No headteacher in the UK will have watched footage of school riots and the ensuing violence in France over the past month or so without a small sense of trepidation.
Even though we may not face quite the same issues in culture and education (and, of course, protest has never been our national pastime!), it would be naïve to imagine that our own students are immune to the disillusionment and anger that can lead to such wanton destruction and violence. Although the protests started with school students, others soon joined the movement, with a range of other issues rising to the surface.
Pundits have spoken about the struggles France faces as a nation: high government spending and debt have left limited room to meet demands for more public spending. It is clear that there has been a collapse in public confidence in France, with major repercussions across the nation and young people feeling particularly aggrieved. But I suspect there is more to this than financial frustration or concerns about leaking school roofs.
As responsible educators – and citizens – we do have to ask ourselves: could it happen here? And as Christians in education, we should be all the more concerned about the spiritual causes – and consequences – of a generation descending into anarchy.
What is actually happening?
In late September, students from French upper secondary schools – or lycées – took to the streets in protest in cities across the nation. Anger about overcrowded classes, teacher shortages, dilapidated school buildings and lengthy school days spilled over from largely peaceful occurrences into more serious disorder and unrest. Immediate demands for updated classrooms and increased funding for teachers gave way to more deep-rooted anxieties about the cost of living, the lack of opportunities for young people and general dissatisfaction with the government.
Protests in France are not unusual. You might say they are part of the nation's DNA. Indeed, schoolchildren are regularly taught about their nation's protesting legacy, and the implication is often that to protest is to be virtuous. As one French educator puts it, ‘In France, we learn to resist long before we learn to vote.’
But these are not ordinary protests or acts of resistance. They enter the realm of anarchy.
News reports from the events in France showed heartbreaking scenes: beautiful, historic buildings set ablaze; thousands of arrests; and schools and classrooms vandalised and covered in graffiti (much of it bearing anarchist and hammer-and-sickle symbols). Looting, ransacking and the destruction of property have been rife. And that is not to mention the alarming violent attacks on school staff, including reports of pupils targeting teachers, and staff being doused in petrol (though it was later claimed that this was unintentional). Police have also reportedly discovered bags of human excrement stockpiled for use as weapons.
There have certainly been bad actors involved, with agitators from both the right and left exploiting a period of economic and cultural uncertainty. Whilst there are legitimate conversations to be had about France's economy, this is not 1789. France is not facing mass starvation or the widespread denial of democratic rights. The scale of the violence and disorder is unprecedented.
What do we know about France's education system?
It is important to ask questions about an education system that has seemingly contributed to, if not directly caused, such a sense of discontent and chaos in the lives of young people in France.
So what might have enabled this moment of crisis?
1. A disjointed, bureaucratic and highly centralised system
The French education system has traditionally been highly centralised, with significant control exercised by the national Ministry of Education. I have family members who have lived in France for decades and work in education. They describe a system that is concerned with uniformity, and a preoccupation with administration. There is a disconnect between academic achievement and the wider responsibilities of schooling.
The academic prowess of a teacher is held in high esteem in France. But, unlike the British systems, where pastoral care and holistic development are also key parts of a teacher's role, that personal dimension appears to be much less developed in France. It could be argued that there has been a neglect of the relational, pastoral and character-forming dimensions of a child's development.
Not only can a rigid and bureaucratic system be bad for students, but it may also leave teachers feeling disempowered, with a lack of connection between teachers and students, and even between schools and local communities. France operates a points-based system, with teachers employed by the state and allocated to schools literally anywhere in the country. They have very little say over where they will teach. Newly qualified teachers, with few allocation points, are often posted by default to the most challenging and under-resourced areas. This can leave them feeling little sense of belonging or investment in their school community, as well as lacking an understanding of the local area, inevitably contributing to disillusionment and poor teacher retention, with little motivation to invest in their pupils.
2. Young people are feeling the impact of societal fragmentation
Like many countries in Europe, including the UK, France has experienced significant immigration over several decades. This cultural, linguistic and religious diversity may have brought social enrichment, but it has also presented significant challenges with integration.
There are particular tensions around the integration of young people from immigrant backgrounds, especially in economically disadvantaged urban communities. In a profoundly divided society, young people may struggle to find a sense of direction and purpose. They are perhaps not helped by a system that focuses solely on academic outcomes rather than holistic development or pastoral care. French schools are inevitably one of the places where the challenges of integration and social cohesion show up most acutely.
3. A secular state and education system underpin a sense of nihilism
Unlike the UK, France has a longstanding and deeply embedded commitment to secularism in schools and public life. Laïcité – loosely translated as secularism – is a chief value of the French Republic. The law separating Church and State dates from 1905, and the process starting in the 1800s. Nowhere is this principle more evident in civic life than in state schools. Visible signs of faith are barred in all areas of school life. This means that the wearing of religious symbols or clothing in state schools is forbidden. It also means that there is no curriculum subject of Religious Education. Teachers, meanwhile, are regarded as representatives of the state and are expected to uphold and explicitly embody the values of the Republic, including laïcité.
France has arguably even more issues with cultural and religious friction than the UK, which is perhaps surprising in a nation that tries to focus on the uniting force of being a citizen of the republic. But tensions in France between a strongly secular state and the religious and cultural identities of minority communities seem to be an even greater challenge than the more familiar questions of multiculturalism, community relations and national identity faced in the UK.
A society – and education system – that pushes God out risks losing its sense of purpose and direction. Such muscular secularism leaves a vacuum. It creates fertile ground for extreme individualism, purposelessness and a deep sense of nihilism. If the curriculum is underpinned by a commitment to life being the product of chance without any ultimate meaning or purpose, it is inevitable that despair will set in.
What can we learn as Christian teachers in the UK?
Vulnerabilities exist here too
Students in the UK may not be far behind their French counterparts. We have already seen protests spread to Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Albania. And young people in our own nation do not show great satisfaction with life here either. British students pay significantly higher tuition fees than almost anywhere else in Europe. The UK spends less per pupil than France, and though England performs better than France in international assessments such as PISA, significant challenges remain. Around a quarter of British 15-year-olds report low life satisfaction (amongst the lowest in Europe), while nearly half of young adults feel that the political system ignores them.
And hope for our students once they leave school isn't in plentiful supply either. The UK sits well above the EU average for students not in education, employment or training.
Andy Burnham has called the NEET figure “an economic catastrophe and a moral failure”.
As Christians, we need to pay attention to this. While we should not dismiss the importance of resilience and courage in young people, we must also resist the simplistic narrative that this generation is simply ‘soft’ and needs to toughen up. Young people have it hard – a lot harder than perhaps many of us did. As Christian teachers, we need to meet students where they are, firm in our own knowledge of the hope of eternity. While we may not always be able to preach the gospel explicitly, we can offer something profoundly important: relationship and community rather than isolation. In a world consumed with negative online information and polarising perspectives, schools have an important role in nurturing meaningful, face-to-face relationships and helping young people feel known, valued and connected, and open to conversations about issues of eternal significance.
We should resist the slow drift to secularism
The UK may not have a pledge to secularism in the same way as France, but there is a danger that we are slipping into that in a functional, if not constitutional, way. We may still have Religious Education and the obligation to have a daily act of collective worship, but culturally, there is very little reference to a comprehensive understanding of Christianity in schools. And whilst education may have become less explicitly Christian over the centuries, it has not become less religious. The dominant ideologies of our age still carry their own assumptions, values and expectations, shaping public life and the formation of young people just as powerfully as Christianity once did.
This gives a sense of grounding to what Paul recognised, that our fickle hearts are immensely vulnerable to being shaped by falsehoods. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Romans 1:21
Christianity is the only foundation that can bring real hope to a hope-hungry generation. They will search for answers elsewhere. We must resist the expulsion of Christianity through legislative reforms, institutional apathy or fear of offending.
We must draw on our own heritage
Alongside many positive aspects to its culture, France has a unique heritage of protest and secularism. We can see very clearly that these have been found wanting. The violent rejection of Church authority and the eventual establishment of a thoroughly secular republic have had a profound impact, not only on French society but on education too.
Whilst we must avoid an idealised, rose-tinted view of our own national history, we should not forget how much we have to be thankful for in Britain's Christian heritage. Education in this country grew out of the Church, with a vision of learning that extended opportunities to rich and poor, to boys and girls. It was explicitly founded on the idea that education was a form of Christian formation and discipleship, and has continued- to some extent- to this day.
Of course, lasting hope for young people requires more than a return to the values and institutions of the past. In order for young people to truly find hope, there needs to be authentic personal spiritual renewal. But that does not mean the wider culture and environment in which young people learn are unimportant. Perhaps there is something in the richness of our historic Christian vision for education that we need to rediscover and reclaim.
And perhaps Christians can once again lead the way. As educational historian Arthur Leach wrote: “The history of English education begins with the coming of Christianity.”
May God bring about such a renewal once again in our nation’s Education – and across the Channel too.