Part deux, as they might say:
Up to 500 schools across France will be partially or totally closed on Monday after clashes between riot police and student protesters in recent days, the French education minister said on Sunday.
Lessons will be "totally or partly suspended" in some "400 to 500" high schools as security conditions "have not been fulfilled", Édouard Geffray said.
He also said 24 schools had been "burned or ransacked" since the start of the protests.
Thousands of students have been demonstrating over education standards and the protests, which started last week, have spread from Paris to other cities, including Montpellier, Nantes and Marseille.
High school pupils and others have objected to a lack of teachers, overcrowded classrooms and run-down buildings.
On Friday, French Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said 735 of France's 3,700 schools had been affected "one way or another" by violent protests.
(Sidebar: not protests.)
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Two weeks ago, students in the impoverished Seine-Saint-Denis area of northern Paris took to the streets to protest dilapidated school buildings, unsanitary conditions (including reports of rat and cockroach infestations), and extreme classroom temperatures ranging from sweltering heat to freezing cold due to poor heating/cooling systems.
(Sidebar: this again?)
Protesters cited acute shortages of teachers and support staff, leading to overcrowded classrooms with up to 35 students per class. Students also campaigned against long, grueling daily timetables (such as mandatory 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. schedules).
The kids were complaining that few resources were given to working-class and poorer districts and that it was going to get worse because the French government was dealing with the reality that it was running out of other people's money to spend.
The protests soon spread across Paris and then into its suburbs. The unrest has now become a national crisis, with more than 3,000 students and others arrested and hundreds injured. ...
"According to Education Minister Édouard Geffray, 65 teaching staff including 40 school heads have been injured. 'Most of the staff who were hurt said that the people they were facing… were not their own pupils,'" reports the BBC. ...
The LFI – La France Insoumise (translated as France Unbowed or France In Revolt) — is a radical left party emphasizing democratic socialism, eco-socialism, anti-austerity, and populist policies. What has the students' and the radical left's panties in a twist is the release last week of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu's draft for next year's budget. It's being referred to as an "austerity" budget because it will cut about $60 billion from a budget of $1.1 trillion.
The package aims to reduce France's budget deficit from an expected 5.4% of GDP down to 5.0%.
The unions and radical left in France are fiercely opposed. As with liberals in the U.S., cutting a dollar from the budget is sacrilegious, and now that the kids are rising in protest, the unions have a ready-made ally to shed blood for them.
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**The problem looming over these riots is that France has a large population of young people who are immigrants or the children/grandchildren of immigrants that are simply not employable. They will not work and employers will not risk hiring them. They are not citizens in any meaningful sense, but an unassimilated third world horde, unemployable and ultimately ungovernable.
— John Daniel Davidson (@johnddavidson) October 5, 2026
🇫🇷 A woman was burned in the face in Marseille after a masked, hooded rioter used an improvised aerosol “flamethrower” against her during the unrest. Follow: @europa https://t.co/jEZE6KMrVP
— Europa.com (@europa) October 2, 2026
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On Thursday in Marseille, a woman told a group of youths to stop wrecking a bus shelter. One of them, masked, turned an aerosol can into a makeshift flamethrower and sprayed fire into her face …
This has nothing to do with education or inequality or funding cuts, and we all know it.
This is a backward crowd of thugs let into the country, given free reign, and allowed to belittle an arrogant yet weak-willed populace.
I'm sure the political parties in France can't find anything wrong with this.
N'importe quoi.
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