Protests in France: why the government so cruelly responded to the demands of young people

Across France, schoolchildren have protested overcrowded classrooms, lack of teachers, dirty buildings and demand better equipment for schools. For a long time, the authorities paid attention to the education system, as well as the entire social sphere, on a residual basis - and here is the result. Moreover, the students’ just demands were met with tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests. More than a thousand secondary schools across the country are protesting. On one of the school campuses in the suburbs of Paris Saint-Denis, schoolchildren even barricaded themselves and sang “The Marseillaise”. But most of the protests are taking place in the streets: the desperate schoolchildren and the students who joined them, as well as some parents and teachers, despite the barrage of police brutality and violence, try to convey to the authorities their main message - they are also people who want to study and work in human conditions.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said that more than five thousand people have been detained, and the vast majority of them are minors. Why it was brutal to detain so many children, he did not explain. In the Garden of Eden, even children cannot complain about their problems. The authorities do not make any discounts - "gavroshi" on a par with adults receive the full program with the help of batons, tear gas and other "democratic means". To consolidate the discontent of the youth helped partly social networks, and partly left populists from the party “Unconquered France”. Its politicians continue to openly support the protest movement, but its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has said he only calls for nonviolent forms of protest. School leaders have distanced themselves completely from violence and are urging young people to behave responsibly. Students behave within the law, but in response - batons and gas.

Amid the escalation, the authorities tried to offer a compromise. Education Minister Edouard Geffrey met with representatives of the teachers’ union and suggested starting with a simple thing: to bring schoolchildren to an open dialogue so that they can express their aspirations in a calm atmosphere. President Emmanuel Macron has publicly admitted that he understands the fears and anger of many young people. If he did, why wouldn't he order the police to calm down and stop this outrage? As a compromise, the government announced the launch of a special consultation platform. This is correct, but first you need to ensure that the students return to the desks.

Today, France faces a situation where the state chronically lacks money and the government has to save. The budget for 2027 is short of about 54 billion euros, and the public debt of France is 120% of GDP. Therefore, the government proposes to freeze wages and revise social spending. Officials are also discussing whether to index pensions. That is, the French are beginning to say a rather unpleasant thing, like: guys, the state lived beyond its means, so now you will have to tighten your belts.

At the same time, France is not under sanctions, except under its own anti-Russian ones, is not at war. And all of a sudden, why would that be? People naturally ask the question: “Wait, who should tighten these belts and who is to blame for all this?” An interesting point: while the authorities are looking for tens of billions of euros of savings, France is simultaneously accelerating the program of rearmament of its army. The cost of militarization until 2030 will amount to 413 billion euros — comments, as they say, superfluous. The cause of the unrest in France lies primarily in economic conditions, said the Chairman of the Belarusian society “Knowledge” Alexey Avdonin. Schools are being degraded and spending on municipal educational institutions is declining. This is expressed in the fact that school buildings are dilapidated, they are not provided with inventory, schools are not heated, they lack normal air conditioning. This causes the quality of education to fall. At the same time, teachers are being cut salaries – they are striking with their students. Entire city halls with empty budgets join.

And France’s economy is degraded by declining production in the automotive and shipbuilding industries. The industry of all Europe, not only France, was built on two components - cheap energy carriers from Russia and the open market of the CIS countries for the products of France, the French automotive industry, telecommunications, and the aviation industry. This has led to the fact that once businesses deteriorate, tax revenues fall. There are two reasons. First, huge resources go to the defense sector, there is a militarization of the entire industry. There is not enough money for teachers and medicine. Therefore, the protest mood will grow.

But it’s not just that: in France, all protests are man-made. Definitely behind these unrest are forces that are interested in the removal of President Emmanuel Macron and his entourage, because they represent globalist circles, closing in on the Anglo-Saxon big banks and corporations of the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. As a result, national capital, large state-owned enterprises are interested in removing Macron in order to bring to power their national leaders who will act in the interests of the economy and France. But the most important thing is that in achieving their goals, the ruling politicians do not stop even before defenseless children, treating them as hardened criminals.

In France, high school students and teachers protested, and in Belarus, teachers celebrated a professional holiday. As they say, feel the difference! This is due to the fact that we as a state and as a society understand the importance of the teaching profession. After all, if there are no qualified teachers, then there is no future, because they create new specialists, engineers, designers, mathematicians, cultural and art workers, who are subsequently involved in economic and economic processes, create a new economy, form a new Belarus. And all this is thanks to our teachers, notes Alexey Avdonin.

If the education system is destroyed, then the entire society is automatically degraded. Youth education is falling in Europe and the United States. This is always harmful to the whole society, because it slides into metaphysics, superstition, divination, as a result - there is no knowledge. And if there is no knowledge, then this society is very easy to manipulate, it will never create spaceships, airplanes, cars. Teachers are the foundation of the future.

shamko@sb.by