Sébastien Lecornu targets the left as French schools crumble
By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit ·
As Sébastien Lecornu deploys riot police against students protesting decaying classrooms, the state criminalizes youth to hide its own failure to fund public education.
When the ceilings fall and the state sends the riot squads
Teenagers do not set trash cans on fire because they read party manifestos. They do it because they are freezing in classrooms with no budget, no resources, and leaking roofs. Across France, demonstrations have erupted and many schools have shut down, according to reports from The Guardian and BBC. Prime minister Sébastien Lecornu called a crisis cabinet meeting to manage the fallout. Meanwhile, the interior ministry deployed police forces that have detained nearly 3,000 lycée students. The ruling establishment looks at teenagers standing in classrooms of 35 students and sees only an insurrection to be crushed.
Like the 2005 French riots, the government focuses on the urban violence and the agitators. It ignores the systemic decay and abandonment of the suburbs that drove the youth to revolt. As Euronews reports, students are rebelling against overloaded schedules, teacher shortages, and crumbling facilities. In Caen, a 16-year-old student named Maelle said they are protesting a government that refuses to invest in heating, air conditioning, or teachers' salaries. Yet instead of fixing a broken system, officials point fingers at the hard-left La France Insoumise party. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen claimed the demonstrations had become riots organized by professionals and overseen by hard-left deputies. This is the oldest neoliberal playbook: starve the public good, wait for the explosion, and then criminalize the kids.
The technocratic managers and their police state
The technocrats currently running France have spent decades building the very crisis they now claim to deplore. Education minister Édouard Geffray transitioned from implementing high school reforms to managing the response to these protests. Prime minister Sébastien Lecornu brings a record of hunting welfare recipients and closing priority education colleges. When teenagers in Strasbourg and Marseille face leaking roofs and tiny cafeterias, the state offers them riot-control projectiles and remote-learning mandates. Reports from Fox News note that students and school staff have been injured.
Opponents argue that legitimate grievances do not justify setting fires or splashing a teacher with petrol. That argument collapses upon contact with reality. When a state cuts public spending, strips infrastructure, and answers desperate kids with riot police, it forfeits its moral authority. Like the anti-austerity protests in France between 2010 and 2012, the state responds to grievances with police force. It refuses to address the budget gaps that crippled the institutions in the first place.
May 68 and the ghosts of a broken future
This uprising shares its DNA with May 68, when students revolted against deteriorating educational conditions and state repression. That movement sparked a broader systemic crisis that brought the country to the brink of revolution. Today's generation is living through the compounding failures of the 2008 crash, student debt, and a heating planet. They look at the starved public services and see their futures being traded away. When local politicians like Bally Bagayoko, the LFI mayor of Saint-Denis, express solidarity, they acknowledge that the social contract is broken.
The ruling class wants the public to believe this is merely a law-and-order problem engineered by radical politicians. They point to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who insisted his party backed non-violent methods while criticizing police violence. But no amount of political spin can hide the reality of kids packed into freezing, water-damaged rooms. Like La France Insoumise emerging in 2016, this movement positions itself as the defender of marginalized youth. If the government spent money on hiring teachers instead of deploying riot squads, the streets would be empty.
Prime minister Sébastien Lecornu and education minister Édouard Geffray must immediately halt police violence. They must drop all criminal charges against detained minors. They must redirect state funds from policing to fully staff and rebuild every public school in the country.
Sources
- The Guardian: France school protests escalate into ‘urban violence’ as PM calls crisis cabinet meeting
- Fox News: France rocked by student riots as hundreds arrested, violence spreads nationwide
- BBC: Fires break out at French schools as students protest nationwide
- BBC: Fires break out at French schools as students protest nationwide
- Euronews: French protests over school conditions spread as students set fires and put up blockades