Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joined French high school protests over teacher shortages and overcrowded classrooms, as nearly 200 schools shut and police clashes left the country split.
On Tuesday, Thunberg stood with demonstrators outside Paul-Éluard High School in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, as a pupil protest movement entered its fourth week, Reuters reported.
Students have used marches, school blockades, placards, and megaphones to demand action on teacher shortages, packed classrooms, and run-down buildings. The unrest has spread across Paris and other French cities.
Education Minister Edouard Geffray said about 200 schools were closed. He indicated some shut as safety precautions because they sat on routes of planned marches.
Riot police have answered some protests with tear gas and charges. Reporting on the response put injuries in the hundreds and arrests in the thousands.
Last week the government suspended stun grenades after one teenager lost a hand. That decision came as the disorder hardened into a national political fight.
Thunberg called the police response an “extremely violent” sign that authorities were protecting the status quo and ignoring young people’s demands. Left-wing politicians also criticized the police.
National Rally presidential candidate Marine Le Pen took the opposite line. She blamed violent protesters and pointed to damage inflicted on schools and injuries to staff and officers.
Thunberg rose to fame as a teenage climate protester and has since widened her activism. Outside the Saint-Denis school, she framed the French walkouts as part of a broader youth revolt.
She told reporters:
“They should know that all over the world we are following these developments. We are inspired by the young people who are demanding their basic rights,”
She went further, folding school budgets into a larger political pitch:
“Whether it’s not funding schools enough, or the climate crisis, or social injustice crises... it’s about time that young people are stepping up and reclaiming that future.”
Paul-Éluard High School was one of the sites where the movement first gained traction. On Tuesday morning, pupils clustered outside school doors in several cities before marches planned later in the day.
France’s government has promised to address pupils’ concerns. It has little room to maneuver. National debt, a budget deficit, and borrowing costs at the highest level in years constrain what Paris can spend.
The timing is politically sharp. The country is about six months from a presidential election. Opinion polls put Le Pen as the front-runner to replace President Emmanuel Macron. A win for her National Rally would mark a major shift in French politics.
Le Pen has said she would slash spending to bring public finances under control. That stance collides with protest demands for more school resources and with a government already short on fiscal space.
So the same week students block campuses and clash with police, voters are watching a cash-strapped state try to calm the streets without money it does not have.
Hundreds of schools have faced blockades during the four-week campaign. Closures, street clashes, damaged property, and injuries to staff and officers are no longer side notes. They are the story’s hard center.
One side treats the police response as proof the system is deaf to youth. The other treats vandalism and assaults on schools as proof the protests have slid into lawlessness. Both frames are now public. The classrooms still need teachers, space, and basic upkeep either way.
Thunberg’s arrival internationalizes a local education fight and yokes it to climate and social-justice rhetoric. French families, meanwhile, are left with shuttered schools, strained budgets, and an election clock already running.
When activists turn school grounds into barricades and politicians race to assign blame, students are the ones who lose class time, and taxpayers are the ones who pay for the mess.
