Dozens of people detained after government building and two banks set on fire as tens of thousands march over education costs and corruption
Tens of thousands of students have taken to the streets of Tirana, the Albanian capital, setting alight a government building and two banks and hurling stones at police during a protest over rising education costs and corruption.
Police responded with water cannon and teargas to disperse protesters who started a fire at the ministry of education building, overturned bins and smashed the fronts of local businesses. A branch of Raiffeisen Bank near the education ministry also caught fire.
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© Photograph: Florion Goga/Reuters
© Photograph: Florion Goga/Reuters
© Photograph: Florion Goga/Reuters
Is a college educations worth the hassle and expense? Amid concerns over soaring tuition costs and campus political intolerance, a growing share of Americans aren't convinced that higher education is worthwhile. Academics themselves—the honest ones, anyway—acknowledge that they've squandered a lot of goodwill over the years. Fortunately, it's still possible to get an education that justifies the time and money—though the path doesn't necessarily go through college.
"Three in 10 Americans (31%) think a college education is 'very important,' four percentage points below last year's reading, the previous low among the seven times Gallup has asked this question since 1978," the polling firm reported earlier this month. "As recently as 2013, more than twice as many U.S. adults (70%) said college was very important." Gallup adds that "the percentage of U.S. adults who say a college education is 'not too important' has risen from 6% in 2013 to 29% today, while the percentage saying it is 'fairly important' has increased from 23% to 39%."
Higher education plummeted in public esteem for more than one reason. For years, Americans have voiced concern about rising costs and political intolerance on campuses. Last year, even as a Vanderbilt University poll found a slight rebound in favorability toward colleges and universities, the authors noted that "Americans across the political spectrum still are deeply concerned about the affordability of higher education" and "many Americans see political bias in higher education as a serious problem."
The problem was underlined this year when some colleges broke the $100,000 mark in annual costs. "Today, a bachelor's degree at some of America's top schools can cost upward of nearly half a million dollars over four years," reported Business Insider. "And the trend doesn't seem to be slowing down."
Almost at the same time, Vanderbilt released a report warning "there are several worrying tendencies in contemporary academic scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, all of which reflect, to varying degrees, a distinctive form of politicization in which the scholarly enterprise is taken to be subordinate to, or in the service of, political (social or moral) goals beyond the advancement of knowledge and understanding." The goals of this politicization, the study added, "are generally though not exclusively associated with the progressive left."
Unsurprisingly, many Americans balk at paying through the nose so they (or their kids) can spend four years at woke camp. That trepidation undoubtedly contributes to declining college applications at a time when the applicant pool is already shrinking. Many students who do apply to college are applying very modern filters to the schools they'll consider.
"The median student is willing to pay up to $2,617 (12.5%) more to attend a college where the share of students with opposing political views is 10 percentage points lower, suggesting that political identity plays a meaningful role in the college choice process," found a 2025 study from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University which documented "a steady increase in political sorting across American colleges."
This month, a survey from Art & Science Group, a higher education consultancy, found that among college applicants, "the share ruling out colleges solely because of politics in a state rose from 24% in 2023 to 31% in winter 2026 and 34% in summer 2026."
Employers haven't stopped hiring from prestigious colleges and universities. But the definition of "elite" has changed, with some firms leery of traditional Ivy Leagues and preferring southern schools where costs are lower and ideological tolerance still has a place.
Higher education can still be worthwhile for students who apply due diligence to their selection of schools and fields of study. College offers a good return on the investment of time and money for those who choose wisely.
According to the Education Data Initiative, "an average bachelor's degree has a 560.53% lifetime return on investment with a median lifetime return up to 1,040.14%." But not all degrees are equal. "The most cost-efficient bachelor's degree is in management information systems and statistics, with a lifetime ROI of 1,758.59%," while "a Bachelor of Psychology offers the lowest lifetime ROI at -122.78%, representing a $54,188 loss in degree-based earnings (compared to median earnings with a high school diploma)."
The 10 bachelor's degrees with the highest lifetime earnings are an assortment of engineering disciplines, management information systems and statistics, accounting, finance, economics, mathematics, and the like. But return on investment also depends heavily on the cost of the degree; it's more difficult to get your money's worth when you pay top dollar.
Importantly, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields are also the academic disciplines with the least lopsided political balance among professors.
But college is not the only choice for young Americans planning their futures. According to a 2025 Harris survey for the American Staffing Association, more Americans now recommend that graduating high school seniors go to trade school (33 percent) than recommend college (28 percent).
Trade schools cost a fraction of what four-year colleges cost. And they satisfy a growing demand for skilled workers.
"Of the 124 skilled trades occupations, 86 are projected to grow or hold steady, and more than 600,000 net new positions are projected through 2035," the Alliance for Skilled Trades, a coalition of companies that depend on trades people, notes in a recent report. "Employers will need to fill about 1.7 million openings each year."
Note that new positions are opening even as the population of job-market entrants shrinks.
And employers increasingly value experience and in-house training over college degrees of dubious value. Last year, a quarter of employers reported that they were eliminating requirements for bachelor's degrees among new hires.
Higher education still has a role to play. But "education" doesn't have to mean four years of high tuition. It can be a certification program or trade school that launches graduates into a productive life.
After decades of being the default path for many Americans, colleges and universities have alienated people with high prices and intolerant ideological environments. They still have a lot to offer, but now they have to compete with alternatives for the time and money of a skeptical public.
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The NC Department of Public Instruction has a bold goal to boost public school enrollment. So far, there's not been much movement.
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Students from the Agrupamento de Escolas Silves Sul received a hero’s welcome at Faro Airport on Sunday evening after returning from a successful Model United Nations (MUN) conference in Manchester,
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Why bother knowing anything when you can just study yourself? Steven Tucker charts the gloriously fraudulent rise of academic 'Me-Search'.
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Science emerged in Christendom because God was transcendent, not pantheistic. Now materialism reigns as a hidden theology – Epstein-funded, preached by ambiguous atheists.
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There is possibly more than one correct answer to the question of why science emerged in Western Christendom, rather than appearing first in one of the many Eastern societies with formidable technology, or within the fold of Greco-Roman paganism.
The Benedictine epistemologist Stanley Jaki offers a detailed answer that is intrinsic to Christianity: as we read in Christ and Science, the distinguishing factor is that Christians are not prone to falling into pantheism. Among Greco-Roman pagans, the cosmos was called “only-begotten” – a title later assumed by Jesus in Christianity, and only in Christianity. In the world of Aristotle, Western Christendom’s favorite pagan, bodies move of their own volition (fire seeks to rise, earth seeks to sink, etc.), and the Prime Mover is part of nature rather than transcending it. In Judaism and Islam, figures such as Spinoza (beloved in the 20th century by Einstein and Sagan, and in the 21st by Sam Harris) and Averroes (with his universal intellect) demonstrate how easily God can be conflated with nature itself. It was in medieval Christendom that the world came to be conceived as a vast clock with inanimate parts adjusted by an intelligent Creator, whose laws we must discover. This way of thinking about the universe, which we associate today with Newton, is medieval. And this worldview, specific to Christendom, is what made the invention of science possible.
Here in this SCF column, I once ventured a more modest answer of a cultural nature. I wrote that the West has been rationalist since before it was Christian; and this fosters not only the emergence of science but also the willingness to uphold it in the event of a conflict with faith. Sunnis, who constitute the majority of Muslims, saw a form of Quranic literalism put an end to the spectacular flourishing of the sciences during the Middle Ages. Jews, who devoted themselves to the exegesis of religious texts, only became scientists following emancipation and secularization. This cultural characteristic helps explain why science emerged in Western Christendom rather than in the East, given that both the Roman and Greek Churches shared the belief in the only-begotten Jesus. It also helps explain why, following the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Europe did not cling to biblical literalism or to Luther’s diatribes against reason, but instead produced science in dialogue with Catholic Europe. This ultimately shifted the locus of Truth from religion (where each group held its own version) to science (to be accepted by all), paving the way for that recent Western invention known as scientism.
Now, an idea intrinsic to Christianity that I wish to highlight is its absolute intolerance of relativism regarding knowledge. In the pagan world, philosophy and religion were disconnected matters. Plato reflected on the good, the beautiful, and the just without investigating Olympus. Cicero, as a philosopher, wrote against the public soothsayers of the Roman religion; yet, as a politician, he showed no intention of altering state religious practices or inventing secularism. Even Aristotle, who wrote on every conceivable discipline, did not write about Zeus, Hera, or Athena. He did create a “theology,” but it referred not to the gods, but rather to the Prime Mover. Zeus, Hera, and Athena were not the objects of any discipline.
It was during the Middle Ages that the Catholic Church invented the university with the aim of studying the universum – that is, everything: metaphysics, physics, politics, theology… Knowledge was organized cohesively, based on the presumption of an objective reality. Thus, physics could not teach something that contradicted theology, and vice versa. (Although the Galileo affair stemmed from the Aristotelianism embraced by the Church through Thomas Aquinas, rather than from a literal reading of the Bible.) This cohesion might seem obvious, yet today the discipline of physics claims that glass is a liquid, while the discipline of chemistry claims that glass is a solid. And that is not even the greatest problem: who would dare ask a university for an unequivocal definition of “man” or “human”? In practice, relativism reigns in the university – and did so even before the postmodernists took over everything.
This fragmentation of knowledge originated in the scientific model that emerged during the Renaissance. Outside the universities, humanists sought out ancient texts that medieval Catholics had discarded, such as De rerum natura by the materialist and Epicurean Lucretius. Since antiquity conferred authority in those days, the occult tradition formed by the fusion of Hermeticism and Kabbalah enjoyed particular credibility among the learned class. Hermeticism derives from Hermes Trismegistus, whom Renaissance thinkers believed to be the teacher of Moses, Plato, and Pythagoras, though in reality, he was a fictional figure dating from slightly after the time of Christ. An etymological trace of Hermeticism’s importance to science is the adjective “hermetic,” used by alchemists to describe their tightly sealed vessels. As for Kabbalah, it stems from a religion that predated Christianity – which is enough for it to be regarded as ancient, even though its principal text, the Zohar, originated in medieval Spain. As I have argued in greater detail here, Renaissance occultism influenced modern science and is responsible for its utilitarian bias. If individual disciplines decide that a certain concept “works,” contradictions between them pose no problem; what matters is not knowledge itself, but practical utility. It is a science inspired by the methods of the sorcerer, who consults ancient books and tests spells to see which ones work.
Thus, the status quo of knowledge within universities is one of practical relativism, resulting from the institution’s lack of a unified vision. On an individual level, however, it is humanly impossible to conduct science without a coherent worldview – even if that worldview is constructed a posteriori based on the “spells” that proved effective, much like the alchemists of the Renaissance. Today, it is quite clear that the scientific mainstream is atheist, but that tells us little. It would be more accurate to say that the mainstream is materialist.
The nineteenth century was the century in which materialism became consolidated within science. It was the century of Darwin’s triumph – Darwin being the first (and perhaps only) great scientist in history that was unequivocally atheist. Before Darwin, the prevailing worldview was the medieval one of God as the “watchmaker,” or of nature as a book written by God in the language of mathematics (to use Galileo’s metaphor). Alternative worldviews began to emerge during the Renaissance. By the Enlightenment, this movement had taken the forms of deism and materialism – concepts that are not mutually exclusive. Deism is the idea that God exists but is indifferent to humanity. This is a very vague notion, as it encompasses the possibilities that: (1) God is a distant architect (as for Voltaire, a “creationist” and admirer of Newton); (2) God is matter itself, or the universe itself (pantheism); or (3) gods exist but are made of atoms, just like the rest of nature – a view found in De Rerum Natura that results in practical atheism. Since this conception of God is psychologically difficult to sustain, it is hardly surprising that, by the nineteenth century, the public face of materialism had become that of atheism.
Even so, as I have shown here on SCF, only one of the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism (Richard Dawkins) is unequivocally an atheist. The other three (Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens) are adherents of either a psychedelic New Age philosophy, Judaism, or both. Sagan was another atheist with this ambiguous profile.
I believe, then, that it is useful to distinguish between these two opposing scientific worldviews: one, which gave rise to science, is that of the transcendent God who acts as the cosmos’s engineer; then there is the materialist view, according to which everything that exists is matter moving randomly, generating at times chaos and at others order. Within this latter framework, one can be an unequivocal atheist – like Dawkins today or Baron d’Holbach in the 18th century – or a New Age type like Sam Harris. Matter itself can also be divinized by crystal-obsessed wine moms and potheads. An ambiguous figure is none other than Epstein; this patron was a Jew religious enough to want to create a GMO kosher pig so he could eat bacon, yet he simultaneously funded Sam Harris’s atheist club. As I have shown here, Epstein was such a committed materialist that he sought to identify the specific part of the brain corresponding to the soul.
One final intrinsic trait of Christianity worth mentioning is its exotericism – that is, its public, non-initiate nature. This characteristic is reflected in universities and libraries: the entire repository of knowledge is open to anyone wishing to study. In the case of materialism, England has maintained a solid tradition of private and secretive scientific societies, often with commercial aims, dating back to the 18th-century Lunar Society. This aligns with the esotericism of the Renaissance. Furthermore, in the 21st century, the Epstein files brought to light discreet societies of materialists, such as the one involving Sam Harris that was funded by the pedophile.
Given that the pedophile also funded university research, it is plausible that this materialism – bordering on both pantheism and atheism – constitutes a hidden “theology”: one that is always presupposed in contemporary science yet never made explicit to the uninitiated.
A ciência nasceu do Deus engenheiro cristão. Hoje, o materialismo ateu domina as universidades, mas mantém sociedades secretas e ambíguas.
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Possivelmente, há mais de uma resposta correta à pergunta de por que a ciência surgiu na cristandade ocidental, em vez de ter aparecido primeiro numa das muitas sociedades orientais com tecnologia formidável, ou no seio do paganismo greco-romano.
O epistemólogo beneditino Stanley Jaki tem uma resposta detalhista e intrínseca ao próprio cristianismo: segundo lemos em Christ and Science, o diferencial é os cristãos não serem propensos a cair no panteísmo. Entre os pagãos greco-romanos, o cosmos era chamado de “unigênito”, título assumido depois por Jesus no cristianismo, e somente no cristianismo. No mundo de Aristóteles, o pagão predileto da cristandade ocidental, os corpos se movem por vontade própria (o fogo quer subir, a terra quer afundar etc.), e o Primeiro Motor é parte da natureza, em vez de transcendê-la. No judaísmo e no islamismo, as figuras de Spinoza (amado no s. XX por Einstein e Sagan, e no XXI por Sam Harris) e de Averróis (com seu intelecto universal) mostram que é fácil confundir Deus com a própria natureza. É na cristandade medieval que o mundo passa a ser concebido à maneira de um grande relógio com as peças inanimadas ajustadas por um Criador inteligente, cujas leis devemos descobrir. Esse estilo de pensar o universo, que hoje associamos a Newton, é medieval. E essa cosmovisão, específica da cristandade, é o que possibilitou a invenção da ciência.
Aqui nesta SCF, cheguei a aventar uma resposta mais modesta, de natureza cultural. Escrevi que Ocidente é racionalista desde antes de ser cristão; e isso favorece não só o surgimento da ciência, como a disposição para mantê-la em caso de conflito com a fé. Os sunitas, que são a maioria dos muçulmanos, viram uma espécie de literalismo corânico acabar com o espetacular florescimento das ciências na Idade Média. Já os judeus, que se entregavam à exegese de textos religiosos, só se tornaram cientistas com a emancipação e a laicização. Essa característica cultural ajuda a explicar por que a Ciência surgiu na cristandade ocidental, em vez da oriental, já que tanto a Igreja Romana quanto a Grega compartilham a crença no unigênito Jesus. Isso também ajuda a explicar por que, quando a Reforma protestante aconteceu, a Europa protestante não se apegou ao literalismo bíblico, nem às invectivas de Lutero contra a razão, e produziu ciência em diálogo com a Europa católica. Isso acabou deslocando a Verdade da religião (que cada uma tinha a sua) para a ciência (a ser aceita por todos), criando terreno para essa invenção recente ocidental chamada cientificismo.
Agora, uma ideia intrínseca ao cristianismo que eu queria apontar é a absoluta intolerância ao relativismo no conhecimento. No mundo pagão, filosofia e religião eram assuntos desconectados. Platão refletia sobre o bom, o belo e o justo sem investigar o Olimpo. Cícero, enquanto filósofo, escrevia contra os adivinhos públicos da religião romana; mas, enquanto político, não esboçava nenhuma intenção de alterar as práticas da religião de Estado, nem de inventar o laicismo. Nem mesmo Aristóteles, que escrevia sobre todas as disciplinas concebíveis, escrevia sobre Zeus, Hera ou Atena. Ele até criou uma “teologia”, mas não se referia aos deuses e sim ao Primeiro Motor. Zeus, Hera e Atena não eram objeto de uma disciplina.
Foi na Idade Média que a Igreja Católica inventou a universidade com a intenção de estudar o universum, isto é, tudo: metafísica, física, política, teologia… O conhecimento estava ordenado de modo coeso, presumindo uma realidade objetiva. Assim, a física não podia ensinar uma coisa que estivesse em contradição com a teologia, e vice-versa. (Embora o problema de Galilei se deva ao aristotelismo abraçado pela Igreja via Tomás de Aquino, e não a uma leitura literal da Bíblia.) Essa coesão pode parecer óbvia, mas nos dias de hoje a disciplina “física” diz que o vidro é líquido, enquanto a disciplina “química” diz que o vidro é sólido. E esse nem é o maior dos problemas: quem se atreveria a pedir uma definição unívoca de “homem” ou “humano” a uma universidade? Na prática, o relativismo impera na universidade mesmo antes de os pós-modernos tomarem conta de tudo.
Essa fragmentação do conhecimento teve origem no modelo de ciência surgido na Renascença. Fora das universidades, os humanistas buscavam os textos antigos que os católicos medievais haviam descartado, como o De rerum natura, do materialista e epicurista Lucrécio. Como naquela época a antiguidade conferia autoridade, o ocultismo formado pela fusão entre o hermetismo e a cabala gozou de especial credibilidade entre os letrados de modo geral. O hermetismo vem de Hermes Trismegistos, que os renascentistas acreditavam ser o professor de Moisés, Platão e Pitágoras – mas na verdade era uma ficção um pouco mais nova que Cristo. Um vestígio etimológico da importância do hermetismo para a ciência é o adjetivo “hermético”, usado pelos alquimistas com seus potes muito bem fechados. Quanto à cabala, ela vem da religião que precedeu o cristianismo e isso basta para ser entendida como muito antiga – mesmo que seu principal texto, o Zohar, seja da Espanha medieval. Conforme argumentei em maior detalhe aqui, o ocultismo da Renascença influenciou a ciência moderna, e é responsável pelo seu viés utilitarista. Se cada disciplina decidir que um determinado conceito “funciona” e houver contradição entre elas, não há problema, pois o que interessa não é o conhecimento, mas sim o caráter prático. É uma ciência inspirada no procedimento do feiticeiro, que fica consultando livros antigos e testando feitiços para descobrir se funcionam.
Digamos então que o status quo do conhecimento nas universidades é um relativismo prático decorrente da falta de uma visão unitária por parte da instituição. No âmbito individual, porém, é humanamente impossível fazer ciência sem uma cosmovisão coerente – nem que seja uma elaborada a posteriori com base nos “feitiços” que funcionaram, à maneira dos alquimistas na Renascença. Hoje, está muito claro que o mainstream científico é ateu, mas isso é pouco informativo. Seria mais preciso dizer que o mainstream é materialista.
O século XIX é o século da consolidação do materialismo na ciência. É o século do triunfo de Darwin, o primeiro (e talvez único) grande cientista inequivocamente ateu da História. Antes de Darwin, predominava a cosmovisão medieval do Deus relojoeiro, ou da natureza como o livro escrito em linguagem matemática por Deus (para usar a metáfora de Galileu). Na Renascença, vão despontando cosmovisões alternativas. No Iluminismo, essa movimentação ganha as formas do deísmo e do materialismo, que não são mutuamente excludentes. O deísmo é a ideia de que Deus existe, porém não se importa com a humanidade. Essa é uma ideia muito vaga, pois compreende as possibilidades de (1) Deus ser um arquiteto distante (como para Voltaire, um “criacionista” entusiasta de Newton); (2) Deus ser a própria matéria, ou o próprio universo (panteísmo); (3) os deuses existirem e serem feitos de átomo como o resto da natureza – opinião que consta no De rerum natura e resulta num ateísmo prático. Como esta concepção de Deus é psicologicamente difícil de sustentar, não é de admirar que, no século XIX, a feição pública do materialismo já tenha sido a do ateísmo.
Ainda assim, como mostrei aqui na SCF, só um dos “quatro cavaleiros” do neoateísmo (Richard Dawkins) é inequivocamente ateu. Os outros três (Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett e Christopher Hitchens) são adeptos ou de um New Age lisérgico, ou do judaísmo, ou das duas coisas. Sagan era outro ateu com esse perfil ambíguo.
Creio então ser útil discriminar essas duas cosmovisões científicas opostas: uma, originadora da ciência, é a do Deus transcendente engenheiro do cosmos; outra, a do materialismo, segundo o qual tudo o que existe é matéria a movimentar-se de maneira aleatória, gerando ora caos, ora ordem. É possível, dentro desta última, ser um ateu inequívoco como Dawkins hoje ou Barão d’Holbach no XVIII; e é possível também ser um New Age como Sam Harris. A matéria é, também ela, divinizável por parte de peruas dos cristais e maconheiros. E uma figura ambígua é ninguém menos do que Epstein, já que esse mecenas era um judeu religioso o bastante para querer criar um porco kosher GMO a fim de comer bacon, mas ao mesmo tempo financiava o clube de ateus de Sam Harris. Tal como mostrei aqui, Epstein era adepto do materialismo a ponto de querer identificar a parte do cérebro que corresponde à alma.
Um último traço intrínseco do cristianismo que vale mencionar é o seu exoterismo, isto é, o seu caráter público e não iniciático. Essa característica se reflete na universidade e nas bibliotecas: todo o repositório de conhecimento está público para aquele que quiser estudar. No caso do materialismo, desde o XVIII a Inglaterra tem na Lunar Society uma tradição sólida de sociedades científicas privadas e secretas, amiúde com finalidade comercial. Isso também está de acordo com o esoterismo da Renascença. E no século XXI, os Arquivos Epstein trouxeram à tona sociedades discretas de materialistas, tais como a de Sam Harris financiada pelo pedófilo.
Dado que o pedófilo também financiava pesquisas na universidade, é plausível que esse materialismo limítrofe entre o panteísmo e o ateísmo seja uma “teologia” oculta, sempre presumida na ciência atual, porém nunca explicitada para os não iniciados.
Thousands of children and teenagers with special educational needs are at risk of losing specialist support, as Inclusion Resource Centres (CRI) are still unaware of the level of funding for
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French police arrested 504 people and reported 48 officers injured during nationwide student demonstrations on Thursday, 8 October, as violent confrontations broke out in central Paris and incidents were reported at schools and police facilities elsewhere in the country.
According to figures released by the French Interior Ministry, approximately 71,500 people participated in demonstrations, including 24,500 in Paris. Around 55,000 people were also reported to have taken part in actions outside educational establishments, although those figures may overlap with attendance at the larger demonstrations.
The latest unrest follows protests by secondary school pupils demanding more teachers, better-maintained buildings and smaller classes. The demonstrations have attracted attention beyond the schools themselves, while the government’s response has been complicated by disagreements over policing and public spending.
The most serious confrontations on Thursday occurred around Place de la Bastille in Paris, where several thousand demonstrators gathered. Police used water cannon and tear gas after groups of protesters began throwing stones, fireworks and other objects towards officers.
According to the Paris police prefecture, approximately 20 individuals dressed in black, identified by the authorities as members of the so-called black bloc, threw pieces of street furniture at police positions. Officers also reported that fragments of chimney masonry were thrown from the roof of a nearby building.
Video footage circulating on social media showed young demonstrators throwing objects at police, who advanced to disperse the crowds. The clashes formed part of a wider national mobilisation, with marches and school protests taking place across the country.
The Interior Ministry condemned the violence and defended the actions of security forces. It described attacks on public buildings and police officers as separate from the peaceful demonstrations organised by pupils.
Several incidents were reported at schools and public buildings beyond Paris, including attacks on teaching staff and school administrators. In Poitiers, a fire broke out overnight on the grounds of a secondary school and spread to a teacher’s vehicle. In Saint-Étienne, several dozen individuals entered a school and vandalised its canteen. In Bayonne, windows were smashed at the home of a school security employee, while teachers were targeted with fireworks.
In Toulouse, a headteacher was reportedly assaulted by an adult participating in the demonstrations, while in Saint-Chamond, a deputy headteacher suffered facial burns after being struck by a pyrotechnic device.
Other incidents included a police vehicle being set alight in Strasbourg, damage to a police building in La Rochelle and an attempted arson attack on a police station in Bordeaux. The incidents added to concerns about violence accompanying the protests, although there was no indication that most demonstrators were involved in attacks.
Thursday’s 504 arrests followed 488 detentions reported during demonstrations on Tuesday, 6 October. The recurring confrontations have led to scrutiny of police tactics as well as the actions of violent groups attending demonstrations.
Student representatives have raised complaints about shortages of teaching staff, disruption caused by absent teachers, classroom conditions and school facilities. Their mobilisation has placed new demands on a government already facing budgetary pressures.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu attempted to ease tensions on Wednesday, 7 October, promising that the government would present measures responding to the complaints raised by secondary school pupils before the end of the month.
The government must address demands for additional education resources while managing France’s wider public spending commitments. Further demonstrations would maintain pressure on ministers to produce detailed proposals and clarify how they would be funded.
Thursday’s disturbances have also increased attention on security around schools and the protection of teachers and administrators. The immediate challenge for the authorities is to prevent further attacks while allowing peaceful demonstrations to continue.
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Two-weeks long protests by French high-school students demanding better education conditions risk getting more heated due to the French government’s lack of response.
For his part, French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu told parliament on Wednesday (7 October) the first proposals on education reform would be published at the end of the month.
He spoke after 250,000 demonstrators took to the streets across the country on Tuesday (6 October), according to interior ministry fiigures.
But the High School Student Union (Union Syndicaire Lycéenne, USL) said the number was as high as 450,000, including solidarity protests in most universities.
Pupils, joined by parents, teachers, and labour unions, want an end to teacher shortages and urgent renovations of run-down school buildings.
“Today, the balance of power is in our favour,” said Marius Mesnil, the USL’s co-general secretary, on Monday.
The secondary school teachers’ union (Syndicat National des Enseignements de Secondaire, SNES) also called Lecornu’s inaction “unacceptable.”
Some 715 police officers, 215 students and 85 school staff members have been injured during the protests, with 18 internal probes were launched to investigate police brutality since 21 September, when the movement first erupted, after being sparked by a teachers’ protest.
A school in Nantes, in the west of the country, was set on fire, and protesters regularly light trash bins and make barricades in city centres.
The minister of interior has suspended the use of stun grenades after a 15-year-old’s hand was blown off in a violent confrontation with police on Monday.
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Find the full transcript below:
France has been seeing growing protests by high school and university students in recent weeks.
The movement is continuing today with a fourth day of mobilisation. According to the government, the far-left opposition party is fuelling the protests. For Donald Trump, the movement is the result of mass migration and the presence of Islam.
But what are young people actually protesting about? High school students’ anger has been building for some time. One of the tipping points came in June, when temperatures inside many schools rose above 35 degrees. Many classrooms had no fans, let alone air conditioning.
And this happened in buildings that were already often in poor condition. Add to that the fact that absent teachers are frequently not replaced. The result was what you might call a general overheating — both literally and politically.
The government, meanwhile, has accused the left-wing party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, or LFI) of fuelling the protests. Some commentators have even suggested that the movement was orchestrated by the party from the beginning.
There is little doubt that LFI is supporting the mobilisation and may be trying to benefit politically from it. But dismissing the protests as political manipulation risks ignoring problems that are well documented.
As sociologist and child psychiatrist Laelia Benoit recently told Le Monde, assuming that high school students cannot think for themselves and must necessarily be manipulated by adults or political parties is, in her words, a way of denying them their ability to act politically.
And many of their demands are supported by both parents and teachers. Teachers, for example, have long complained about the lack of replacements when they are absent.
This is supported by the latest PISA report on France: 87% of French students — as well as school principals — said their school’s capacity to teach was affected by a lack of teachers.
So young people are increasingly asking to be heard. Earlier this week, they put forward their demands, resulting in 10 concrete measures supported by both high school and university students.
Among other things, they are calling for a major programme to renovate schools, more staff, a guaranteed €1 meal at university canteens, and higher housing benefits and grants so that students can live with dignity.
So what is the government offering in response? France has opened an online platform in recent days where students can submit their demands. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said yesterday that the platform had already received more than 40,000 contributions.
So for now, the government’s message is essentially: go back to class and submit your demands online. The prime minister then pointed to the additional €1 billion he has proposed for the education budget next year.
And as for more immediate measures, he announced five areas of work that should begin at the end of October. They include tackling teacher replacements, improving schools’ material conditions, reorganising school timetables, reforming the university admissions platform which appears to be a nightmare, and thinking about how to give high school students a greater voice.
Let’s see if that is enough to ease the protests.
For Oakland Review of Books, Stephanie Uchino-Beach writes about getting laid off at an education tech company that transformed into an “AI-first outfit.” As as customer success manager, she acted as a liaison to district administrators, school principals, and teachers. While AI could automate some of her tasks, what about the core responsibilities of her CSM role: building real relationships and understanding an educator’s needs? An AI sees data points, not people. This is a sobering read from a former tech worker living in the Bay Area, and an edtech company that has gone all in on AI and forgotten about its mission.
Before I went to work for Silicon Valley, I was a lot of things. A few jobs before this last one, I was an elementary school teacher in Chicago, helping kids learn to read, creating units, planning lessons, and buying supplies with my own money on the weekends, like countless other teachers around the country. I grew up on the Peninsula, and I made the move into Customer Success to get a job that would let me move home. Tech was never my dream; it was a means to an end. My dad studied computer science and still works in tech to this day and enjoys it, so it seemed like a satisfying and fruitful career was plausible. I figured that once I broke in, all my problems would be solved: I could get a house, have a kid, and fulfill every middle-class dream that had always felt slightly out of reach for a millennial like myself.
And yet, job after job, I consistently left feeling unsatisfied. Unsatisfied by how I wasn’t growing and wasn’t developing my skills. Unsatisfied with poor managers who were just in the right place at the right time to be promoted but so often lacked the skills to provide the same success for their employees. Unsatisfied with how the products I worked on could do wrong by the communities we sold them to, even though every company said they were “mission-driven” and “put our customers first.”
The crisis of school placements – already having seen several schools increase class sizes beyond recommended numbers – continues, with another 380 “late enrollment requests” received in certain areas, the
The post Further pressure on over-full state schools: 380 ‘new’ pupils request places appeared first on Portugal Resident.
LA NEWSLETTER · GRATUITE
L'essentiel de l'actualité, passé au crible par les cinq plumes du Courrier. Dans votre boîte, chaque jour ouvré.
Gratuit. Vous restez libre de partir quand vous voulez.
JE M'INSCRIS lecourrierdesstrateges.frSoixante et un euros. C'est ce que le fisc accorde chaque année aux parents d'un collégien, au titre des « frais de scolarité ». Cent cinquante-trois euros pour un lycéen. Encore faut-il payer l'impôt sur le revenu : 46 % des foyers seulement sont dans ce cas. Les autres n'ont rien.
La même année, la France dépense 10 580 euros pour ce collégien, et 13 200 pour un lycéen de la voie générale. L'essentiel est payé par l'État et les collectivités. Sur cette somme, ses parents ne décident de rien : ni de l'établissement, que leur adresse désigne, ni des professeurs, qu'un barème affecte, ni du programme, qu'un bureau rédige. Soixante et un euros sur 10 580 : à peine plus d'un demi pour cent. C'est la part exacte de confiance que le pays leur fait.
Gardez ces deux chiffres en tête. Ils expliquent mieux les lycées bloqués que tout ce qu'on entend depuis quinze jours.
ABONNEMENT
Deux grands formats par jour. Les cinq plumes du Courrier. La série Sécession, le dimanche.
Le monde commente. Vous, vous comprenez.
S'ABONNER lecourrierdesstrateges.frLe mouvement est parti le 21 septembre d'un lycée de Créteil. Dix jours plus tard, on comptait près de mille actions en une journée et environ quatre cents établissements fermés. Matignon a trouvé l'explication : une « manœuvre organisée par LFI et ses proxys de l'ultragauche ». Bruno Retailleau a renchéri : « Il y a cette jeunesse qui s'engage, qui veut éteindre le feu, et une jeunesse qui veut mettre le feu. » Philippe de Villiers, dans le Journal du Dimanche, a compté deux jeunesses lui aussi.
Entendons-nous sur les violences. Elles sont réelles, et rien ne les excuse : vingt-quatre établissements « incendiés ou saccagés », selon le ministre de l'Éducation, une centaine dégradés sévèrement, des proviseurs blessés. Mais comptez dans l'autre sens. La France a 3 700 lycées. Le ministre dénombre 735 établissements touchés par le mouvement. Restent, au bas mot, près de trois mille lycées où il ne s'est rien passé, et quelque six cents où l'on a bloqué sans dégât sérieux. Vingt-quatre sur 3 700 : moins d'un pour cent. Ce sont ceux-là qu'on nous montre depuis quinze jours, et l'on en tire le portrait d'une génération.
Que La France insoumise souffle sur les braises, je le crois volontiers, et 61 % des Français jugent qu'elle n'est pas dans son rôle. Mais souffler n'est pas allumer. Aucun parti n'a les moyens de fermer quatre cents lycées dans un pays où les élèves seraient contents d'y entrer. Le même sondage dit que 62 % des Français trouvent la mobilisation justifiée, et que les deux tiers ne se sentent proches ni de LFI ni du gouvernement.
Expliquer une colère par ceux qui l'exploitent, c'est une théorie du complot comme une autre. Elle a le même usage que les autres : elle dispense de regarder. Regardons donc.
Pour ses écoles, ses collèges et ses lycées, la France a dépensé 131,6 milliards d'euros en 2024, tous payeurs confondus. La dépense par élève du secondaire a augmenté de 70 % depuis 1980, en euros constants. Dans le même temps, les élèves français ont obtenu 458 points en mathématiques à l'enquête PISA 2025, trente-sept de moins qu'en 2018. Au collège public, une heure de cours sur dix n'est pas assurée, écrit la Cour des comptes. L'argent monte, le niveau descend, et les heures manquent.
Cet argent, où va-t-il ? L'éducation prioritaire coûte 2,6 milliards par an, deux fois et demie plus qu'en 2014. La Cour des comptes a constaté que 70 % des élèves défavorisés sont scolarisés ailleurs, et que la carte n'a pratiquement pas été revue depuis dix ans. Quant à savoir quel collège accueille quel public, le ministère le savait et le gardait pour lui. Il a fallu qu'un journaliste aille devant le tribunal administratif, en 2022, pour qu'il publie l'indice social de chaque établissement. Il refusait de crainte « qu'il ne serve d'outil au contournement de la carte scolaire ».
Reste la manière d'enseigner. Selon l'enquête TALIS de l'OCDE, 53 % des professeurs débutants jugent en France leur formation adaptée, contre 75 % en moyenne dans les pays comparables. On envoie devant des adolescents de 2026 des gens qu'on n'a pas préparés, puis l'on s'étonne.
Des moyens qui montent, des résultats qui tombent, un argent distribué à l'aveugle, des professeurs laissés seuls. Les lycéens n'ont pas eu besoin de Jean-Luc Mélenchon pour s'en apercevoir. Ils y passent leurs journées.
TELEGRAM · L'INFO EN CONTINU
La newsletter vous donne le matin. Le fil vous donne l'instant.
Gratuit, et en continu.
REJOINDRE LE FIL t.me/resterlibreCes trois défauts n'en font qu'un, et Friedrich Hayek lui a donné un nom en 1988 : la présomption fatale. C'est l'idée qu'un petit nombre de gens instruits, réunis dans un bureau, en savent assez pour organiser la vie de millions d'autres mieux que ceux-ci ne le feraient eux-mêmes.
Hayek ne dit pas que ces gens sont sots. Il dit qu'ils ne peuvent pas savoir. Ce qu'il faut connaître pour éduquer un enfant n'est écrit nulle part : que celui-ci s'ennuie et que celui-là se noie, que ce professeur de mathématiques est remarquable et que cet autre est absent depuis novembre, que dans ce quartier il manque un lycée professionnel et dans ce bourg une classe bilingue. Cette connaissance existe. Elle est dans la tête des parents, des élèves, des professeurs, d'un proviseur. Elle ne remonte dans aucun tableau de la rue de Grenelle, ou alors dix ans trop tard : voyez la carte de l'éducation prioritaire.
Relisez maintenant l'affaire de l'indice social. Le ministère détenait une information utile aux familles, et il l'a cachée pour qu'elles ne s'en servent pas. Tout y est. L'administration ne se contente pas d'ignorer ce que savent les parents. Elle leur retire ce qu'elle sait, de peur qu'ils choisissent.
À le bien regarder, nous avons bâti l'école sur une hypothèse que personne n'oserait écrire : un rédacteur de circulaire connaîtrait mieux votre fils que vous. Sept ministres se sont succédé rue de Grenelle depuis mai 2022. Chacun est arrivé avec sa réforme, et aucun n'a touché à la règle du jeu, puisque la règle du jeu est justement qu'on décide d'en haut. On ne corrige pas une présomption en changeant le présomptueux.
L'autre voie, Hayek l'appelait l'ordre spontané : laisser décider ceux qui savent, et laisser l'offre se former autour de leurs décisions. Des écoles qui ouvrent parce que des familles en veulent. Des écoles qui ferment parce qu'elles n'en veulent plus. Personne ne l'a planifié, et c'est pour cela que ça s'ajuste.
Tout repose sur un constat d'une grande banalité : dans leur immense majorité, les parents veulent le bien de leur enfant. Pas tous, pas toujours avec discernement, mais plus sûrement et plus obstinément qu'aucune administration. Un recteur change de poste ; un père reste père.
Ils savent d'ailleurs très bien ce qui ne va pas. Interrogés par l'Ifop pour le Comité national d'action laïque, qui défend l'école publique, 93 % des parents jugent urgent d'y améliorer la sécurité et la discipline, et 88 % la qualité de l'enseignement. On ne leur demande pas leur avis. On leur attribue une adresse.
Le chèque scolaire retourne le circuit. Aujourd'hui l'État finance des établissements et y affecte des enfants. Demain il financerait des enfants, et les établissements viendraient les chercher.
Concrètement : on cesse de subventionner les écoles, et chaque famille reçoit pour chaque enfant un crédit d'impôt égal à la subvention moyenne par élève de l'année scolaire concernée. Un crédit d'impôt, et non une réduction comme les 61 euros d'aujourd'hui : ceux qui ne paient pas l'impôt sur le revenu, plus d'un foyer sur deux, le touchent quand même, et pour la même somme. Fléché, bien entendu : il ne règle qu'une inscription, dans l'école publique ou privée que les parents ont choisie. Et versé directement à l'établissement, comme l'Urssaf avance déjà le crédit d'impôt des emplois à domicile, pour que personne n'ait à sortir une pareille somme de sa poche.
Ce n'est pas une rêverie. La Suède le pratique depuis 1992 : la commune verse la même somme par élève à l'école municipale et à l'école indépendante, celle-ci est gratuite et ouverte à tous, et près d'un lycéen sur trois y est aujourd'hui inscrit. Les Pays-Bas financent à égalité écoles publiques et écoles privées depuis 1917, et les trois quarts des élèves y fréquentent une école privée.
Je ne vends pas un remède miracle. La Suède se dispute depuis des années sur ses écoles indépendantes : notes gonflées pour attirer les familles, élèves qui se regroupent par milieu, et une partie de la presse française y voit un « anti-modèle ». Les syndicats d'enseignants objectent que l'école privée choisit ses élèves quand l'école publique les prend tous, et que le chèque ferait de celle-ci l'école de ceux dont personne ne veut. Ils désignent ainsi la règle qu'il faut écrire : une école qui encaisse le chèque ne trie pas à l'entrée.
Reste le supplément qu'elle pourrait réclamer en plus du chèque. La question se dispute. La Suède l'interdit. On peut aussi l'admettre, à condition que l'État ajoute au chèque des enfants pauvres une subvention de discrimination positive, pour que le prix ne leur ferme aucune porte. Les 2,6 milliards de l'éducation prioritaire, qui manquent aujourd'hui sept élèves défavorisés sur dix, suivraient alors l'enfant et non la carte.
Il y a aussi ce que le chèque ne peut pas faire. Dans un bourg qui n'a qu'une école, le choix reste sur le papier, au moins les premières années. Un parent qui ne s'occupe pas de son enfant ne s'en occupera pas davantage avec un crédit d'impôt, et pour celui-là l'État garde tout son rôle : l'obligation scolaire, l'inspection, l'examen national qui dit ce que l'élève sait. Et l'opinion n'est pas acquise. Dans le sondage que je citais, 60 % des parents voudraient que le privé soit payé par les seules familles. J'imagine qu'ils répondraient autrement si le chèque était dans leur poche et non dans celle du voisin. Je n'en ai pas la preuve.
Mais regardez ce qu'il change, et qu'aucune réforme n'a changé. Aujourd'hui, un collège où une heure sur dix n'est pas assurée ne perd pas un euro. Les familles n'ont aucun moyen de le lui faire savoir, sinon déménager ou payer deux fois, l'impôt puis l'école privée. Avec le chèque, l'établissement que les parents quittent perd ses moyens, celui qu'ils demandent en gagne, et le ministère l'apprend le jour même, sans rapport de la Cour des comptes, sans tribunal administratif, sans blocus.
L'information que la rue de Grenelle cachait aux parents devient ce qui fait tourner la machine. C'est en cela que la réforme est structurelle. Elle ne demande pas à l'Éducation nationale de se corriger, ce qu'elle ne sait pas faire. Elle change la main qui tient le carnet de chèques.
TIPS · SANS ABONNEMENT
Un média libre vit de ses lecteurs. Un pourboire ponctuel, sans compte ni engagement, quand le cœur vous en dit.
Vous donnez ce que vous voulez. Vous restez libre.
LAISSER UN POURBOIRE merci !Reste nous. Le chèque scolaire a un prix que ses partisans annoncent rarement : il nous retire une excuse. Depuis quarante ans, nous confions nos enfants à l'État, nous nous plaignons de ce qu'il en fait, et nous votons pour celui qui promet des moyens. C'est confortable. Le jour où l'argent est dans notre main, il faut visiter, comparer, se tromper, changer, et ne plus pouvoir dire que c'est la faute du ministre. Je ne suis pas certain que nous en ayons tous envie.
Les lycéens de Créteil demandent des professeurs et des salles qui tiennent debout. On leur répond Mélenchon. On pourrait leur répondre ceci : plus de 13 000 euros sont dépensés chaque année au nom de chacun de vous, et ni vous ni vos parents n'avez votre mot à dire sur un seul.
Soixante et un euros de confiance sur 10 580, pour les parents d'un collégien. Commençons par inverser la proportion.
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