It's amazing we are not hearing more about this. If it was in the US, our media would be obsessed.

Unfortunately they do. The protests weren't exclusively about education (it was a General strike) but austerity in general.

Strange you jumped straight to a racist conclusion. Or maybe it's not strange for you at all.

The vast majority of the protesters seem to be of ethnic origin. Not quite sure how stating the facts is racist?