The resourcefulness of children is truly amazing. We can never underestimate their passion and thirst for education. According to the news media in France, the very violent and destructive rioting in numerous French cities were spawned by a dissatisfaction with the quality and access to proper education. Who knew that French kids were so passionate about knowledge?
But rather than just carrying signs peacefully and perhaps wearing some colored vests, they really decided to express their dissatisfaction by destroying everything in sight, including classic structures, churches, monuments, storefronts and causing havoc in many of the major cities including Paris and Marseilles. They were so influential, they managed to rope in people who were clearly not students to make their points. Clearly, 25 year old keffiyeh adorned men also care about education.
Unlike most teenagers in other cultures, who would be hard pressed to find matching socks in the morning, these intrepid French ‘students’ managed to ‘find’ loads of nicely stacked cartons of bottles on the streets to make their demonstrations more real life and personal. They had enough organizational ability to have flags made, not French flags, but oddly only Palestinian ones. Who knew that students had a flag that was the same as that of a foreign people? Nothing screams “help my education” more than breaking into and burning a Rolex store, looting Luis Vuitton bags or desecrating churches and running at cops.
Clearly they had some inspiration from the ‘organic’ demonstrations in the US a few years ago, but the Americans being less refined, had only access to palettes of bricks instead of bottles. But heck, these are only students expressing their youthful chagrin over their circumstances over lack of chalk and pencils. Why are there shortages at all in the education system? Economics is clearly not a well taught subject in the schools or else it would be obvious that overwhelming a fixed supply with increased demand would result in shortages. Where did all the influx of new students come from since the birth rate of the native French is near zero? A mystery to be sure.
One of the objectives of an education is to be able to be successful in life, to buy nice things etc. You could say that these ‘students’ are just cutting out the process and just getting to the main objective by getting their luxury bags and fancy watches without the long process of schooling.
In Canada, the process of protesting is quite lame by comparison. The famous trucker convoy of a few years ago consisted only of trucks honking their horns. The government, clearly panicked at this thug-like behavior set the police upon the protestors, arresting their leaders and shutting down their bank accounts. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the benefit of flag waving students supporting their cause.
The French President, Macron, true to famous French insouciance, announced that violence would not be tolerated; that it was probably rooted in Donald Trump’s oil policies and returned to his Celin Dion concert.
What we learn from these events is that if you’re going to hold a riot, make sure to characterize it as a student uprising, regardless of actual participants.
