Latest / Color Commentary / Ep 50 | The Bloody Education Revolt Happening in France Right Now
Transcript
- Charles Cole: Welcome to Color Commentary, your podcast where the story shaping our world are told in black and white first, and then we dig into their deeper meanings in full color. Each week I'll be bringing you the news like this. First, we'll start with what I like to call the black and white section. A clear, straight shooting rundown of the facts in the tradition of grace like Ed Bradley, Walter Cronkite, and the classic voices of journalism. Then we'll shift into the color commentary section, where I add my own personal opinions and insights. Sometimes it'll just be me. Sometimes we'll have guests, and I tell you all this every every episode. Look, I'm a I'm a scholar, I'm a hip-hop junkie, a movie and coach and nerd, and an avid book reader. So in these shows, you will get glimpses of all of that, you know. And you're about to get a glimpse into another part of my past, which was activists. But let's get into it. And by the way, episode 50, a huge milestone for us. Thank you to the people who got the show here, for the people that support. Thank you to ABH and Ed Post for the partnership that helped grow this audience. it's appreciated. And and I really do enjoy and love doing this and love the feedback. So please keep it coming. Today we're we're gonna go across the pond. France just ran a national experiment that We've been running quietly in this country for 50 years and they shut it down in about two years. that experiment is sorting kids by ability. friends did it in a very loud way, and they saw the harm in their own data, and then they reversed it. we do it by another name, and we almost never ever reverse it. So I just wanna tell you exactly what happened over there, and then I just want to hold it up a mirror for us to what we do here and This is a developing story, was what's happening in France. I want to make sure that I say that it's still developing. So I'm gonna give you the facts that I have and my thoughts and my opinion. I may not go super deep into what the specific like how I feel about the issue or the things that they're protesting, because it's not my protest, right? I wanna I just want people to understand why and and what what what stuff looks like. And we'll be sorting this out together. So Let's get into these facts first. All right. I definitely want to make sure you all have a good base because I'm not hearing this discussed in the United States the way that I thought that I would. I'm not, I'm not. There's a lot happening. So, enough of hiding the ball. Let's get into it. Here are the facts. Black and white people. So in 2024, France launched a sweeping national education reform called the Troc des Savours. And again, excuse my pronunciation, I don't speak French, but I'm gonna do the best that I can. But what that does is that translates to the shock of knowledge. It was championed by the education minister at the time, Gabriel Atall, who would go on to briefly become prime minister. The signature piece of the reform told the colleges. Which are Francis Middle Schools to split their students into ability groups for math and French. You test the children around ages 11 to 14, and then you group the strong students together and the struggling students together, and you put them in separate groups for these core subjects. So math and French. The groups were first called the groups de niveau, meaning level groups. And the reform was sold as a way to raise achievement. The arguments from supporters was that teaching children alongside others at their same level will let the advanced kids move faster and give the strugglers more targeted help. The pushback was immediate and it was national. Teachers, parents, researchers, and the unions organized against it from the announcement, arguing the policy amounted to sorting children by social class and background behind an academic label. A refrain from school staff became a flat refusal. We will not sort our students. The government tried to cool the backlash by renaming the ability groups Group de Bessones, meaning knees group, but the design underneath did not change. Then came a pretty harsh reality of what schools actually did. By the fall of 2025, a survey from the SNES. Dash FSU Teachers Union found that only about nineteen percent of colleges, roughly one in five, had fully put the ability groups in place. Many schools quietly went back to teaching mixed level classes on their own. France's own institutions turned on the reform too. In June 2025, the National Education Inspectorate, the IGESR, published a report that was damning finding the measure, delivered few solutions for vulnerable students, and widened gaps rather than closing them. And the country's highest administrative court, the Council des Tat had already struck down the ability grouping in a ruling in November 2024. Worth being precise here. The court threw it out on a technicality ruling the government had used the wrong kind of legal instrument, not the idea itself was illegal. That's very important. But then the end came pretty fast. And in the in December of 2025, the new education minister, Edouard Gaffrey, announced the groups would no longer be mandatory. And a decree published in March 2026 made the abandonment official. So the signature measure of the shock of knowledge was dead, just you know, roughly two years after it started. So that's the story that's happening in France. A country tried to sort its children by measured ability, watched its own data and its own courts and its own teachers reject it, and then they walked it back. Now, here is a part that's kind of about us. The United States has a name for sorting children by measured ability, we call it tracking. And we've been doing it for generations, usually without some kind of national debate and without a reversal. The effects fall hardest on black children. According to an analysis of federal civil rights data, in a recent year, an estimated 771,000 black students were missing from gifted and talented programs. Either they were never identified or they were attending schools where kids who looked like them were just simply never selected. Researchers have put it bluntly. Roughly three out of four gifted black students are never identified as gifted at all. So you got that stuff happening. You got kind of juxtaposition with us. What is happening now, though, is that there is a full-on revolution that's happening there. So again, these are high school students, there are some university people out there, some other citizens and people, but it has escalated. And These these these students are are fighting back. they they are expressing some things over there and it's playing out right now. Right now. they're tired of talking, and this is where things are. So that's the news. Now let's talk about it. You're listening to colored commentary with Dr. Cole. Now listen, like I said, I'm still learning about this. I'm still learning some of the language pieces. And for those that don't know, I do have quite the affinity for France. Well, I like Paris. It's just one of my favorite places that I've been. I think it's a beautiful, beautiful place. And I know that they are rife with their own political issues and turmoil. I think the last time I was there was right as Brexit was happening. There was a lot of terrorism happening in the place. For instance, I was in one of the the the the cathedrals, which are still active churches, like people are still they're actively using these cathedrals, but there's also like this museum kind of feature to so you can kind of walk around and admire things. And I remember being in there, there's like a sermon, there's like all these tourists, and then like I don't know if it's their national guard or their army, but they came in with the rifles. to secure the location. I think a priest was decapitated around that like in that time like either the day before or that day. It it was it was crazy. So France is not new to social unrest and social turmoil. And that was a lot. That was a lot on my trip. This story caught me because I'm so surprised I'm not seeing more about it here in the United States. And maybe it will, but thousands of people have been arrested. Thousands. Like they're in the streets right now. And they're not just marching. They they're not seeing Kumbaya. Like there's some headbusses out there. and they interviewed a few of the young people. And it's it's you know. It's been it's been interesting. Let me actually find a clip. What we're gonna do now, we're gonna listen directly to some of these students, some of these young people. it has been translated. of lost class time, but the latest official figures show that seven percent of teaching hours they were not replaced. We kept quiet for a long time about all the restrictions we faced. Teachers were constantly absent and not replaced. Substitutes that are useless because their specialty is another subject. We just want to save our education and learn because we need it. Plain and simple It's an injustice in other high schools for example, more Privileged ones, the staff they're actually there. And that raises questions about equal opportunity and meritocracy in France. We will put the link in the actual show notes. So you can go and watch this. but honestly, there'll probably be, you know, by the time you get to this you get this, there should probably be a a ton more stories. But these are young people. These are young people in high school. and they talked about they took to the streets. Because their classes have thirty-five thirty to thirty-five kids in them. they have had long-term subs, and they were offended that they are getting these subs. One, they're subs, so there's probably, you know, the classroom isn't very ruly to begin with, but also these deep even these great subs, they're subbing in rooms that they're not specialists in, and these kids are pissed. And they are pissed and they took to the streets. And then you get, you know, a very active college contingent. you get a, you know, there's a lot of things happening in the world right now. there's a lot of things happening in the United States, there's a lot of things happening in France, there's a lot of things happening in Russia, there's a lot, there are a lot of things happening around the world right now. And these young people are are saying that they want to sit and they they're gonna fight for for what they feel they deserve. And I think it's interesting. Again, I'm reserving judgment. it's not my place to really have a criticism on I'm well, I'm still getting data too, right? Like I'm still trying to understand. But here's where this connects here in the United States. And I have led walkouts. I've led walkouts in college. you know, they did not turn violent, but I could there's there's there's a There's a universe where it did. You know, there's somewhere in the multiverse. I could see where it could get, you know, pretty, pretty violent and enraging. And so I just want to riff on these things a little bit. Like I said, I know it's gonna be a shorter episode today, but I want us to be global citizens. I I this education stuff is not just relegated to here in the United States, it's not just relegated to the black neighborhoods or whatnot either. Like I am I focus on what I focus on, but I pay attention to everything. And that's usually where you can kind of find different ways of doing things, right? You gotta take things in stride. What might work there may not work for you. but here you are seeing in real time actual cause and effect, not just talking. And so I I just want us to to reflect on that. My first bullet point that I wrote down for myself was just really paying attention to how other places Respond versus us. Look, man, I am from I I l I am a big civil rights person. I if you if we go to this bookshelf, man, it's it's X, it's King, it's Fannie Lou. You know, it's it's it's it's stories on Emmett it's like Emmettil, it's it's it's Mega Evers, like and I just feel like the way that those people were taken to the streets when things happened, or you know, or or the the strength of Emmett Till's mother, to make these not just political statements, but like really stand on it and be willing to risk life and limb. You know, those when marches were happening then, they just carried a different tinge and and and and things were on the horizon and and like, but there was like a real danger, not just for the black people, for also those allies, right? Like very famously, there was a white, you know, preacher who was murdered protesting. During the civil rights movement. And the way that people were treated during that played a big, big hand, along with, you know, Malcolm X being like, nah, we're not we're not getting down like that. that's King. You you King is doing it that way. You touch me, I'm taking the fingers with me. And then the mashup of that, along with how the country watched those things happen and the unrest. you know, led to things like the Black Panthers, right? That that where they kinda looked up to both of them but leaned more heavily on on on Malcolm and how Malcolm thought. To now, and I've been in my own marches, I've been in my own protests, they they feel different than what I read at times. Like some of those were like I I just I've led some, you know, I've been there. And I think those still had that tinge of like we really want change, but then something happened along the way, right? Like where, you know, you start getting The white ladies and they pink hats and things like that and you know, and no kings. And look, man, I'm not I'm not dumping on those, but they felt more like Like a social media play. You know, they felt more like like like It was just more so being done for the show because for the most part, you know, they were gonna be safe and they were gonna be okay. and I think that a bunch of white women in pink pussy hats will be fine. I don't think that there's an imminent threat to them anywhere commensurate to that of the civil rights movement or even like Trayvon Martin you know, protest. Or George Floyd protest or things like that. I d I I think it became chic. I think and I think that it was kind of done intentionally. I think that's how you kill movements. this is gonna be very random, but this is why you come here for the show, right? For my randomness. I used to love Saved by the Bell. And there was an episode of Say by the Bell. I think the kids were selling these like friendship bracelets. And so, you know, the kids started to compete. And Zach Moore is, you know, he's finally about to lose, right? He's He's losing to the other group of kids. I don't know, I don't know if it was Kelly or whoever. Maybe it was AC Slater. They usually gotta be against each other. So he bows out, right? And then he's like, you know, he he he ends his friendship bracelet business and kind of concedes victory to the other group. And then what he does on his way out is he gives a friendship bracelet to Principal Belding. And in doing so and giving it to Principal Beldon, he instantly killed all cultural affect that the friendship bracelets had, you know, so everybody lost. I think that's kind of what happened with protests. I I think once the principal is involved, once the leader is involved and is sanitized, right? And it represents something else, it it just loses the luster. Well I don't think France was playing by those rules. I think them kids said, you know, they them kids reminisce to their own history. Them them kids had a flashback to let them eat cake. They they dug into their own revolutionary history. And they do have one. It's a lot older than ours. And then I watched this with these young people, and these young people feel that they are being robbed of education. And they are handling it and taking it as a war crime. And in acts of war, when there's a war crime, other factions tend to respond. And the equivalent to what is required when a war crime is committed against you. Now, I am not here saying that our kids need to take to the street and hurt themselves and put themselves in any type of position where they can be hurt, and mothers and fathers are out here crying, and teachers is getting busted upside the head, which means then kids will be getting busted upside the head. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is. We talk about education here like we care about it and we talk about it like it matters and we talk about it as if kids' lives are on the line and the future of our communities are on the line and our social strata, if you're one of those kids, is on the line, but our actions don't follow that. We do a lot of talking in the United States. We do a lot of placating. And again, I am not pushing for violence. I am just simply bringing something to the forefront that is currently happening right now, and the United States has chosen, United States media has chosen to not cover it. I just think it's interesting. And I think it's interesting. I don't see, I haven't seen the left or the right. Now again, by the time this comes out, all this shit could have changed. I am just telling you, when I I I I surf through, I have education fees and I have their local. I have some that are hyperlocal. So I'm always following Oakland and Chicago, because those are the places that I live. My office is still in Oakland, my business is in Oakland, and I live in the Chicago area. But I also look at international. I'm always trying to learn from other places. And so when I was building out the show, I was trying. You know, I think Fox finally picked something up, but you know, that's gonna have its slant. I was looking to see though, right? Well, let's see what Fox and what MSNBC are doing. They're kind of the left and right, you know, hey, we we wear our flags proudly of who we are. I didn't see anything on CNN, but I'm sure there probably is something now. All right. I just think it's interesting. These kids said we're not taking it. They ain't asked nobody for permission, and they were. Deeply, deeply offended to the point of taking to the streets. Very interesting. Two. That leads me to this next bullet point that I have is we got to revisit our own standard. What is the standard? What is the standard that we want in education? What is the standard that we want for our kids and kids, students? Like, this is a show where you it is begging you to talk directly to young people. Because it's like, what are you? What is the standard? Because the standard that I have for myself is I wanted the harder classes. I advocate to get into the harder classes. I busted my ass in the harder classes. I got A's and Bs in those harder classes just to find out that those harder classes weren't harder classes at all. They were hard in the building compared to the rest of the building. But AP English was not the equivalent of college level English. We didn't even teach about a thesis. And this is important that we revisit the standard because if you let mainstream media tell it or right wing media tell it or and and listen, I got smoke for super right wing today and super left wing. I think y'all both fucking things up in a lot of different ways as it pertains to education. That's what I'm gonna finish with. But let me make this point first. Mainstream media would tell you that black kids or black boys or black whatever or brown boys or poor kids whatever they don't want to learn and their parents don't want to learn and this, that, and the third. My parents were very proud that I was in the academy when I was at Emory High School. They were very proud that I was on the honor road. They didn't go to any function without mentioning that their son was on the honor roll, that their son was gonna be a scholar. All four the level of class. So basically the tri the regular classes in that school were super below standard. In the academy classes, because we're talking about tracking again, which is one of the things that they were protesting, but it's a very real thing here in the United States. It was under the national standard, but not as much as the rest of the school. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. I remember saying, you're gonna have to suspend me. I've taken that class before. I need to be in another one. If I gotta get an ass whooping at home, I had to pop, show, you know. I ain't really getting a lot of trouble in high school, but yo, I had a dad. And he didn't really, he he didn't want me getting suspended or getting in trouble. He didn't want to have to come up to that school for whatever. I was willing to take that ass whooping. So I'm this notion of people not wanting to learn or people not wanting the best. We, it's not these kids. It's fucking the adults. What is the standard? Now, are you nervous because you think, well, I don't want to hurt my students' feelings because they're not up to snuff and I need to build their confidence. You build their confidence by teaching them. Is it a deeper problem that maybe a lot of these teachers didn't know that they were not masters of the stuff there on on their own? Well, are we trying to say their feelings too? They get a check. Everybody deserves the truth. And good teachers would have took that, embraced it, and improved. And you would have weeded out people because the ones that did just get mad when being presented with actual data of where they are and how they're performing and what their knowledge base is, they would have weeded themselves out. They would have did you a favor. These kids, these are kids. What what does it do to society when the the when when not listen? Kids are always be weary of adults and their parents. They're always gonna be suspicious of them. Okay? That's a that's that's your right as a kid. It's part of the process. But what happens when they catch you in the lies? What happens when they catch you being lazy? What happens when they catch you taking shortcuts? What happens to that generation that is coming of age, that has lost all trust and respect for the adults in front of them? That's what's happening in France right And I'm gonna come to this. Like I said, it's a this is a sprint episode, you know. I'll I'll take the feedback, but I wanted to get y'all an episode out. So I know, I know, I get it, I understand, but it's for y'all, it's for you. And me, because I need to talk about it. And I don't wanna talk to random people on the plane about it, which I'll probably end up doing because I'm weird like that. You should talk to people. I just think you should. I just don't think we talk to people enough in the world. That's not what the show is about. I'll continue. Listen, I'm gonna end this here because again, I didn't go super deep into the issues just yet because there's still more information coming out. But there might be something, they might be protesting over something that I disagree with, right? I don't know it it doesn't matter, right? Like it does not matter. This is the voice of the people there. The people are speaking. They're speaking with their feet, mouth, and hands. I don't really care how people feel about stuff. What I mean is I'm not throwing them out. I'm just saying I have a right to feel what I feel. You have a right to feel what you feel. You can feel how you want to feel. You can feel how you want about different types of schools. You can feel how you want you know, maybe segregate schools or desegregate schools, or, you know, or traditional or charter public or private what home, whatever. You can f I believe in your right to that. Here's where we can't negotiate. You can feel how you want to feel, but schools have to be honest. They have to be honest. I've been talking about this for over a decade. Stop telling kids they did A-level work when they haven't. And I don't even care about them getting an A, because A's get you in college, baby. I got in the my GPA got me into college. My life is different forever. And I went to a very humble state school. Okay? We don't have a football team, right? Like I like I root for UK. That's the first university I saw as a kid. I love Kentucky basketball. Our football team is now also, you know what I'm saying? Ranked. That is my sch my school avatar, though, because I didn't go to a big college. There's no big homecoming that I need to go to at Cal State fucking Hayward. Love you, Cal State Hayward. Y'all gave me a billboard before. I love you. I will love you forever. I will rep you forever. I fought very hard for you. Right? So I'm not mad if you helping a if you making sure a kid got the grades to get into school, I mean and that could be controversial or whatever. What I'm saying is even if you're doing that, do they know that they behind? Does it take for me to scream at the top of my lungs nine, ten years ago about A through G requirements and why in the hell are A through G requirements in California different from high school graduation requirements? Does it have to be profound when a school in Oakland aligns its graduation requirements with the A through G requirements to get into college? Or Do I have to do studies with students and 500 kids where we're talking to these kids and we're like, yo, you are a 3.83 GPA student, you are a 4.0 student, you are a 4.2 student. Do you think that you're proficient? Eight out of 10 of them think that they are. And then we dive into the data together because we teach them how to read the data. And by the way, they picked it up immediately? Them kids learn how to read data in one section. Not section, session. That was less than 90 minutes. To the point where they started to look up the next schools and the schools around them. And then they looked up the city. And then they looked up the state. And then the nation. And were pissed. The same kids that they're afraid to tell where they at because they think these kids are gonna be so demotivated that they're not gonna do anything or drop out of whatever. These are high achieving kids. These are the kids that want to be there. You always gonna have the people that's like, look, I ain't a school guy, I'ma do this, I wanna work this type of job, or I'm gonna go do this, I'm gonna do this here. Again. Stop letting them put things on our kids and our communities. Stop letting them put things on our parents. Schools have to be honest. Now I know I've been screaming this, but nobody listens or cares until Nicole Hannah Jones writes a beautiful prose of ten years ago and then revisited it twenty year ten years later and you know who said it there too? Her fucking kid. It was her kid. Her kid dictated that standard of saying, this is not good enough. It needs to be better. So you gotta be honest. We can we can argue about a lot of different things. The one thing we can't lie about is that schools can't lie. You're lying to them with the grades. You lying to them about the fiscal issues. You know that that school building's supposed to hold 1500 people, but it only got 205 kids. You know what the law says about this stuff, especially in California. We gotta stop lying. So, as we close this out, and I I'm I'm, man, if I get some a chance, maybe I'll do an extra bonus episode or something, I don't know, from the hotel. I don't know. I'm probably gonna be busy, I might not be able to. and the quality's not gonna be great. But I wanna continue this conversation. And I want you who are watching, you now have a duty, okay? You have a duty to ask two or three additional questions. You have a duty to like, when you start looking at education, to like really dive in and see if they're Doing right by kids, really see like, yo, like these teachers that are doing this, like, who really knows their stuff? Who really got their pedagogy down? What's happening to the kids that really want more? Because I don't believe the other lies. I don't believe that because somebody's black, brown, poor, whatever the case is, that they can't learn. I just don't believe it. I believe that when you have a collection of those kids, that sometimes the collective standard of the adults and the people Mixed with some other things lowers the standards. I believe that. there's just too much evidence. Eras have changed. This is a generation where kids enjoy being smart. This is the information like like this this is they want it. They want that these young people want to be better. Than our people in the civil rights. They they see that, they hear about it, they want to carry that torch. They want to. Yeah, also might want to do some TikTok dances and stuff too, but what I'm saying, but shit, even in some of them dances, well Pythagorean theorem is the thing. Some of them trying to educate you. It's young people shit. I'm not supposed to you know what I'm saying? They ain't gonna be showing us I don't know, man. I I I don't think that I I think the left nor the right really want kids here or communities here seeing what's happening in France. It then becomes the five-minute mile, six-minute mile issue. I'm getting the it wrong, but I'll give you the gist of it, right? Like basically for a long time, you know, nobody can run the mile in six minutes or something like that, right? That's the wrong time, but just go with me. And then one person broke it, and people saw them break it. And then immediately, a bunch more people broke it. I think that's what we're approaching with this France it situation. I think. And I'll end on this. My beef with the extreme left and the extreme right. And that is both of you care more about your ideology, your politics as religion than you do actual people. It becomes clothes that you put on as opposed to s you having a soul that lives within you. When you know the decision before you hear any of the facts. So if you're just super, super extreme left and might be doing well in life or you know, and and and you're insulated in different ways, and just giving really bad advice to people that want to do better and be better, but you got different safety nets. Or now you wanna be oppressed, cause you're tired of seeing these black people, these brown people, these black women, brown women or whatever, you know, benefit from this, right? True oppression Olympic shit. So we gotta delineate some more. Now you and this group of people. In the far, far right. I'm talking about the ones that they just so racist, but have gotten really good at couching that into everything else. The purity people. The souls of people don't matter to you. You want to return the country to a place. Where people were subservient to you. Yeah I mean. I know I'm a left leaning person. I always have been. I'm a black man, yo. Like I I get it. Like I understand. I get it. I look, man. I'm sick of these labels. I'm sick of this shit. I'm sick of people trying to gangbang. That's what the left and the right trying to do. That's what the Democrats and Republicans trying to do. They're trying to be the bloods in the Crips. And fam, you just not good at it. You ain't about the G D life. So how about we get back to being citizens and people and building on the sacrifices that was made for us and learning from other people, learning from France to make sure that that don't happen here. Or maybe just maybe. A revolution might be needed. Done my revolution stuff. I've led my my marches and my my walkouts. Not saying I wouldn't again. But This is a young folks game. And they're coming. They're here. And they're gonna get wind of this. They're gonna get wind of this. A civilization should not. We should not be Fighting our children. The future of our nation. This is me. In two thousand and five. Two thousand and five. That was a special time. And we led, man, hundreds, hundreds of students out for similar reasons. It was changing the name of our school without talking to us. Our fees were not being used the way that we felt like they needed to be used. Our buildings were crumbling. There were just a lot of things that were happening. And we made some change. And it didn't turn violent. But I think we were prepared. So, anyway, I know this is a different type of episode. Keep this in the show, this part right here, Tommy. I want to publicly apologize to Tommy because this is probably a very difficult episode to edit. You know? Kind of all over the place in it. So if any of this made sense and had some type of through line, y'all show Tommy some love in the comments. And I'll keep watching this story. But let's get back to people and let's get back to the promise that we have to fulfill for this next generation. We are supposed to take care of our elderly and raise up our upcoming. I don't think we're doing either very well right now. And that's a problem. I don't want us to have an episode like France is having. But it's staring you in the face. The writing is on the wall. And we're about to find out just how literate we are as a country. You guys have been great. Thank you for listening to Color Commentary. And we'd love to hear from you. So drop us an email at color commentarypod at gmail.com. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show. Leave us a five-star rate share it on social media. And join us every week for more color commentary with Dr. Cole. And I think somebody told me I need to say this. So if you're watching on YouTube, we need you to hype it. Give us the hypes. I don't even know if I qualify for hypes, but but if I'm gonna say it like I do, hype it. And until then, man, until next time. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. All right, y'all. I gotta go. Peace.