numerous groups of attentive young students grouped in front of great masterworks, being taught with animation and verve. Most of my museum-going here in DC doesn't occur during school hours, but I wonder if we can say the same.
Recent weeks have provided another French lesson, with massive student protests over proposed changes in French labor law. Of course, these being the French, the student outrage seems equally arrogant, utopian, and foolish--they're angry about the idea of raising the age at which they can't be fired for incompetence to 26. Because employers are reluctant to create jobs if they can't fire people who under-perform, they haven't been creating many jobs and youth unemployment is enedemic. Presumably that will be the subject of some future round of marches and burnings of cars. One French high school student said, "They're offering us nothing but slavery." Uh, no--slavery is when your boss won't let you leave your job, not when he won't let you keep it.
But the focus of student anxiety in France does point toward some of the profound differences between our countries in the relationship between education and employment. In France (I'm cribbing from Tony Carnevale here), most of the risk of a bad education falls on society. If you're poorly educated and can't afford to provide an income, health care, etc. for yourself, the government provides it for you. If you're bad at your job, you get to keep it. In America, by contrast, the risk of a bad education falls mostly on students, who are left poor, uninsured, and unemployed if they don't get the education they need.
Which is why it makes sense that French students would focus on labor policy instead of education, however misguided those ideas may be. And it's why one wishes American students had similar political power, and were able to marshall it in demanding far better schooling than many now receive.
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