France Bowed by School Riots
5th October 2026
When I was U.S. Consul General in Marseille, France from 2017–2020, I visited countless schools across the south. One was the Lycée de la Méditerranée, a high school in the city of La Ciotat on the Mediterranean coast. By French standards it was a tough school, though it would not have seemed so in comparison with inner-city America. Many of its students had family roots in France’s former colonies.
Today, I watched a video of young people at that Lycée, who may not all have been students there, assault and pour gasoline on a teacher, with the presumed intent to set him alight.
Elsewhere across France, there has been rioting and mayhem. In Marseille, rioters set their school on fire and then torched the fire truck sent to put it out. In Nantes, rioters caused millions of euros in damage to 40 schools. In Paris, high schoolers blocked their school, set fire to e-bikes, and played cat-and-mouse with riot police. French police have arrested around 2,000 people–mostly young folks, though not necessarily students–so far.