Thursday briefing: Why young people are taking to the streets across France
Good morning. In my experience, at any protest, the most memorable and encapsulating slogans are always the ones written by hand with marker pen on cardboard placards. “School is a right, not a privilege,” read one such sign held aloft by a student in Paris, where huge youth protests over the state of high school education have brought tens of thousands of young people and adults on to the streets, with further strikes planned today. “A state that gasses high school students is a weak state,” another sign said, referencing growing public anger at alleged police brutality towards young protesters. Tens of thousands of young people have also taken to Spanish streets in recent weeks to protest against the country’s deepening housing crisis. And outside the Labour conference in Liverpool last week, a crowd of jobless young people protested against what they saw as their bleak employment prospects. From Paris to the north of England, a similar thread runs through it all: a generation who feel betrayed by the absence of basic economic security and the erosion of public services that older generations took for granted. I spoke to our Paris correspondent Angelique Chrisafis who has been reporting from the centre of the French protests. But first, the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | Kemi Badenoch has announced that the Conservatives would abolish inheritance tax on family homes if elected, prompting criticism that she is prioritising cutting taxes for the rich. Education | Labour’s flagship changes to special education in England are at risk of unravelling because parents are rushing to secure support for their children before the system changes, new analysis has found. Spain | María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old whose eviction set off a nationwide wave of protests against Spain’s housing crisis, has died. Science | A type of gene therapy based on Nobel prize-winning science is safe and can partly restore sight in blind people, researchers have revealed. Epstein | British billionaire Sir James Goldsmith warned that Jeffrey Epstein was a “sexual deviant” decades before the FBI closed in on the abuser, a Guardian investigation has found. In depth: Why have young people taken to the streets?
The most significant youth movement to emerge across France in recent decades started on 17 September. Pupils returning to the Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, southwest of Paris, after the summer holidays, discovered they couldn’t continue their studies because of the extent of staff absences. The 15- to 18-year-olds blockaded their high school in protest. After negotiations with the education ministry, those staffing gaps were filled, but the impassioned complaints about crumbling buildings, overcrowded classrooms, and long school days – alongside a wider sense of inequality in the education system – resonated in the suburbs. “This movement grew from the ground up, from teenagers speaking to others outside their lycées. And over a couple of weeks, it has spread to hundreds of schools across France,” Angelique tells me. There’s a tendency to mythologise youth protest, especially in France – my uncle Joss was in Paris in 1968, and I lapped up his tales of pulling up cobblestones with his bare hands to build barricades. But youth activism is often diminished. When I reported on the schoolchildren who protested against the war in Iraq in 2003, and those who took part in climate strikes more than a decade later, adults repeatedly questioned whether they were swayed by older provocateurs or just wanted an excuse to dodge school and indulge in petty vandalism. (In my experience: no, no and no.) So it is in France this past month. “This is very much a youth movement,” says Angelique, comparing it to similar protests in 2006 over an unpopular youth employment contract, which were organised by students’ unions. “High schoolers are organising themselves without a centralised system or even spokesperson. That’s historic, and it’s taken the government by surprise.” *** Who are the teenagers on the streets? This week, the sociologist Fabien Truong, who has written widely on youth protest culture, praised the “maturity and coherence” of the protesters. He pointed to a “social media effect” whereby teenagers in wealthier areas were sharing videos of scurrying rats, gaping ceilings and leaking toilets in poorer schools. “It’s beautiful, this solidarity with students from more privileged backgrounds fighting for others and more equality.” This is precisely what Angelique has witnessed on the streets of Paris in recent days, where some of the most elite state schools have also been barricaded. She spoke to one teacher outside a school in a richer inner-city area, who was proud of her pupils. “She said there was a feeling of solidarity and generosity between teenagers, and how it flies in the face of the idea that they’re part of a social media generation who are selfish and narcissistic.” “I spent a long time speaking to teenage girls at one of the barricades in the centre of the city,” Angelique says,“who were sitting on top of a pile of bins and shopping trolleys. They told me: ‘We’re told in France that state education is a great leveller, but that’s not the case. We are being taught our lessons, but we’re getting out on to the street because we can’t bear to know that other students in poorer areas are in buildings that are crumbling’.” *** What’s wrong with French schools? As Angelique sets out in this helpful explainer, the pupils’ grievances are backed up by evidence – and the prime minister himself has described them as “legitimate”. Thousands of French schools at all levels, both primary and secondary, are in need of repair. Class sizes are bigger on average, and school days are longer, than in other comparable countries, while about 10% of teaching hours across the year are not delivered because of absent teachers. And yet France’s expenditure on high schools is 28% higher than the OECD average. What’s going on? The high spend can be explained in various ways, Angelique tells me. France has a lot more high school buildings to maintain than other countries, and many more vocational courses that cost more to teach. At the same time, more spending is desperately needed on staff. Teacher shortages are linked to very low pay progression through the profession, while there are severe difficulties in finding teachers to work in deprived areas. There’s also a shortfall in other crucial roles, including school nurses and support staff for pupils with disabilities. *** How have adults responded? Angelique tells me that what has defined how adults are responding to this burgeoning movement is the behaviour of politicians and police. Initially, the French government “had its head in the sand”, she says, distracted by public anger at rising fuel costs and a difficult budget process. “And when it suddenly woke up, the reaction was not a political one, it was a police crackdown.” Eighteen investigations into possible police brutality are already under way after injuries allegedly involving the use of police weapons, including a 15-year-old who lost his hand after contact with a stun grenade and a 14-year-old whose jaw was shattered after police allegedly beat him and fired a form of rubber-bullet launcher. Yesterday, the French interior minister suspended the use of stun grenades but rejected accusations of police brutality, saying riot officers only intervened when protesters turned violent. Dozens of teachers have also been injured in clashes, and a small number of schools burned or ransacked, but Angelique tells me that most protests have been peaceful. The injuries, however, have prompted outrage, with parents and teachers angry at the “disproportionate police response” now joining young people at the barricades. An Elabe poll for BFMTV, published on Wednesday, found that 72% of French people thought the student’s demands were legitimate – although 55% of of those surveyed also thought the protests should come to an end. The movement has also brought to the fore a debate about the wider state of public services ahead of next year’s presidential election. The radical left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, backed for president by 47% of voters under 35, is loudly supporting the protesters, while far-right candidate Marine Le Pen has blamed the current government for chaos and called for an anti-riot law. The sheer scale of the marches in cities across France this week was unexpected, Angelique says. “There were hundreds of thousands of parents, grandparents and teachers. There is a lot of support for these young people’s demands and an understanding that the problems they are raising reflect wider worries about public services.” What else we’ve been enjoying
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The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
At 65 years old, Luis Gómez was still hawking vegetables at the market he had worked at since the age of eight. Now at 80, Gomes, or JM as he is popularly known, has become a musical sensation, selling out venues across Chile, as well as in Mexico, the UK, Argentina and France. He is the frontman of Los Crack del Puerto, who in May released their fourth record, Lo Mucho Que Nos Queda (So Much Yet to Come), as a cassette – to great acclaim. It’s a long way from his early life in the city of Valparaíso; the youngest of five children, he was three when his father died, and 10 when he lost his mother. For a time, he slept on the street between parked cars. JM would eventually form a musical double act with his cousin, Juan Navarro, and the two entertained crowds in Valparaíso’s bars. The pair would find fame well into their 70s after forming the band in 2017. “I never planned any of this, and I’d be happy still working at the market,” JM says. “But I suppose it’s never too late to give something a try.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
