France is devouring itself as school riots reveal a crisis far bigger than broken classrooms
Fox News · R · trust 52/100
Video Far-left and Islamist groups are exploiting France's violent school protests, expert warns FDD Special Envoy Simone Rodan-Benzaquen says legitimate student grievances have been hijacked by political movements seeking to fuel unrest and deepen divisions across France.
Student protests over crumbling schools despite billions in public spending are fueling a broader crisis in France, as experts warn that the country's mounting financial troubles, President Emmanuel Macron's weakened political center and radical movements are pushing the unrest far beyond its original educational grievances.
Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' senior envoy for Europe, told Fox News Digital in an interview from Paris that what began in September with legitimate complaints about school conditions has increasingly been exploited by political forces seeking confrontation with the state.
"Overall I'd say the anger is real but the violence I would say is organized," she said, adding that destroying schools would do nothing to improve the education system.
FRANCE-POLITICS-EDUCATION-DEMO A protesting student feeds a burnt barrier during a blockading action outside the secondary school Le Corbusier, in Aubervilliers, northern Paris on October 1, 2026. Since late September, students have staged protests outside schools over grievances ranging from timetables, class sizes and a shortage of teachers to overheated classrooms during this year's heatwaves. The protests started in the Ile-de-France region around Paris but have now spread to other cities nationwide. (Photo by LOU BENOIST / AFP via Getty Images) ( )
Seventy-two percent of education expenditure went toward salaries, social contributions and pensions for teaching and non-teaching personnel, while just 8.5% went toward investment, including infrastructure and equipment. The figures cover the entire education system, not just high schools, according to France's Education Ministry's 2026 statistical overview.
Harvey Feigenbaum, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and an expert on French politics, told Fox News Digital that France's underlying problem is a government caught between expensive social commitments, sluggish economic growth and mounting pressure to cut spending.
"France is in deep debt. It wants to cut its expenses," Feigenbaum said, explaining that years of financial pressure and neglected school facilities have fueled frustration among students.
The scale of the financial predicament is striking. According to Eurostat , French public debt stood at 117.6% of GDP in the first quarter of 2026, the third-highest ratio in the European Union, behind Greece and Italy.
Reuters reported October 8 that rising borrowing costs and investor concerns have severely limited the government's ability to resolve unrest through additional spending, a strategy employed during previous waves of French protests .
The financial squeeze has collided with an increasingly fragmented political system, creating opportunities for parties at both ends of the political spectrum to capitalize on public dissatisfaction.
Protestors gather around the Monument à la République in Place de la République in Paris on Oct. 4, 2026, during nationwide demonstrations against an overcrowded, ill-equipped and understaffed education system. A masked protestor holds a red flag of the Soviet Union with the communist hammer and sickle. (Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)
For Feigenbaum, the long-term roots of the crisis lie in Macron's political legacy.
When Macron won the presidency in 2017, he promised to move beyond France's traditional left-right divide, combining policies from both sides into a new centrist political movement.
But Feigenbaum argues that the strategy produced an unintended consequence: weakening France's established moderate parties without creating a durable governing coalition to replace them.
"What he ended up doing was attracting the moderate voters from the parties of the moderate left and the parties from the moderate right, and essentially destroyed those parties," Feigenbaum said.
He argued that the collapse of the traditional political center helped create space for more ideologically polarized movements. "Macron is a smart man, but he's a terrible politician," the professor added.
Macron's controversial pension reforms illustrate the difficulty of persuading French voters to accept reductions in longstanding public benefits, Feigenbaum argued. Those efforts triggered widespread protests, while implementation of the 2023 retirement changes has since been suspended until 2028.
The situation became especially difficult after Macron called snap parliamentary elections in 2024, producing a deeply divided National Assembly without a governing majority.
"Even if the government wanted to do something coherent, they simply don't have the votes to do it," Feigenbaum said.
That paralysis has left Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu handling the immediate unrest while Macron faces questions about the stability of the political system he helped reshape.
Protesters hold a Palestinian flag on the day French high school and university students attend a demonstration in Strasbourg as part of a nationwide day of protests and blockades, voicing anger over overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and dilapidated school buildings, which students blame on years of underinvestment, France, October 6, 2026. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach ( )
The protests began in the Paris suburbs in September amid complaints about overcrowded classrooms , inadequate heating and cooling, aging buildings and teachers who were not replaced when absent.
Rodan-Benzaquen said the anger reflected years of educational instability, frequent ministerial changes and reforms that have failed to resolve persistent school problems.
She also pointed to a broader sense of anxiety among young people about their economic…
Read the original at Fox News →
Open in TruthVane →