The crisis in French high schools makes the headlines in foreign media

From burning barricades to overcrowded classes, the crisis in French high schools is making headlines in foreign media. Triggered in mid-September in the Paris region around teaching conditions, the youth movement has since spread to the entire territory. Monday October 5, some 589 establishments were disrupted, on the eve of “act three” of the mobilization.

The international press notes a French paradox: despite a level of public spending among the highest in Europe, school appears to many demonstrators as a public service in decline. The British daily The Guardian listed on Friday the multiple demands of the mobilization: "Lack of investment, overcrowded classes, dilapidated buildings and low pay for teachers."

The New York Times emphasizes how students are fed up with the lack of teachers and unreplaced absences, highlighting the inequalities between certain suburbs like Saint-Denis, near Paris, and better-resourced areas. The Japanese television All-Nippon News Network (ANN) retains the "anti-police" tone and points to the "lack of money" as the constant demands of the movement to block high schools in France.

“A worrying eruption among young people”

Some do not hesitate to invoke the memory of the student revolt of May 1968, or even the Revolution of 1789, like the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a leading German daily which recalls the French "taste for revolution". Less than seven months before the presidential election, France Insoumise is now "trying to recover the movement", estimates this newspaper.

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Other media underline the fear for some young people of seeing the leader of the far right Marine Le Pen, the ultra-favorite in the first round, win. During the demonstrations, numerous signs on the theme "Angry youth but not fascist" were displayed in front of establishments in recent days. “All the elements are perhaps in place for a worrying eruption among French youth”, between fears linked to the climate, artificial intelligence or the cost of living, adds the Swiss newspaper Blick.

The electoral deadline is on everyone's minds: in Spain, El Mundo believes that the demonstrations are becoming "a hot topic of the campaign", in a tense financial context. According to the Qatari channel Al Jazeera, the school demands “increase the pressure on President Emmanuel Macron before the elections”.