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French Kids Are Destroying Their Schools. I Blame the Adults. · Strictly Education

0:08
SPEAKER_17: Our message is to smash everything.
0:12
SPEAKER_17: Smash everything is what happens when you mix white guilt, mass migration, and any culture that romanticizes tearing down the West.
0:26
SPEAKER_17: Hello and welcome to Strictly Education with me, Catherine Bierbel Singh, Britain's strictest headmistress.
0:31
SPEAKER_17: Today I want to talk about the situation in France.
0:34
SPEAKER_17: We've all seen the footage over the last few weeks.
0:37
SPEAKER_17: The story began as student protests, and then they became something else.
0:42
SPEAKER_17: And we all started thinking, is this really just about school children who want air conditioning in their classrooms?
0:48
SPEAKER_17: We started to see escalations in violence like this.
1:27
SPEAKER_17: Attackers douse teacher and gasoline as student protests rage across France.
1:41
SPEAKER_17: I mean literally being shot by what seems to be a school pupil.
1:47
SPEAKER_16: Here's some of the early reporting.
2:22
SPEAKER_17: It all starts in childhood.
2:24
SPEAKER_17: Then you have the French society, and you have a detached, huge state, and a culture of protest against that state.
2:33
SPEAKER_17: But on top of all of that, you've got a culture of white guilt across the West.
2:37
SPEAKER_17: And this means there's a sense of contempt for the West.
2:41
SPEAKER_17: Then add to all this huge levels of change in a short space of time through mass migration.
2:48
SPEAKER_17: But before I explain how this all started, I should confess, I just love France.
2:53
SPEAKER_17: I lived in France for a year as a child.
2:55
SPEAKER_17: I lived there as a university student, and I visited France all my life.
2:59
SPEAKER_17: I remember taking London kids to climb the Eiffel Tower over and over and over, doing exchanges with French schools, because before I was a strict head mistress, I was a French teacher.
3:11
SPEAKER_17: But this story is also about way more than just France.
3:15
SPEAKER_17: It's relevant to Britain, Germany, America, frankly, anywhere in the Western world.
3:20
SPEAKER_17: And I address this in my book, Diversity is Not Our Strength.
3:23
SPEAKER_17: The situation in Britain isn't so far away from France as we might like to think.
3:28
SPEAKER_17: And I talk about that in the book, and you can order it in the pre-sales in the Amazon link below.
3:34
SPEAKER_17: On some level, we all know that this isn't a French story anymore.
3:38
SPEAKER_17: You know, I mean, here's Belgium.
3:39
SPEAKER_17: Let's look.
4:06
SPEAKER_17: It isn't just Belgium either.
4:08
SPEAKER_17: Something is going on, and I'm telling you that you cannot understand it unless you understand childhood.
4:14
SPEAKER_17: But we'll get to that later.
4:16
SPEAKER_17: Now, in terms of how people will explain what's happening, the left will say it's all about poverty and racism across Europe.
4:22
SPEAKER_17: The right will say it's about mass migration and the far left trying to disrupt Europe.
4:27
SPEAKER_17: There's loads of commentary that I agree with, but I don't think either side captures the whole picture.
4:34
SPEAKER_17: So how did it all start?
4:35
SPEAKER_17: It began in mid-September at a school in Crétey, in the suburbs of Paris.
4:39
SPEAKER_17: Crétey is in the banlieu, on the outskirts of Paris.
4:42
SPEAKER_17: The banlieu are the suburbs.
4:44
SPEAKER_17: In Britain or America, we tend to think of the suburbs as richer areas, but in France, the banlieues are often associated with high levels of immigration and deprivation.
4:54
SPEAKER_17: Some students went on strike and barricaded their own school.
4:58
SPEAKER_17: And then it grew to having marches in different cities.
5:02
SPEAKER_17: Students explained to the cameras how they felt things needed to change.
5:06
SPEAKER_17: Here's an example.
5:07
SPEAKER_20: We want uh governments to invest more in public schools because uh like the private schools aren't struggling, but schools are falling apart.
5:14
SPEAKER_09: There can be leaks in the ceilings.
5:16
SPEAKER_09: Uh there's what also in there.
5:18
SPEAKER_09: The condition in which we uh work is uh very poor.
5:23
SPEAKER_17: Okay, so the story was about funding and investment.
5:26
SPEAKER_17: The protests started in Paris and then spread to other schools across the country.
5:30
SPEAKER_17: This involved barricades, generally around the lycée schools, schools for ages 15 to 18.
5:36
SPEAKER_17: By October, you had half of all the schools closed across the country.
5:42
SPEAKER_17: And by then, it wasn't really about school protests anymore, either.
5:45
SPEAKER_17: Progressive media outlets were describing mainly peaceful marches.
5:50
SPEAKER_17: They were then contrasting this with an unreasonable and heavy-handed police with footage like this.
6:07
SPEAKER_17: But to anyone with any sense, it had become quite clear that something else was going on.
6:12
SPEAKER_17: This wasn't about having leaks in a classroom or being frustrated that your physics teacher had too many days off.
6:18
SPEAKER_17: Here's one video filmed by students as they destroy their own school.
7:04
SPEAKER_17: So how can this possibly be explained?
7:06
SPEAKER_17: Why are these kids doing this?
7:09
SPEAKER_17: So, first I want to address the standard explanations given by the left.
7:13
SPEAKER_17: Some will say schools are underfunded, and that's why so many young people are angry.
7:18
SPEAKER_17: But I'm afraid that just doesn't make a lot of sense.
7:22
SPEAKER_17: In fact, in France, spending per pupil at high school level is way more than it is here in the UK.
7:28
SPEAKER_17: Here in the UK, we spend just under 10,000 pounds per pupil at sixth form level once you include building costs.
7:35
SPEAKER_17: In France, it's 12,500 per pupil.
7:38
SPEAKER_17: Their budget is much bigger than ours.
7:41
SPEAKER_17: As for poverty, it is absolutely true that there are areas of France that are very, very poor.
7:47
SPEAKER_17: But that's always been the case.
7:49
SPEAKER_17: It isn't true that poverty means that you get scenes like this.
8:18
SPEAKER_17: Modern poverty in France?
8:19
SPEAKER_17: Well, it isn't the worst poverty the world has ever seen.
8:22
SPEAKER_17: It's more affluent than my parents' generation from the Caribbean, for instance, when they moved to London in the 1960s.
8:29
SPEAKER_17: Let me tell you, no one went around behaving like that then.
8:33
SPEAKER_17: And it also isn't true that the poverty in France is so concentrated that it is far worse than Britain.
8:39
SPEAKER_17: The Nuffield Foundation reported a few years ago that poorer households in France were an example of better conditions than poorer households in Britain.
8:48
SPEAKER_17: The poorest fifth of households in Britain are now over 20% poorer than their French and German equivalents.
8:55
SPEAKER_17: Let's go through the other claims generally used to justify how tough French students have it.
9:01
SPEAKER_17: Well, it's certainly true that some buildings are in bad shape, but it seems odd to burn down a building because you want your building to be better.
9:10
SPEAKER_17: Not only that, but some of the buildings being smashed are pretty nice.
9:14
SPEAKER_17: Here's one example.
9:16
SPEAKER_17: Climbing wall.
9:18
SPEAKER_17: Well, state of the art.
9:20
SPEAKER_17: Everything really.
9:21
SPEAKER_17: I mean, reflection room with artistic open lighting.
9:26
SPEAKER_17: Years ago, I used to live in France as a university student, and I would go to the trendy, beautiful part of Paris to work in a library, which so happens to be opposite one of the schools that has had protests.
9:38
SPEAKER_17: It was called the Lycée Henri IV.
9:40
SPEAKER_17: Here are some students there.
9:42
SPEAKER_17: Let's have a look.
9:53
SPEAKER_17: This is a super posh school, by the way, which is right next to the Panthéon, the Sorbonne.
10:00
SPEAKER_17: In my opinion, it's one of the poshest schools in the entire world.
10:03
SPEAKER_17: Here's a few photos from inside the school.
10:06
SPEAKER_17: This is the library.
10:07
SPEAKER_17: Here's the courtyard.
10:09
SPEAKER_17: Yes, the courtyard.
10:12
SPEAKER_17: But notice their school is barricaded too.
10:15
SPEAKER_17: Okay, let's look at the other claims that this is a simple case of terrible conditions and therefore young people speaking up against oppression.
10:24
SPEAKER_17: Well, there's the idea that school is simply too hard.
10:27
SPEAKER_17: Here are some people explaining.
10:49
SPEAKER_02: D'accord, we don't have married, just on our venture, hey better, I will make uh boîte, we'll see.
11:02
SPEAKER_17: We can't sleep in the classroom.
11:05
SPEAKER_17: The teachers don't like that.
11:07
SPEAKER_17: Funny that.
11:09
SPEAKER_17: We have a one-hour break.
11:11
SPEAKER_17: I mean, goodness, I suppose you need two hours.
11:15
SPEAKER_17: One girl is complaining that she can't wear a tank top.
11:19
SPEAKER_17: We're not allowed to talk when we want.
11:22
SPEAKER_17: Oh my goodness, how terrible.
11:24
SPEAKER_17: I mean, what they're describing is what school has always been and always will be all over the world.
11:31
SPEAKER_17: I mean, it's crazy.
11:32
SPEAKER_17: Kids are burning down schools because the teachers won't let them wear what they want, sleep or talk in class.
11:38
SPEAKER_17: The whole thing is insane.
11:39
SPEAKER_17: So, are there any grains of truth in the claims from the left as to why there is such anger among young people?
11:45
SPEAKER_17: Historically, it is true that race relations have been worse in France than somewhere like Britain.
11:50
SPEAKER_17: I think a lot of people in England might not fully understand that.
11:54
SPEAKER_17: One of the reasons I love England and don't understand why some people think England is racist is because I've lived in other places, like France.
12:01
SPEAKER_17: Until 2006, it was perfectly normal for French bakeries to sell Negroes' heads to eat.
12:08
SPEAKER_17: Let's have a look.
12:35
SPEAKER_17: Tete de Nègre is a thing of the past.
12:37
SPEAKER_17: And you didn't have schools burned down and teachers being shot back then, despite the much more overt racism than what we have today.
12:45
SPEAKER_17: It doesn't add up to saying that racism explains all of this.
12:49
SPEAKER_17: The left's explanation for these riots makes no sense.
12:54
SPEAKER_17: So let's turn to the right.
12:56
SPEAKER_17: What explanation does the right generally give?
12:58
SPEAKER_17: Well, the right tends to focus on the way these protests tie in with mass migration.
13:03
SPEAKER_17: The reports have often been like this.
13:05
SPEAKER_17: Look out for the flags in this video.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: As fires and riots grip France, a new report warns that immigrants and their descendants will become the majority in France by 2050 if immigration levels continue to be high.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: What does this mean for French identity?
13:24
SPEAKER_00: And is the country at risk of a civil war?
13:27
SPEAKER_17: Okay, so he's making the direct link.
13:30
SPEAKER_17: We have mass migration.
13:32
SPEAKER_17: We have protests, and notice the protesters are flying flags from a different country.
13:37
SPEAKER_17: He's saying there's an obvious link between migration and the people in these protests.
13:43
SPEAKER_17: This is what Elon Musk is referring to in his post.
13:46
SPEAKER_17: What's happening in France is an invasion in slow motion, but an invasion nonetheless.
13:53
SPEAKER_17: Now I know some people love Elon and some people hate him, but he's saying these riots are about migration.
13:59
SPEAKER_17: People of a different culture are moving into France and then wrecking France.
14:04
SPEAKER_17: That's what he's saying.
14:05
SPEAKER_17: A lot of commentators basically say, look, this is what happens with mass migration.
14:10
SPEAKER_17: These kids who are rioting are ethnic minorities who hate the country.
14:14
SPEAKER_17: This is the kind of thing that people are watching.
14:17
SPEAKER_17: Let's take a look.
14:42
SPEAKER_17: So the conclusion lots of us come to is France is burning because of immigration.
14:48
SPEAKER_17: In fact, that's now basically the established narrative on the right.
14:52
SPEAKER_17: Donald Trump has made similar comments, and there's a general sense among some people that the riots display a deliberate disrespect towards Western tradition and religious icons.
15:03
SPEAKER_17: Here's one example.
15:04
SPEAKER_11: And then there were the two men defacing and ultimately destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary.
15:17
SPEAKER_17: And so in France and elsewhere, there are a lot of people who are furiously angry.
15:22
SPEAKER_17: I must say, I can understand why.
15:25
SPEAKER_17: Right-leaning French journalists will explain that there are parts of France that do not buy into French culture or follow French customs, and they do not respect French laws.
15:34
SPEAKER_17: This isn't just commentators on social media or limited to Marine Le Pen's supporters.
15:39
SPEAKER_17: It's now a pretty mainstream conservative view.
15:41
SPEAKER_17: Here's one political theorist.
15:43
SPEAKER_17: Let's look.
15:44
SPEAKER_17: I would add to this very quickly.
15:58
SPEAKER_18: These are not the Jean-Luc center Francoise that are out, or not exclusively, that are out on the streets.
16:04
SPEAKER_17: Okay, that point about flags again.
16:06
SPEAKER_17: Algerian, Palestinian, Moroccan, even the communist flag.
16:10
SPEAKER_17: So I think there's no question that the failures of multiculturalism in France are a huge factor.
16:15
SPEAKER_17: However, I just don't think it explains everything that's going on here.
16:21
SPEAKER_17: There's also a related argument on the right, the idea that this is actually instigated by radical leftists.
16:27
SPEAKER_17: Here's the same commentator making this point.
16:29
SPEAKER_18: This case is unusual because this is not a grassroots movement.
16:33
SPEAKER_18: I mean, this was instigated by the left-wing parties, by the French far left, and it is a power play.
16:38
SPEAKER_18: What they're basically doing is they show the rest of France that they have an army, if you will, at their disposal.
16:45
SPEAKER_18: They have the riotas veto now.
16:47
SPEAKER_18: And this is also a signal to Le Pen and her voters say if you win next year's presidential elections, you can imagine what's gonna happen on the streets.
16:55
SPEAKER_18: This is a very, very dangerous development.
16:58
SPEAKER_18: This is not a grassroots school movement.
17:00
SPEAKER_17: I can see why people think this, and well, I don't disagree.
17:02
SPEAKER_17: The far-left leader of Insoumise, Jean-Luc Malenchon, has spoken in favor of the protests.
17:09
SPEAKER_17: And a number of left-wing politicians and activists are definitely involved at a grassroots level.
17:15
SPEAKER_17: So it's true that mass migration and far-left politics are a huge part of what's going on.
17:20
SPEAKER_17: But I also don't think these explanations can fully explain what's happening.
17:25
SPEAKER_17: Here's why.
17:27
SPEAKER_17: For a start, it's true that men like Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the French far-left party, is deliberately stirring up revolt.
17:37
SPEAKER_17: But that can't explain 250,000 people marching in Paris.
17:41
SPEAKER_17: It also can't explain why you have half of schools all closed.
17:45
SPEAKER_17: It can't explain why you have almost all students supportive of the protest.
17:51
SPEAKER_17: They can't all be activists.
17:53
SPEAKER_17: Far-left politicians cannot magically click their fingers and get millions of teenagers to behave as they would like.
18:01
SPEAKER_17: The teenagers have to already agree with the far-left politicians.
18:07
SPEAKER_17: This brings me to a second problem with the critique from the right.
18:11
SPEAKER_17: If this is all about mass migration or Islam or the idea that ethnic minorities in France are behaving differently, then why is it that so many of the most vocal protest figures are white?
18:24
SPEAKER_17: Take a look at some of the photos.
18:26
SPEAKER_17: Here's that wealthy posh school, Henri IV.
18:29
SPEAKER_17: The kids are all white.
18:30
SPEAKER_17: They're singing anti-fascist songs, and it's the posh white kids who are singing it.
18:36
SPEAKER_17: Here's one of the organizers of that rich school.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: I'm here today because uh with my school, uh, we organized this movement in order to show the solidarity that we have with every high school in Paris, in France, and especially those that need a lot of uh new uh conditions, better conditions to work and to have more funds in order to study better.
18:58
SPEAKER_17: Okay, you hear that?
19:00
SPEAKER_17: We the rich posh kids are here in solidarity with schools everywhere.
19:06
SPEAKER_17: The student radicals you see waving communist flags seem to be pretty white whenever you show footage from a white area.
19:14
SPEAKER_17: In fact, lots of rich white kids seem to be at the center of this.
19:19
SPEAKER_17: One of the clips that went viral is the taking of the Bastille, where a student is flying a flag in Arabic.
19:26
SPEAKER_17: But you look closer at these photos and yes, there's plenty of non-white young people and Palestine flags.
19:34
SPEAKER_17: But notice how white a lot of the pictures are.
19:39
SPEAKER_17: It isn't that I think mass migration isn't a problem.
19:42
SPEAKER_17: It is.
19:42
SPEAKER_17: I also don't want to deny the huge numbers of brown and black kids involved in the rioting.
19:47
SPEAKER_17: My point is the white kids are there too.
19:51
SPEAKER_17: They too are waving the same flags, burning and barricading the schools and rioting too.
19:57
SPEAKER_17: If you ignore that, you are ignoring a deeper problem relating to all children in France.
20:04
SPEAKER_17: Too many people on the right are being a bit lazy when they say that mass migration explains everything, and there's no further explanation required.
20:13
SPEAKER_17: Some of the most troubling footage reveals that something is going on for all the children, not just specifically ethnic children.
20:23
SPEAKER_17: Remember what I said.
20:24
SPEAKER_17: All of our political issues are rooted in what we do to our children.
20:28
SPEAKER_17: In this video here, you'll see some young people vandalizing a church.
20:32
SPEAKER_17: And while they do this, they're singing a song that celebrates Islamic terrorists.
20:38
SPEAKER_17: Let's watch.
21:31
SPEAKER_17: The boys are young and white.
21:33
SPEAKER_17: She's singing her heart out with these lyrics that glamorize one of the Islamic terrorists.
21:38
SPEAKER_17: That white girl is dancing and singing about Salah Abdesalaam, one of those responsible for the Bataklan massacre in 2015.
21:47
SPEAKER_17: Abdul Salaam was one of the terrorists who coordinated the killing of 90 people.
21:53
SPEAKER_17: The other terrorist she's singing about is Mohammed Mera.
21:56
SPEAKER_17: He killed seven people, including three children, in a terrorist.
22:00
SPEAKER_17: Attack in Toulouse in 2012.
22:02
SPEAKER_17: These white children are singing their names and dancing.
22:07
SPEAKER_17: Notice how she knows the words off by heart.
22:10
SPEAKER_17: Now, anyone who knows youth culture will know that those young people aren't that unusual.
22:14
SPEAKER_17: They're expressing views and romanticizing a certain form of violence, i.e., anti-Western, that lots of our young people throughout the West would agree with.
22:23
SPEAKER_17: There is only one idea that explains all of this, and that is white guilt.
22:28
SPEAKER_17: That's what that girl is showing.
22:30
SPEAKER_17: She's showing she isn't like the nasty white people of the past.
22:34
SPEAKER_17: She's anti-Western.
22:36
SPEAKER_17: As for the idea that foreign or communist flags are present in the protests, well, this is true.
22:41
SPEAKER_17: But a lot of people waving those flags are white.
22:44
SPEAKER_17: The idea that you get foreign flags in Paris because only foreigners or their descendants wave them, well, that just isn't true, and it's just a bit silly.
22:52
SPEAKER_17: In polling last week, nearly one in two French young people believe violence is acceptable to advance one's political views.
23:00
SPEAKER_17: Violence and radicalism cannot be solely explained by the failures of multiculturalism.
23:05
SPEAKER_17: Something has happened to young people.
23:08
SPEAKER_17: The question the right needs to answer is why do so many white young French people despise their country?
23:18
SPEAKER_17: She's describing how there is physical violence against her because she doesn't have left wing views.
23:24
SPEAKER_17: And while you watch, look at the children protesting at her campus.
23:40
SPEAKER_04: And there's another who went on the room.
23:51
SPEAKER_06: He's fiery to aggressive just two young fan.
23:54
SPEAKER_06: They are very fierce.
23:55
SPEAKER_06: I'm not a human for me.
23:57
SPEAKER_06: He claims and says we have to go to Charlie Kirk.
24:00
SPEAKER_06: What do you want to say?
24:06
SPEAKER_17: So notice she isn't in a high immigration area.
24:08
SPEAKER_17: She's around middle class, mostly white university students, and they're saying they'll Charlie Kirk her.
24:14
SPEAKER_17: That means they think she should die because of her political views.
24:18
SPEAKER_17: And notice in America, the political violence and radicalism that killed Charlie Kirk was not multiculturalism.
24:25
SPEAKER_17: It was a white guy who killed Charlie Kirk.
24:28
SPEAKER_17: So what's going on?
24:29
SPEAKER_17: Well, I said earlier, there are four main things going on as I see it.
24:34
SPEAKER_17: You have the culture of French schools, you have the French state, you have Western white guilt in an age of social media, and you have mass migration.
24:44
SPEAKER_17: Put all four together, and this is where we end up.
24:47
SPEAKER_17: Let's start with French schools and childhood.
24:50
SPEAKER_17: There are certain features of the French education system that stand out.
24:53
SPEAKER_17: For a start, it is true that a lot of students are missing lessons, even though the French spend huge amounts on education.
25:00
SPEAKER_17: By the government's own statistics, 10% of teaching posts were not filled.
25:05
SPEAKER_17: In the poorer areas of French schools, it was reported that students missed 20% of their teaching hours because absent teachers were not replaced.
25:13
SPEAKER_17: This is true despite the huge funding in France, because France is insanely unionized and bureaucratized.
25:21
SPEAKER_17: I could do a whole episode on union power and how it ruins the lives of poor families.
25:26
SPEAKER_17: I'll give you one example, though, of what happens.
25:28
SPEAKER_17: Teachers are basically impossible to fire.
25:30
SPEAKER_17: So in some of those really rough schools, you will have teachers who call in sick or who are long-term absent, and they'll still be paid.
25:38
SPEAKER_17: And so the lessons will go untaught.
25:40
SPEAKER_17: And sometimes they might be taught, but the teacher is checked out.
25:43
SPEAKER_17: You know, what I mean is that they've sort of given up and let the classroom turn to chaos, and then they go home, but they still get their paycheck.
25:51
SPEAKER_17: So then you get scenes like this.
26:08
SPEAKER_17: I look at that and think, yup, that reminds me of local authority schools that used to exist before our education reforms here in Britain.
26:16
SPEAKER_17: Unionized bad teachers do nothing or don't turn up, and the kids run riot and hate the school.
26:22
SPEAKER_17: This obviously doesn't make any of the rioting acceptable, but there will be huge numbers of students, particularly in the poor areas like the banlieue, where the children have very little connection with their teachers, if they have teachers at all.
26:35
SPEAKER_17: This relates to a second feature of the French education system.
26:39
SPEAKER_17: In Britain, being a teacher is about having a pastoral relationship with the children and teaching them.
26:46
SPEAKER_17: In France, teachers are all about academic knowledge.
26:49
SPEAKER_17: It's very different.
26:51
SPEAKER_17: They turn up, teach, and they leave.
26:53
SPEAKER_17: Teachers just teach lessons, no form time, no playtime, no ringing parents to talk about the children's naughty behavior.
27:00
SPEAKER_17: Teachers in France are just about knowledge, not relationships.
27:04
SPEAKER_17: It's all a centralized technocratic system that places a teacher in a school and le directeur, or even la directrice la plus stricte, cannot hire or fire you.
27:15
SPEAKER_17: So you don't have a culture of a head really owning his school, building his team and his staff, and creating a culture where there's a school ethos that the kids buy into and where there are meaningful relationships.
27:29
SPEAKER_17: You have this aloof, centralized system where teachers and principals are allocated.
27:34
SPEAKER_17: Teachers turn up to their allocated school, teach, and then go home.
27:37
SPEAKER_17: Everything feels so disconnected and faceless.
27:40
SPEAKER_17: There's this bureaucratic distance that makes it easier for pupils to resent their teachers.
27:45
SPEAKER_17: Teachers aren't thought of as parental figures looking after the children like we do in Britain.
27:51
SPEAKER_17: In France, that role is done by a totally different person called a surveillant.
27:56
SPEAKER_17: They will usually be from the local community.
27:59
SPEAKER_17: And the surveillant will be a bit more down with the kids.
28:04
SPEAKER_17: They're young and cool and do high fives with the kids.
28:08
SPEAKER_17: They have an emotional connection with the kids because they're one of them.
28:12
SPEAKER_17: That's the idea.
28:13
SPEAKER_17: So you often have the situation where in a lot of poorer areas there are ethnic minority children.
28:19
SPEAKER_17: And then often there's an ethnic minority surveillant who is the only adult who has a connection with them.
28:27
SPEAKER_17: The teacher, meanwhile, is often seen as a bit aloof, often white, doesn't really know the children, and often turns up, teaches, and then leaves.
28:36
SPEAKER_17: So it means that there's this divide.
28:40
SPEAKER_17: And that isn't the fault of the teachers or the surveillant.
28:44
SPEAKER_17: In fact, no one realizes there is anything structurally wrong because the French have never known anything else.
28:51
SPEAKER_17: They don't really see how the French system makes it easier for kids to hate their teachers.
28:56
SPEAKER_17: That's exactly what you're seeing in a lot of this footage.
28:59
SPEAKER_17: The kids hate their schools.
29:02
SPEAKER_17: They don't feel any emotional connection at all to their teachers.
29:06
SPEAKER_17: The French don't understand how relationships, love, and trust are crucial when it comes to having a successful school.
29:13
SPEAKER_17: So what else creates this distance?
29:15
SPEAKER_17: There's the parcoursup, which is basically how you're admitted to university.
29:20
SPEAKER_17: Here's economist Charles Gave on the Winston Marshall Show explaining.
29:31
SPEAKER_19: But it's education, failing schools, it's also the fact that you have an absolutely technocratic and stupid model that has been installed to know where you will be able to go to school.
29:42
SPEAKER_19: So if you it's called uh prepsup, prepa sup, where basically you introduce your name in your in the computer and they decide that you're going to study in Toulouse if you're from Strasbourg or so it's it's a totally uh w irrational world.
30:01
SPEAKER_17: He says a technocratic and stupid model exists.
30:04
SPEAKER_17: He mentions you are in Strasbourg and sent off to Toulouse.
30:08
SPEAKER_17: What's he talking about?
30:09
SPEAKER_17: So when it comes to universities, in theory, anyone can apply to university and it's open to all.
30:14
SPEAKER_17: But children will put a whole bunch of choices into a computer portal and it's called Parcoursoup.
30:20
SPEAKER_17: And this is hated by the students.
30:22
SPEAKER_17: And it's the same theme.
30:24
SPEAKER_17: Everything is centralized.
30:25
SPEAKER_17: The students type in their choices.
30:28
SPEAKER_17: The computer then tells them, here's where you're going to university.
30:31
SPEAKER_17: They often don't understand why, and they're left waiting, feeling like there's this distant bureaucracy deciding their entire lives.
30:38
SPEAKER_17: Here's one description.
30:39
SPEAKER_17: We have no idea what we'll get from Parcoursoup.
30:43
SPEAKER_17: We go to school from 8 a.m.
30:44
SPEAKER_17: to 6 p.m.
30:45
SPEAKER_17: We give everything, all for a computer program to decide our lives.
30:50
SPEAKER_17: So they don't know why they didn't get in or why they got in somewhere else.
30:54
SPEAKER_17: It seems random to them.
30:55
SPEAKER_17: It's the same theme.
30:57
SPEAKER_17: Everything is centralized, everything is disconnected.
31:00
SPEAKER_17: I always say in teaching that authority matters.
31:04
SPEAKER_17: You know, strictest headmistress and all that.
31:06
SPEAKER_17: But authority requires a relationship where the people you have authority over should feel like you care about them and their futures.
31:16
SPEAKER_17: That's how it works with the best strict parents.
31:19
SPEAKER_17: They're strict, but they aren't distant.
31:21
SPEAKER_17: They bond with their kids and they hold them to account.
31:25
SPEAKER_17: That's also what good teachers do.
31:27
SPEAKER_17: In Britain, we take for granted that this is how authority should be.
31:31
SPEAKER_17: Think of the old stereotype of the Bobby on the beat, a police officer.
31:36
SPEAKER_17: The idea was that they knew the streets they policed.
31:39
SPEAKER_17: They were part of the community, an authority, but with a connection to the people.
31:45
SPEAKER_17: The French system creates the opposite form of authority.
31:48
SPEAKER_17: It's distant.
31:49
SPEAKER_17: That's true for the French police, and it's the same for French teachers.
31:54
SPEAKER_17: What the educational structures in France create is a shared disaffection where students don't feel an emotional loyalty of connection to the authority figure, which is their teacher.
32:05
SPEAKER_17: This means that when things go badly, they feel they can turn on that figure.
32:10
SPEAKER_17: The whole system in France creates this bureaucratic distance between children and authority.
32:15
SPEAKER_17: What else adds to that dislike of authority?
32:18
SPEAKER_17: Well, it's true that in French culture, the idea of protest and rebellion is viewed as an inherent moral good.
32:27
SPEAKER_17: Here's one French caller explaining some weeks ago.
32:30
SPEAKER_17: It's a very French thing to protest.
32:32
SPEAKER_07: Indeed.
32:33
SPEAKER_15: You asked before, you know, the young lady.
32:36
SPEAKER_15: I think she's absolutely right.
32:38
SPEAKER_15: It's in the French DNA to protest when you're not happy about something.
32:43
SPEAKER_15: And it's instilled in us from a very young age.
32:46
SPEAKER_15: I remember when I was in secondary school, there were some issues with education, and my parents included and other parents, you know, they they they they went down the street and they protested and they clashed with the police, uh, but the teachers were with them.
33:01
SPEAKER_17: My parents protested.
33:03
SPEAKER_17: We clashed with the police.
33:04
SPEAKER_17: It's in our DNA.
33:07
SPEAKER_17: This idea of protest and rebellion is a fundamental feature of French thinking.
33:12
SPEAKER_17: And the thing is that unless you've lived in France, it's quite hard to see that they they literally protest all of the time.
33:19
SPEAKER_17: And this culture of protest is also linked to the way the French state works or doesn't work.
33:24
SPEAKER_17: Here's Charles Gave again.
33:26
SPEAKER_17: Let's look.
33:27
SPEAKER_19: Nothing is working in France.
33:29
SPEAKER_19: So the extraordinary thing is that we have the highest percentage of taxes taken of any main country in the world.
33:38
SPEAKER_19: Something like 57%.
33:40
SPEAKER_19: No government.
33:42
SPEAKER_19: And nothing is working.
33:46
SPEAKER_19: And despite the amount, amount of money that they take, when there is a problem, they believe that the government should intervene.
33:53
SPEAKER_19: It doesn't work.
33:57
SPEAKER_19: It doesn't work, and then they riot.
34:00
SPEAKER_17: It doesn't work, and then they riot.
34:02
SPEAKER_17: So what he's saying is that in France the culture is you pay high taxes, things still don't work.
34:08
SPEAKER_17: People protest and get angry.
34:09
SPEAKER_17: They expect the government to intervene and do more centralizing.
34:12
SPEAKER_17: They vote in a new government, then the same thing happens again.
34:15
SPEAKER_17: And the truth is that it doesn't surprise me that taxes are high, but things still don't work.
34:21
SPEAKER_17: Everyone goes on strike, everyone retires early.
34:24
SPEAKER_17: Everything is run through the state.
34:26
SPEAKER_17: This is what happens with rigid state control.
34:30
SPEAKER_17: The same thing that creates the distance in schools is there in the distance between government and society in general.
34:36
SPEAKER_17: That's part of why you have this culture of people protesting and despising their politicians.
34:42
SPEAKER_17: What adds to that is the French identity.
34:44
SPEAKER_17: The story the French tell themselves about their history is all about rebellion.
34:50
SPEAKER_17: It's there in 1789.
34:52
SPEAKER_17: The French Revolution involves the people rising up against the monarch to set up a great republic.
34:59
SPEAKER_17: It's there in 1830, the July Revolution again, students and young people rising up against the authority of the king.
35:08
SPEAKER_17: It's there in the 1848 Revolution in France.
35:12
SPEAKER_17: It's there in the 1871 workers' commune.
35:16
SPEAKER_17: Most importantly, it's there in 1968.
35:19
SPEAKER_17: All children are taught about the student protests of 68.
35:24
SPEAKER_17: It might be 60 years ago, but look at the footage.
35:39
SPEAKER_14: Students were using monotonic buttons.
35:44
SPEAKER_14: Police were telling it specific scenarios.
35:46
SPEAKER_14: President McGaul and his ministers quickly.
35:49
SPEAKER_14: They banned all open-air demonstrations until after the elections on July 1st.
35:53
SPEAKER_14: They also outlawed seven anarchist and dissident communist organizations.
35:57
SPEAKER_14: One of them is the movement of March 22nd, founded by Daniel Cohn Bendy.
36:03
SPEAKER_17: The students were using Molotov cocktails, basically homemade grenades.
36:07
SPEAKER_17: The police used tear gas.
36:09
SPEAKER_17: Now, the point isn't just that there's a history of student violence that came close to toppling the government.
36:15
SPEAKER_17: It's that this is taught in schools as a heroic thing.
36:20
SPEAKER_17: The idea that fighting for your rights is what makes France a great place.
36:26
SPEAKER_17: And now, on top of that, there's the modern notion, which is all over social media as well, that the biggest oppressor of all has been white Western imperial nations.
36:38
SPEAKER_17: France made a deliberate decision in the 2000s to try to pivot to address the horrors of France's role in the slave trade and in colonialism.
36:47
SPEAKER_17: Here's an extract from the newspaper Le Monde.
36:50
SPEAKER_17: For about three decades now, much hope has been placed in the education system, especially through teaching about France's history of slavery and colonialism.
36:59
SPEAKER_17: In 2001, the French Parliament passed a law acknowledging the slave trade as a crime against humanity.
37:06
SPEAKER_17: They changed the primary school curriculum shortly after.
37:09
SPEAKER_17: So it isn't that France is necessarily super woke.
37:12
SPEAKER_17: It's more that you have this long history in schools about how justice is rebelling against oppressive authority from 1789 to the present day.
37:23
SPEAKER_17: So first you have the idea that fighting authority is something to admire, and then add on that France itself and the entire Imperial West are guilty of the worst crime against humanity, slavery.
37:36
SPEAKER_17: That changes things.
37:38
SPEAKER_17: If history is all about the people pushing back against the oppressor, but you view the French Republic as the embodiment of freedom, that's one thing.
37:48
SPEAKER_17: You protest, but you don't hate your country, like the protests in 1968, for instance.
37:55
SPEAKER_17: But once you view France itself as the ultimate oppressor of history, that means you rebel, but it's deeper than that.
38:04
SPEAKER_17: What you're rebelling against is your own country.
38:09
SPEAKER_17: You just want to tear it down, which is exactly what is happening.
38:14
SPEAKER_17: Okay, so what we've just said, that hasn't been understood by older French people.
38:19
SPEAKER_17: The idea of protesting and rioting is nothing new in French culture.
38:24
SPEAKER_17: Here's some older French people.
38:26
SPEAKER_17: Let's listen to what they're saying.
38:27
SPEAKER_12: Our youth are here to express themselves.
38:29
SPEAKER_12: There was some misbehavior, that's true.
38:31
SPEAKER_12: But that remains minimal compared to what the youth have to say.
38:34
SPEAKER_12: And I don't want our kids to go home injured after protesting, after expressing their opinions.
38:39
SPEAKER_12: It's not enough to announce that they are listening to us.
38:42
SPEAKER_12: That's all fine and dandy, but that's not what's going to change the daily lives of our children.
38:47
SPEAKER_12: Why are we here?
38:48
SPEAKER_12: Because we were part of May 68, and we realized that every successive government, instead of fixing the situation, has only made it worse.
38:55
SPEAKER_12: And I find that dreadful.
38:57
SPEAKER_12: And my slogan says it all.
38:58
SPEAKER_12: What do governments want?
39:00
SPEAKER_12: They want idiots, that's the word, so they can control them better and lead them by the nose.
39:05
SPEAKER_12: So that's unbearable.
39:06
SPEAKER_12: And it's not what we want for the future.
39:08
SPEAKER_12: It's as simple as that.
39:09
SPEAKER_17: Our youth are here to express themselves.
39:12
SPEAKER_17: We're here because of 1968.
39:15
SPEAKER_17: These older people are saying, what these kids are doing, it's just like us.
39:20
SPEAKER_17: But they don't understand that the ground has changed.
39:23
SPEAKER_17: Modern French young people aren't just rebelling against Macron or against a specific government policy.
39:29
SPEAKER_17: They're rebelling against the West.
39:33
SPEAKER_17: And if you don't agree, you should get Charlie Kirked, i.e., killed.
39:39
SPEAKER_17: This brings me to a huge problem.
39:41
SPEAKER_17: White guilt.
39:42
SPEAKER_17: It's the reason why the rebellions now are different, and the reason why these rebellions are spreading in part through social media to other parts of Europe.
39:52
SPEAKER_17: The petrol that sparks a standard French protest into Western hatred is white guilt.
39:59
SPEAKER_17: White guilt is what makes sense of the white girl vandalizing a church with her white friends while they sing about a terrorist.
40:06
SPEAKER_17: The terrorists she's singing about, they're fighting back against imperialism.
40:10
SPEAKER_17: They have a non-Western background.
40:12
SPEAKER_17: They're taking on the West.
40:14
SPEAKER_17: And so, to her, they're the good guys.
40:18
SPEAKER_17: As for the church they're smashing, it's Christian, attended by white people, and it's ornate, which, you know, is privilege.
40:25
SPEAKER_17: It's representative of everything in the West that needs to be opposed.
40:30
SPEAKER_17: That sort of institution is the bad guy of history.
40:33
SPEAKER_17: It's not random.
40:34
SPEAKER_17: It's the natural consequence of a worldview that we have given our children.
40:40
SPEAKER_17: And if you want to show you're the right kind of white person, you need to show that you're against the nasty authority figures.
40:47
SPEAKER_17: Your sympathy is with the oppressed.
40:49
SPEAKER_17: That's why there are white French people flying flags other than the French flag.
40:53
SPEAKER_17: That's how they show that they're on the right side of history.
40:56
SPEAKER_17: They're rebelling against what they think they're supposed to rebel against.
41:00
SPEAKER_17: The West.
41:01
SPEAKER_17: When shops are being looted, well, that's big bad businesses being punished by the oppressed.
41:07
SPEAKER_17: That's the little guy fighting back against capitalism.
41:11
SPEAKER_17: Therefore, it's perfectly acceptable, or at least understandable.
41:15
SPEAKER_17: When rioters are burning down emergency services, they're destroying symbols of authority in the name of the downtrodden.
41:22
SPEAKER_17: It's an act of challenging those who have power.
41:26
SPEAKER_17: Why are radical white students cheering this on?
41:29
SPEAKER_17: Because they think that's what good white people should do: tear down imperial authority.
41:35
SPEAKER_17: When students burn down their school, they're pushing back against authority.
41:40
SPEAKER_17: Same thing.
41:41
SPEAKER_17: That isn't happening specifically because of skin color.
41:44
SPEAKER_17: It's happening because that's the natural conclusion of white guilt.
41:48
SPEAKER_17: A culture of rebellion, as well as huge numbers of ethnic minority kids with little or no sense of belonging.
41:55
SPEAKER_17: This culture shift is missed by the older generation and by politicians.
41:59
SPEAKER_17: Here's the same young girl we heard before explaining this to the former prime minister.
42:04
SPEAKER_17: She's saying you don't understand what is happening on the ground.
42:10
SPEAKER_17: Let's listen.
42:18
SPEAKER_06: We can talk about the classic PISA, the shape of the niveau scholar in France, in math, the month of the violence of lyrics, or even just their students in general on their professors.
42:28
SPEAKER_06: We are in the pad vague, we have the visage of the laxism.
42:31
SPEAKER_06: We have said to cast, we approach the respect, it's full.
42:35
SPEAKER_06: Alright, we have a million lycans, millions of students who have a cadre, who have a cadre, who have a hiarchy, who don't respect rien.
42:42
SPEAKER_17: You can hear her there.
42:44
SPEAKER_17: She's saying that the schools themselves don't function academically.
42:48
SPEAKER_17: French and math scores are plummeting, but it's worse than that.
42:51
SPEAKER_17: No hierarchy, no boundaries, no respect for anything.
42:55
SPEAKER_17: She's saying that the authorities are appealing to a sense of order that simply doesn't exist.
43:01
SPEAKER_17: This then brings us to the other factor.
43:04
SPEAKER_17: High levels of migration do present a huge issue for having shared belonging.
43:09
SPEAKER_17: White guilt means instead of trying to build a shared culture, you encourage resentment along racial lines.
43:16
SPEAKER_17: At the exact point you have huge numbers of new arrivals.
43:20
SPEAKER_17: White guilt means telling ethnic minorities to fight back against the oppressor, which in this case means any form of authority, particularly if it is white.
43:30
SPEAKER_17: Can immigrant groups in small numbers integrate?
43:33
SPEAKER_17: Well, yes, of course.
43:35
SPEAKER_17: Can large groups, where all of the young people are taught to hate their country?
43:40
SPEAKER_17: No, it's impossible.
43:42
SPEAKER_17: And that's what's going on in France.
43:44
SPEAKER_17: White guilt and mass migration work together.
43:47
SPEAKER_17: Then you have the French notion of anti authoritarianism.
43:51
SPEAKER_17: For some young people, the logical conclusion is to just destroy everything.
43:56
SPEAKER_17: And all of this together means that what is happening in France And now Belgium and Italy too is genuinely different from your student riots in the past in France.
44:06
SPEAKER_17: It's worse in scale.
44:08
SPEAKER_17: Schools badly damaged is not the same as pupils going on strike.
44:12
SPEAKER_17: Shooting teachers or threatening to kill conservative students is a whole new level.
44:17
SPEAKER_17: It's also worse in terms of what is being rejected.
44:20
SPEAKER_17: My worry is that what is being rejected is the West itself, not an individual politician or a government policy.
44:28
SPEAKER_17: And that's why you get scenes like this in Belgium.
44:38
SPEAKER_08: Contra?
44:38
SPEAKER_08: Contra, but we're going manifesting.
44:40
SPEAKER_08: We're seeing the reform and our humour ici.
44:49
SPEAKER_08: Not message is why are you rising?
45:11
SPEAKER_17: I don't know.
45:11
SPEAKER_17: That's what he says.
45:13
SPEAKER_17: Our message is to smash everything.
45:16
SPEAKER_17: Smash everything is what happens when you mix white guilt, mass migration, and any culture that romanticizes tearing down the West.
45:24
SPEAKER_17: And that is what we are teaching our kids.
45:27
SPEAKER_17: That is what I have been shouting about for decades.
45:30
SPEAKER_17: But no one's listening.
45:31
SPEAKER_17: But I know strictly viewers are listening, and I'm grateful for that.
45:34
SPEAKER_17: I explore everything I've just said in more detail in my book, Diversity Is Not Our Strength, where I look at our situation here in Britain.
45:42
SPEAKER_17: It comes out on November the 12th, but you can order it now on Amazon pre-sale, and the link is below.
45:48
SPEAKER_17: You'll have to tell me what you think of it.
45:52
SPEAKER_17: And now I get to answer a few questions from all of you.
45:55
SPEAKER_17: If you have a question that you'd like answered, put it in the comments below and subscribe to the channel.
45:59
SPEAKER_17: Remember to subscribe to the channel.
46:02
SPEAKER_17: You can also find me on X at Miss underscore Snuffy.
46:06
SPEAKER_17: Okay, question number one.
46:08
SPEAKER_17: Abyss Mom asks, how do y'all discipline?
46:11
SPEAKER_17: Y'all, I like that.
46:12
SPEAKER_17: Must be from Texas.
46:14
SPEAKER_17: Um, is it all kicking a kid out of class?
46:17
SPEAKER_17: Can you reach a student whose parent is encouraging bad behavior and downplaying education?
46:22
SPEAKER_17: Uh well, yeah, of course you can.
46:24
SPEAKER_17: The thing is to get the kid the child on side.
46:26
SPEAKER_17: I'm always saying, we teachers think that um the most important thing is to get the parents on board.
46:33
SPEAKER_17: And I find it really isn't.
46:34
SPEAKER_17: The most important thing is to get the child on board.
46:37
SPEAKER_17: We actually have children who will apologize for the behavior of their parents.
46:40
SPEAKER_17: Um, because they've come on board with what we're teaching them at school and they love their teachers, and that's what's so important, as this French situation has demonstrated.
46:49
SPEAKER_17: Relationships between the children and the teachers matter.
46:52
SPEAKER_17: And if as a teacher you have developed lovely relationships where they know that you love them and they love you, they will actually apologize for what their parents do, believe it or not.
47:03
SPEAKER_17: So, um, and we have that experience all the time here at Michaela.
47:06
SPEAKER_17: Okay, Mrs.
47:08
SPEAKER_17: KSV asks, can you please explain how a child with neurodivergence, mental health, trauma can fit into the box you describe?
47:16
SPEAKER_17: If they aren't helped, how can they do well at school?
47:19
SPEAKER_17: Okay, so that's an interesting question that people often ask.
47:22
SPEAKER_17: Now, children come in all shapes and sizes, it's true.
47:25
SPEAKER_17: But you always need to ask yourself, should I be lowering my standards for them?
47:30
SPEAKER_17: So it's obvious when you look at a child who's physically disabled, you don't ask them, let's say they're in a wheelchair, you wouldn't ask them to climb the stairs.
47:37
SPEAKER_17: So it's wrong to ask a child to do something they cannot do.
47:42
SPEAKER_17: But what I would say is that far too often when it comes to children with special needs or various issues, we're too quick to drop our standards for them and to imagine that they cannot achieve whatever it is you want them to achieve.
47:56
SPEAKER_17: And uh because they're kids, all kids will will well, if you put your standards there, they'll go to there.
48:02
SPEAKER_17: If you put your standards there, they'll go to there.
48:04
SPEAKER_17: So it it's you you need to you need to set your standards uh just above where you think they might be able to reach, so that they keep reaching for that.
48:14
SPEAKER_17: And um you're saying, well, how I'll tell you what helps a child.
48:18
SPEAKER_17: Uh old-fashioned teaching, uh leading from the front of the classroom, uh, silence, deaths in rows, teacher leading the learning, uh, homework that matches the homework of the uh the what you taught them during the day.
48:32
SPEAKER_17: All of that massively helps any child who is a little bit different.
48:37
SPEAKER_17: So if you're a teacher, Mrs.
48:38
SPEAKER_17: KSV, that's what I would suggest uh you try out with those kinds of kids.
48:43
SPEAKER_17: So Nellie asks, would Michaela ever consider offering teacher training based on your approach to teachers outside the school, as Montessori schools do?
48:52
SPEAKER_17: So uh the thing is, Montessori is probably quite the opposite of what we do.
48:59
SPEAKER_17: And so um what we do really does require uh immersion, I would say, in the school here.
49:06
SPEAKER_17: Uh, because it's all encompassing.
49:08
SPEAKER_17: Having said that, there are ideas that you can take from Michaela and implement in your own schools.
49:15
SPEAKER_17: And so that's partly what the podcast is about, to try and get people to sort of shift in their in their thinking.
49:21
SPEAKER_17: Uh, we're also currently putting together a kind of manual, a digital manual about the school, uh, so that people can take ideas and literally implement them in their classroom.
49:31
SPEAKER_17: And I'm hoping over the next 18 months or so that should be ready.
49:34
SPEAKER_17: So for those of you who can't actually get to us here in in London, uh, there'll be something that you'll be able to see online.
49:41
SPEAKER_17: And thank you, Nellie, for for your question.
49:43
SPEAKER_17: And remember, there's my book coming out on the 12th of November, but you can get it on pre-sale in the Amazon link below.
49:49
SPEAKER_17: Diversity is not our strength.
49:51
SPEAKER_17: I'm really looking forward to hearing what Strictly viewers have to say about it.
49:55
SPEAKER_17: Well, that's all we have time for today.
49:57
SPEAKER_17: I've got a school to run and you've got things to do.
50:00
SPEAKER_17: Until next time on Strictly Education, hold the line, strength and honor.
50:04
SPEAKER_17: Thanks for dropping by.