Today, the Supreme Court decided to hear Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education, a challenge to "facially neutral" discrimination against Asian applicants to selective public magnet schools in Montgomery County, Maryland. The admissions criteria are, on their face, racially neutral. But evidence indicates they were likely adopted for the purpose of reducing the percentage of Asian students in entering classes. More specifically, the case addresses the issue of "[w]hether a plaintiff challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative to its share of the applicant pool." This issue is increasingly important since the Supreme Court banned most explicit racial discrimination in college admissions (and, by extension, school admissions) in SFFA v. Harvard (2023).

The lower court ruled that, even if there is evidence that a facially neutral admissions policy was enacted for the specific purpose of reducing the number of admitted students from a specific racial or ethnic group, it must still be upheld so long as the percentage of admitted students from that group is as high or higher than the percentage of applicants from that group.

The case is similar to (and based on) Fourth Circuit decision in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, which the Supreme Court refused to take in 2024 (though three conservative justices indicated they did want to hear it) [my wife Alison was one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in that case]. The present case is also from the Fourth Circuit. In my view (see here and here), the earlier Fourth Circuit decision is badly wrong and would - if the same approach were adopted by the Supreme Court - license all kinds of invidious, unconstitutional discrimination against Asians and other minorities:

Longstanding Supreme Court precedent holds that evidence of unconstitutional motivation for "facially neutral" policies shifts the burden of proof to the government to show that they would have enacted the same policy even in the absence of illicit motives. If they fail to prove that, then the policy must be subjected to strict scrutiny, which it would be unlikely to survive. In the TJ case, the Fourth Circuit majority opinion by Judge Robert Bruce King holds that even the most blatant discriminatory motivations do not trigger strict scrutiny so long as the group being targeted for discrimination by "facially neutral" means  is still represented in proportion to its percentage of the relevant population (or more). Under the new admissions policy, Asians were still 54% of accepted applicants (as compared to 73% under the old one). Since that is still higher than the Asian percentage of the applicant pool, evidence of discriminatory intent becomes irrelevant….

I and others have previously compared today's anti-Asian discrimination in selective educational institutions to discrimination against Jewish applicants in earlier eras.  Under the Fourth Circuit's reasoning, old-time policies using facially neutral means to reduce the percentage of Jewish students at elite universities would be perfectly legal, so long as Jewish applicants were admitted in the same [or higher] percentages as other groups. And that would be true no matter how extensive the evidence that the new policy was motivated by anti-Semitic prejudices, or that Jewish applicants had to have stronger academic records to be admitted than those required of gentiles.

The same point applies to all kinds of discrimination against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. So long as facially neutral means are used and the overall success rates of different groups are similar, this reasoning would allow even the most blatant discriminatorily motivated policies intended to reduce the participation of some groups for the benefit of others. There are many situations where members of some minority groups are "overrepresented" in educational institutions, government contracting, and elsewhere, relative to their percentage of the applicant pool or of the general population. Jews, Muslims, Asians, atheists, and Mormons are obvious examples of groups that fit that bill in a variety of educational and professional settings.

If a federal or state government adopted a seemingly neutral policy to try to reduce the percentage of blacks among professional football or basketball players, that too would pass muster, so long as the percentage of blacks in the the relevant pro sports leagues remained at least as high as the percentage of blacks among those seeking employment as players…. Progressives and others inclined to support today's decision should consider whether they are really willing to live with these troubling implications.

Since I wrote the above, the ideological valence of anti-Asian discrimination in education has shifted somewhat. For a long time, many left-wingers defended such discrimination (along with discrimination against white applicants) on the grounds that it is necessary to achieve "diversity" and compensate Blacks and Hispanics for the history of discrimination against those groups. Most conservatives condemned it because it violates principles of constitutional color-blindness.

During the second Trump Administration, however, right-wing nativists have increasingly defended discrimination against Asian immigrants on such ridiculous grounds as that they work too hard (thus making it too difficult for whites to compete with them), or even that they undermine the supposed value of racial "homogeneity." The political right actually has a long history of anti-Asian bigotry. But recently the problem has gotten much worse, after a period in which it was diminishing because conservatives (rightly) condemned such discrimination as a violation of color-blindness. The growing anti-Asian bigotry among right-wing nationalists is similar to and linked with their growing tendency towards anti-Semitism. Indeed, as many commentators have pointed out, the two prejudices are similar in many respects. Both Asians and Jews are condemned for supposedly working too hard, emphasizing academics too much relative to other activities, and supposedly dominating various business and intellectual fields.

The left-wing rationales for anti-Asian discrimination are little better than the right-wing ones. If you truly value diversity, it makes no sense to disfavor Asian applicants as a class. They add as much or more to diversity as any others. Indeed, as I have pointed out before, lumping all Asians in one category makes no sense, as this group includes a vast range of different ethnicities and cultures, covering more than half the world's population.

The compensatory justice rationale for anti-Asian discrimination collapses under the weight of the fact that many Asian groups have themselves faced extensive discrimination at various times in American history. Discrimination against Chinese and Japanese by federal and state governments has a long and sordid history, of which Japanese internment during World War II is just one particularly awful example.

It is important to recognize that "facially neutral" policies adopted for the specific purpose of excluding particular racial or ethnic groups differ from those that merely have an unintended disparate impact. The former are deliberate efforts to discriminate on the basis of race, whereas the latter are probably inevitable in a diverse society where groups differ from each other in various ways. For example, laws banning violent crime disproportionately affect any group which is, on average, younger than others, since young people (especially young men) have much higher crime rates than older ones.

The Constitution at least presumptively bars racial discrimination by government, whether motivated by left-wing objectives or right-wing ones. And such discrimination is forbidden even if cloaked in "facially neutral" garb. Otherwise, the government could easily discriminate against virtually any group simply by targeting some characteristic that correlates with group membership. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will recognize that and rule the right way in this case.

NOTE: The plaintiffs in this case are represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest group that was my wife's employer until recently. As noted above, she helped represent the plaintiffs in a previous case (also litigated by PLF), on which the lower court ruling in this case was based. She is not one of the attorneys in this case, and is no longer with PLF.

The post Supreme Court Will Hear Case on "Facially Neutral" Discrimination Against Asian Students in Admissions to Public Magnet Schools appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University demonstrator who became a flash point in the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian foreign college students, asked the Supreme Court on Monday to take up his case, his lawyers said.  Khalil was jailed for months last year, and he has long asserted his detention was retaliation for his protected speech.  The…

The whereabouts of Amelia Earhart’s plane remain a mystery after a team of archaeologists and filmmakers failed to locate the pilot’s Model 10E Electra aircraft on a remote, uninhabited atoll in the Western Pacific.

Teachers will launch a 24-hour strike across Greece on Wednesday, October 21, protesting against staff shortages in schools, issues within educational infrastructure, excessive class sizes, and persistent inadequacies regarding school facilities in many parts of the country. The teachers will be supported in their strike by pupils and university  students as well as left-wing parties, […]

The post Teachers on strike across Greece, protests supported by students, Oct 21 appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.

Scottish university’s annual tradition once involved giving out raisins but fancy dress and shaving cream now in vogue

Nobody at the University of St Andrews in Scotland seems to remember how Raisin Monday became a giant foam fight. For 600 years, first-year students have taken part in the ritual of thanking older students for mentoring them through their first few weeks of university life.

Traditionally, freshers would give their elders a pound of raisins – hence the name. This Monday however, hundreds wore fancy dress as they streamed on to St Salvator’s lower college lawn at 11am armed with cans of shaving foam, covering one another in soapy clouds as they have for the past few decades. Groups of students dress as Smurfs, mice, bananas, grandmas, sunflowers and chefs to participate in the annual rite of passage.

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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Portugal has submitted a proposal to China for an agreement on the mutual recognition of academic qualifications, which Beijing has agreed to consider, the Minister for Education, Science and Innovation,

The post Government proposes mutual recognition of university degrees with China appeared first on Portugal Resident.

• Some US colleges have numerous alums who went on to prolific political careers in the Senate.
• Many of the colleges listed are Ivy League or have extremely low acceptance rates.
• Harvard University tops the list, with 13 current senators among its alums.

US senators come from all sorts of different educational backgrounds.

Some graduated from the US Naval Academy or smaller private schools, but 42 of the 100 US senators came from 10 prominent universities, according to biographies on the US Senate website.

Harvard University, the oldest college in the country and one of the hardest to get into, boasts the largest number of current senators among its alums.

The senators on this list are alums of the schools' undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, law, or medical programs, and some have graduated from multiple of the listed universities. Honorary degrees and schools a senator attended without graduating were excluded.

Here's a look at which US colleges have produced the most current senators.

• Terence Tao, now a UCLA professor, earned his doctorate in mathematics at 20.
• The prodigy said his work is changing in the age of AI.
• With AI tools doing the legwork, math is no longer "heroic," Tao said.

AI is upending mathematics. For one top professor, the issue is just as spiritual as it is practical.

Terence Tao, a renowned professor at UCLA, said in a recent podcast appearance that the "romantic era" of math is over, thanks to AI tools capable of solving hundreds of problems with some simple prompting.

Now, he said, even leading scholars like him are reduced to sorting through reams of AI-generated proofs, instead of doing the "heroic" solving themselves.

"We are moving to an industrial era where math will become much more large-scale," Tao said in an interview this week on Numberphile, a YouTube channel dedicated to math.

"We are entering an era where exciting new things are possible, but some things are being lost," he added.

OpenAI began its brusque push into the field by solving the Navier-Stokes equation in early September, one of math's millennium problems.

The revelation that AI had cracked it caused consternation from many a math geek. Some mathematicians also expressed frustration that while the AI model might have solved the problem, it didn't show its work, leaving them with the less celebratory task of verifying it.

Then, earlier this month, OpenAI said it cracked another 700 outstanding problems. A math professor at New York University told CNBC that the company's release had derailed work by early-career mathematicians.

"We've had whole research programs wiped out on Tuesday by their dump," the professor, Tristan Buckmaster, said at the time.

In a separate brouhaha in September, OpenAI backed out of a sponsorship for a so-called AI "mathathon" — an event organized by undergraduates at Caltech, where participants were encouraged to use AI to solve equations — after complaints from a group of more senior academics.

Event organizers told Business Insider at the time that their professors were sorely out of touch with the field's trajectory.

"We look to the future, and we don't even know if there's going to be grad school open positions by the time we get to Ph.D," one organizer, Caiman Moreno-Earle, said.

Though OpenAI has said it is taking steps to ensure human academics retain their role in this new era, some researchers and professors are already forecasting their possible obsolescence.

Tao isn't as much of a doomer as some of his colleagues in the field. However, he did say in the interview that the stories math nerds tell themselves may not mean so much in the future.

"We have these sort of mythological stories," he said in reference to the tale of Sir Andrew Wiles, who famously spent seven years isolated in his attic solving a single difficult equation.

"There was something romantic about sort of the heroic age," Tao said.

Ontario government inspectors checked several career colleges that had experienced "concerning" growth in applications for the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP), a government financial aid program that helps eligible students pay for post-secondary education. The investigators found problems that raised "serious concerns" at three Academy of Learning institutions, like signs that other people might have been doing students' schoolwork for them—for example, some students finished whole courses in a single day, or even just minutes. A few students could not even name their school or program of study. The inspectors also found shared computer logins from many different locations and said the schools could not prove that OSAP-funded students were really taking the classes they claimed to be enrolled in. These three locations took in more than $219 million in student aid money for about 14,800 students in one year, so the province decided to stop letting new students use that aid at the schools. The colleges deny most of the claims and are fighting the decision in court.

The post Brickbat: Studying Hard or Hardly Studying appeared first on Reason Magazine.

What began as a student protest over deteriorating schools has developed into a nationwide revolt against economic hardship, political paralysis and declining public services. With the 2027 presidential election approaching, the violence has exposed problems that neither the government nor its principal opponents have convincing plans to resolve.

France’s latest wave of unrest has developed into one of the most serious domestic crises of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency. More than 550,000 people participated in demonstrations on 17 October, according to official estimates, before violence spread through Paris and other major cities. Shops were looted, police confronted rioters, and the historic town hall in Limoges was largely destroyed by fire.

The scale of the destruction prompted emergency government consultations and a televised presidential address. Macron promised to prosecute those responsible, while stopping short of declaring a state of emergency. Yet the immediate security challenge conceals a more difficult political question: why have protests that began with relatively specific demands over education become a confrontation involving such different sections of French society?

From school protests to a national revolt

The movement originated among secondary-school students demanding better facilities, more teachers and improvements in educational standards. Their complaints subsequently attracted trade unions, workers, farmers and elements of the Gilets Jaunes, the Yellow Vest movement that challenged Macron’s government in 2018.

The resulting coalition has no coherent political programme. Students protesting overcrowded classrooms share demonstrations with workers concerned about purchasing power and motorists angered by fuel prices. Their interests are not necessarily compatible, but they reflect a common dissatisfaction with the government’s ability to deliver functioning public services while containing living costs.

This distinction matters. The presence of masked rioters and organised groups engaged in violence does not establish that the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated peacefully supported their actions. Equally, the destruction of public buildings, attacks on police and widespread looting raise legitimate questions about the state’s capacity to maintain public order.

The economic problem behind the protests

At the centre of the discontent lies a structural problem that successive French governments have struggled to confront: the distribution of public expenditure between an ageing population and the services required by younger generations.

A French government budget assessment published in October revealed that pension obligations accounted for approximately 32 per cent of the education ministry’s budget, including €28.5 billion in pension expenditure. These obligations restrict the resources available for other departmental priorities.

France nevertheless remains a substantial spender on education. According to official figures, expenditure reached €199.2 billion in 2025, equivalent to 6.7 per cent of GDP. However, after inflation, the annual increase was only 0.1 per cent.

The issue is therefore not simply how much France spends, but how efficiently resources are allocated and whether expenditure meets changing educational needs.

The OECD’s 2025 PISA assessment found that French pupils’ performance in mathematics and reading had declined compared with 2022. Results were among the country’s lowest recorded, although broadly comparable with the OECD average.

These figures give the student protests a significance extending beyond the immediate condition of classrooms. They raise questions about France’s longer-term economic competitiveness and its capacity to provide younger generations with opportunities comparable to those enjoyed by their predecessors.

The limits of Macron’s reform programme

Macron entered office in 2017 promising to modernise the French economy and overcome the traditional division between left and right. Nearly a decade later, his administration faces a fragmented parliament, constrained public finances and growing resistance to further structural reforms.

The suspension of his pension reform illustrated the difficulty. Raising the retirement age was intended to reduce pressure on the pension system, but parliamentary opposition forced the government to defer the measure until after the presidential election.

The underlying financial pressures have not disappeared. Nor can they be resolved easily through additional spending when public debt, borrowing costs and budgetary obligations already restrict the government’s room for manoeuvre.

This creates an uncomfortable political reality: the state is expected to provide better services, greater purchasing-power protection and stronger security, while the available resources remain limited.

Can the opposition benefit?

The unrest comes approximately six months before the presidential election, with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed competing to establish themselves as alternatives to Macron’s political centre.

Le Pen has sought to combine support for economic grievances with demands for tougher policing. That position may attract voters concerned by the violence, but it also exposes tensions within a movement that previously supported the Yellow Vest protests.

Mélenchon faces a different difficulty. Supporting demonstrations against government policy is consistent with his political programme, but the involvement of violent groups risks shifting public attention from social demands towards questions of security.

A recent presidential opinion poll even suggested that Le Pen and Mélenchon could contest the final round, illustrating the weakening position of more conventional political alternatives.

Neither, however, can escape the fiscal constraints that have frustrated Macron’s government. A change of president would not automatically provide the resources required to expand public services, reform pensions and reduce the deficit simultaneously.

A wider problem for France and Europe

President Donald Trump has attributed the French unrest to immigration, although the movement’s documented origins lie principally in education, living costs and dissatisfaction with public services. Without established evidence about those responsible for individual acts of violence, broader claims about the demonstrators’ backgrounds remain speculative.

For the European Union, France’s instability carries consequences beyond its domestic political debate. France is central to European defence, fiscal negotiations and support for Ukraine. Sustained political paralysis would complicate its ability to negotiate and implement decisions requiring substantial public expenditure.

The immediate task for Macron’s government is to restore security without allowing the legitimate grievances of peaceful demonstrators to disappear from political consideration. The more difficult task will fall to whoever enters the Élysée in 2027.

France’s crisis is not simply a repetition of the Yellow Vest movement. It reflects a growing conflict over public resources, expectations of the state and the ability of established political institutions to reconcile competing demands.

The violence may subside, but the economic contradictions that brought such different groups onto the streets will remain. The presidential election will determine who inherits them, rather than whether they exist.

Information on financial aid for students 

Uncertain about your career options? Low on self-confidence? This column may help

While the immediate trigger for the students’ protest at Jantar Mantar was the repeated paper leaks, disillusionment among the youth runs much deeper. India has a significant youth population; however, unemployment remains high. Additionally, access to quality education has become limited due to a number of factors

For students of Engineering, memorise long lines of complicated syntax is no longer important. What is required is system design thinking

Amid financial pressures on household and school budgets, the theatre company is expanding access with free plays

Six young actors step into the spotlight as a reverent silence descends on the hall at City Academy in Bristol. A boy steps forward to pose a central question: “What does it mean to be young in Britain in 2026?”

Union jack flags flash across the backdrop as three girls excitedly debate a Spice Girls reunion concert, before the focus swings back to the young boy wrestling with modern British identity. He rattles off a list of familiar cultural touchstones – fish and chips, cups of tea, Butlin’s, David Attenborough, Gogglebox and the England football team, naming heroes such as Jordan Pickford and Jude Bellingham.

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© Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

© Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

© Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

• Sometimes I have to take my child out of school for healthcare appointments.
• Perfect attendance can depend on health, access to care, and whether a parent can leave work.
• I'd rather schools reward kids for showing up after hard times than for perfect attendance.

Whenever I schedule an appointment during the school day, I feel guilty.

I ask for their latest available appointment. If that doesn't work, I pull up the school calendar. Then I start doing the ridiculous parent math: How long is the drive? What class will my child miss? Can I get them back before the final bell? Is there some magical way to make a 10:30 appointment happen without blowing up half the school day? Usually, there isn't. So I take the appointment.

I'm a mother in rural North Carolina. Healthcare providers aren't always five minutes down the road, and appointments that fit perfectly between school dismissal and dinner aren't exactly falling from the sky. Sometimes the appointment you need is at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday. And sometimes you take it. I still feel guilty about it almost every time.

I want my child in school. Of course I do. I know how quickly one missed class can turn into a missing assignment, which then becomes another assignment they don't understand because they missed the first one. But I also have to take care of my child. Sometimes those two responsibilities bump right into each other. And that's probably why perfect-attendance awards have always bothered me.

My child is my priority

I understand why schools care about attendance. Kids need to be in classrooms. They need instruction, routine, relationships with teachers and classmates, and all the little pieces of school that are hard to recreate at home. When a child is missing a lot of school, I absolutely think families should be supported in figuring out why and helping that child get back into a routine.

But perfect attendance is something different. An unbroken attendance record isn't necessarily a measure of how hard a child tried. Kids don't choose when they get the flu. They don't control when the specialist finally has an opening. They can't give their parents paid time off, fix the car when it won't start, make the school bus come down a road it doesn't serve, or move a doctor's office 45 minutes closer to home.

The certificate may have a child's name printed on it, but there's a whole lot of family circumstance behind that streak. I work for myself, which gives me more flexibility than many parents have. I can move things around when an appointment pops up. That doesn't mean the lost work hours don't matter, but I can usually make it happen.

A parent working an hourly job may be making a completely different calculation. Can I afford to lose three hours of pay? Will my boss be irritated? How many times have I already had to leave early this year?

And that's before we even get into transportation, housing instability, access to healthcare, chronic illness, or any of the other things families may be dealing with that nobody sees when the certificates get handed out. Those circumstances matter. They just aren't evidence that one child tried harder than another.

One sick day shouldn't erase a year's worth of effort

As parents, we already have to make enough judgment calls when our kids are sick. Is this a stay-home sick or a send-them-and-see sick? Are they actually exhausted or just really, really not interested in going to math?

We're told attendance matters. And it does. We're also told to keep our kids home when they're contagious because sending them to school sick exposes others to illness. Both things can be true.

Then we turn around and give an award for never missing a day. That's where I get stuck. One fever in October can knock a child out of the running for an award handed out in June.

I don't want to hesitate before keeping my sick child home because some part of my brain is thinking about an attendance record. And I definitely don't want my child learning that dragging yourself through school when you feel awful is proof that you're more dedicated.

Sometimes staying home is the responsible choice. Sometimes missing school for an appointment is the responsible choice. And sometimes the impressive part isn't never missing school at all, it's coming back.

I'd rather see schools recognize persistence

I'm not suggesting schools stop caring whether kids come to school. Chronic absenteeism is a real problem, and families dealing with it may need more support, not less. But perfection doesn't have to be the prize.

Recognize the kid whose attendance improved from one grading period to the next. Celebrate shorter milestones. Acknowledge the student who had a rough stretch and worked their way back into a routine.

Despite my views, I know I'll keep doing the school-day appointment math. I'll keep asking for the latest opening. I'll keep checking the calendar. I'll keep trying to minimize what my child misses and help them catch up when missing school can't be avoided. And I'll probably still feel a little guilty every time.

My child may never earn a perfect-attendance award. I'm fine with that. I'd much rather they learn that taking care of themselves is responsible, staying home when they're contagious is considerate, and showing up again after a hard stretch is something worth being proud of.

More than half a million people took part in demonstrations across France on Saturday, 17 October, as protests over living costs and education deteriorated into riots, looting and attacks on public buildings in several major cities.

France is assessing extensive damage following nationwide demonstrations on Saturday, 17 October, that brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets and resulted in more than 1,200 arrests. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said 150 police officers and gendarmes were injured as violent groups attacked public buildings, looted businesses and confronted security forces.

According to figures released by the French authorities, approximately 550,000 people participated in 110 marches across France, including 110,000 in Paris. Organisers, including trade unions and student associations, placed nationwide participation at 800,000.

The demonstrations represented a considerable escalation of the movement that began in September over deteriorating conditions in French secondary schools. The protests have since expanded into a broader campaign against rising living costs, public spending restrictions and the government’s economic policies.

Violence spreads beyond Paris

In the French capital, confrontations erupted around Place de la République, where masked groups threw paving stones, fireworks and other projectiles at police. Security forces responded with tear gas and water cannon as vehicles and rubbish bins were set alight.

Businesses along Boulevard Magenta and neighbouring streets were targeted, with shops broken into and goods stolen. Several central Paris Métro stations were closed as authorities attempted to restrict access to sensitive government locations.

Although the main authorised procession remained largely peaceful, violence continued elsewhere in the capital into Saturday evening.

The disturbances extended well beyond Paris. In Limoges, the historic town hall suffered extensive fire damage, with parts of its roof collapsing. Regional authorities described the destruction of the 143-year-old building as a major loss to the city’s architectural heritage.

In Marseille, groups forced their way into the town hall after using street barriers to ram its entrance. Municipal premises were vandalised before police regained control.

Further incidents were reported in Lyon, where a tourist office was attacked and a fire started, and in Bordeaux, where the official residence of the Gironde prefect was ransacked. Police also reported attacks or attempted break-ins at public buildings in Lille, Calais and Brest. The scale of the disturbances placed security forces under considerable pressure.

Government blames organised extremist groups

Lecornu accused organised far-left groups of deliberately instigating violence in several French cities. Nuñez similarly attributed much of the destruction to radical groups and individuals exploiting the demonstrations to loot businesses.

President Emmanuel Macron condemned attacks on public property and commercial premises, promising that those responsible would face prosecution.

The government has not announced a state of emergency, although authorities are reviewing the scale of the damage and the security response.

The mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, described the destruction across parts of the capital as extensive and distinguished the peaceful protest movement from those responsible for vandalism.

Student unrest becomes a national movement

Saturday’s demonstrations followed several weeks of disruption across France’s education system.

As EU Today reported earlier this month, between 400 and 500 secondary schools faced partial or complete closures as students protested against teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and deteriorating facilities.

The subsequent confrontations with police intensified political tensions, with student organisations accusing authorities of using excessive force and police representatives complaining of inadequate protection.

A further controversy emerged on Saturday after a 17-year-old demonstrator in Saint-Étienne suffered a serious hand injury. An investigation was opened into the incident and assigned to France’s police inspectorate, the IGPN. Reports linked the injury to a grenade thrown by police; the precise circumstances remain under investigation.

The latest demonstrations also marked a revival of the Gilets Jaunes, or Yellow Vest, movement, which emerged in 2018 in opposition to fuel taxation and subsequently developed into a wider challenge to Macron’s economic programme.

Trade unions, including the CGT, joined calls for higher wages and pensions, lower consumer prices and increased investment in public services.

Political consequences for Macron and Lecornu

The unrest presents another challenge for Lecornu’s government as it attempts to manage France’s public finances ahead of the 2027 presidential election.

The demands for increased spending on education, wages and public services come as ministers face pressure to reduce the budget deficit and control public debt.

The political implications are already apparent. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the hard-left France Unbowed movement, has supported the student protests while opposing looting and destruction. Marine Le Pen has condemned the rioters and accused Mélenchon’s party of helping to legitimise the unrest.

The latest disturbances also follow growing criticism of the government’s policing strategy, particularly the use of riot-control weapons during demonstrations involving minors.

With municipal authorities calculating the cost of damage to public buildings and commercial premises, Lecornu has instructed ministers to support affected businesses. The immediate challenge is to restore public order while addressing a protest movement that has expanded considerably beyond its original demands for improvements in French schools.

• I spent years preparing my kids for college, but I overlooked some essential life skills.
• I never properly taught them to clean toilets, repay debts, or recognize health problems.
• Now I'm trying to fill those gaps and accept that parenting doesn't end when kids leave home.

Last week, a friend asked if I knew of any jobs for her recent graduate. Between his rigorous academic load, sports, and club activities that landed him in a prestigious university, he'd never held a job.

"My fail," she confessed.

My kids have had jobs, but I have parenting fails of my own. I'm concerned that, in the grand scheme of middle-class privileges, we forgot to teach our children some basic life skills: scrubbing bathrooms, repaying debts, and self-attunement.

I crammed as much as I could into the first 18 years of their lives, but juggling my small business while parenting didn't leave time for everything. I found myself tossing last-minute advice like grapes while driving each to their respective dorms: Carry your drinks with you at all times — even to the bathroom. Know where Student Health is located. Sit in the front rows; meet your professors. Skip the jugs of BORG.

We didn't teach them everything they need to survive, let alone thrive, but I'm hoping it's not too late to offer some guidance.

Cleaning their toilet

The bathroom might be the most inhospitable location in either of my sons' living quarters. The filth lurking below the interior rim is as confronting as the overspray of urine where the lid hinges.

To protect them from chemical toxins, I reflect that I never handed my kids a cleaning wand. They'd wiped down sinks, vacuumed, and washed clothes, but the toilet was off limits. Instead, I'd taken the plastic brush into my own hand or, worse, hired a housekeeper. It should have transitioned at some age, but between my own squeamishness about cleanliness and their protests at reaching inside the bowl, I failed.

I'm consoled that it appears statistically unlikely that anyone would catch a disease from their lack of sanitization, but in the interest of raising functional adults within accepted cultural parameters, I'm impressing upon them the virtues of hygiene and housekeeping as attractive to a future partner, while clamoring to provide motivation.

My kids had no fiscal responsibility

To teach financial awareness, my husband and I set up checking accounts and outlined budgets with our kids in their last year of high school. What we failed to do was teach them the importance of paying bills or repaying debt — imperative when adulting to secure credit, rent your own accommodations, and eventually live a fiscally independent life.

We felt like we were on the right path when our kid bought his first (used) Toyota Tacoma, and we helped by providing a partial private loan to make it possible. The idea was for him to pay us back in monthly installments, no matter how small, but that quickly fell by the wayside when he felt $20 too nominal a transaction to matter.

He eventually paid off the entire debt in a lump sum, and we blew off his breach of our contract, but when a second kid dismissed our financial agreement, I knew we'd made a mistake. It's a lesson worth reworking in the interest of said kids' futures — perhaps we should've enforced stricter consequences for non-payment or suggested a bank loan that has natural repercussions for non-compliance? Idk, but that's my hot tip.

I told them to 'read the room,' but also, they should read themselves

This broad term refers to an individual's ability to assess themself in their environment, mentally and physically. I'd always advised my kids to "read the room," but now I implore them to read themselves — better.

By the end of high school, I'd encouraged my kids to schedule their own doctor appointments but still played caregiver when advising them to stay home from school (with a fever) or insisting on their attendance (to avoid truancy). Collectively considered, I might have disabled their agency given that one of our kids landed in the emergency room after ignoring cold symptoms that manifested as chest pains in the middle of the night, his freshman year of college. Diagnosed with an acute case of pericarditis, his heart was stressed. He spent three harrowing nights in the hospital and continued with six months of follow-up as an outpatient; it was scary. I couldn't conceive how quickly an active young person's health had plummeted so drastically. "This must be super rare?" I asked the attending physician.

"Not really, it's a textbook response to strep throat," the doctor replied. Then, turning toward my kid, he asked, "Didn't your throat feel sore?"

"Not really."

Dropping our youngest child to start her college career on the opposite coast this fall, we kissed and hugged. "Have fun — these years are the best!" Then I added, "but it's normal to feel lonely at times. It's OK to be uncomfortable." I reminded her exactly what I probably needed to hear: "Discomfort breeds growth." And maybe that's how I'd reframe my embarrassing "fails" — as an opportunity for growth, because isn't that why we all went to college in the first place?

School looking to sell piece of open land beloved by people in Devon town to fund refurbishments

On Saturdays throughout autumn, residents of Totnes have met at a field on the banks of the River Dart to play ballgames, fly kites or simply sit on the grass and chat.

But it hasn’t just been about having fun – this has been a “play protest” aimed at trying to save a beloved piece of open land in the historic Devon market town.

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© Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian

© Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian

© Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian