The streets of France have erupted. Students are protesting, demonstrations have turned violent, and the grievances are piling up faster than politicians can manufacture reassuring statements about their commitment to education. Closer to home, students are also preparing to make their frustrations heard.
What exactly are these young people protesting? Take your pick. Overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, deteriorating buildings, restrictions on cell phones, inadequate resources, and an assortment of other grievances that, depending on whom you ask, range from entirely legitimate to hopelessly misguided.
Recent reporting from France confirms that protests initially focused on deteriorating school conditions have expanded into broader concerns about public services, economic insecurity, and the future awaiting young people.
Student protests are hardly a new phenomenon. Young people have been challenging authority for generations, occasionally with remarkable results and frequently with considerably more enthusiasm than strategic planning. But I suspect something different is happening this time, something deeper than another round of complaints about budgets, buildings, or bureaucratic incompetence.
I suspect we are witnessing the early symptoms of a profound crisis of relevance.
I freely admit that I cannot prove this hypothesis. My evidence is largely anecdotal, gathered through conversations with friends, family, acquaintances, and the unsuspecting individuals I encounter while walking my dog. My dog, incidentally, has demonstrated considerably more patience with these conversations than many educational administrators.
Nevertheless, I keep hearing the same underlying concern. The world is changing at a speed that leaves people increasingly uncertain about what tomorrow will look like, while our educational institutions continue behaving as though the future has generously agreed to wait until the next curriculum revision.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating this uncertainty. It is transforming how we access information, solve problems, communicate, create, and increasingly perform work once considered the exclusive domain of human intelligence. None of this is happening in secret. There is no conspiracy, no mysterious technological coup. The revolution is unfolding in plain sight.
And yet, much of education seems determined to greet it with another committee, another policy document, and perhaps a professional development afternoon featuring coffee, muffins, and a PowerPoint presentation explaining why innovation matters.
There is an old expression dating back to the aftermath of the First World War: How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paree?
The question was rhetorical then, and it remains rhetorical today.
How are we going to persuade students to return obediently to an educational experience built around yesterday's assumptions once they have discovered what artificial intelligence makes possible?
We aren't.
This does not mean that AI automatically makes students smarter, that every technological innovation improves learning, or that teachers have suddenly become unnecessary. Far from it. UNESCO's 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report warns that educational technology must be judged by evidence of learning, equity, and sustainability rather than technological enthusiasm.
But that is precisely the point. If technology can increasingly provide information, explanations, examples, and immediate feedback, why do we continue organizing so much of schooling around the delivery, memorization, and reproduction of information?
Why are we not devoting considerably more attention to developing the human capacities that make such technologies useful: critical thinking, sound judgment, creativity, communication, ethical reasoning, and the ability to distinguish a convincing answer from a correct one?
The problem is not that students no longer need to learn. The problem is that they need to learn differently, and our institutions are having a remarkably difficult time accepting that distinction.
I have argued repeatedly that expecting meaningful, system-wide educational transformation to emerge spontaneously from within existing institutions is, at best, an exercise in extravagant optimism. This is not an indictment of individual teachers, many of whom are extraordinarily committed and innovative. It is an indictment of a system that rewards compliance, protects established routines, and too often treats meaningful change as an administrative inconvenience.
Educational innovation certainly exists. We have exceptional schools, extraordinary teachers, imaginative programs, and inspiring examples of what learning could become. Whenever anyone questions the system, these examples are paraded before the public like prize-winning livestock at an agricultural fair.
Look! Innovation!
Wonderful. Now show me where it has become the norm.
The uncomfortable reality is that promising educational practices do not automatically become standard practice. UNESCO has identified governance, access, teacher preparation, evidence, and sustainability as significant conditions affecting the successful adoption of educational technology.
We have become remarkably proficient at celebrating isolated examples of educational excellence while leaving the machinery that makes them exceptional largely untouched.
And so, the question becomes: if students are increasingly dissatisfied and institutions struggle to transform themselves, who is left to demand something better?
The parents.
Yes, the parents. Those inconvenient people who produce the children, raise them, feed them, comfort them, encourage them, and eventually surrender them to an educational system over which they often exercise remarkably little meaningful influence.
We invite parents to fundraising activities, encourage them to volunteer, ask them to supervise homework, and occasionally permit them to participate in carefully structured consultations. We are delighted when they contribute to school life, provided they do not become confused and imagine that contributing also entitles them to question the fundamental assumptions underlying what their children are being taught and how they are being taught.
The moment parents begin asking difficult questions about curriculum, pedagogy, or assessment, the atmosphere can change rather quickly.
After all, what could parents possibly know about education?
They haven't necessarily studied curriculum theory, completed courses in educational psychology, or mastered the sophisticated vocabulary that allows us to describe perfectly ordinary activities in language that makes them sound revolutionary.
To be fair, professional expertise matters. Teachers and educational researchers possess knowledge that deserves respect. Parents should not be empowered to replace scientific evidence with personal preference or dictate every classroom decision.
But expertise is not ownership. And professional qualifications do not confer immunity from public scrutiny.
Parents live and work in a world that schools are supposed to prepare their children to enter. They see the skills demanded in workplaces, the changing nature of employment, the importance of adaptability, and the consequences of technological disruption.
They are perfectly entitled to ask why certain educational practices have survived largely unchanged across generations.
Why does mathematics so often feel disconnected from the problems people actually encounter? Algebra has genuine intellectual and practical value, but surely we can question whether students sufficiently understand how mathematics helps them reason, evaluate evidence, interpret statistics, and make decisions.
Why does passive instruction continue to occupy so much classroom time when learning requires students to engage, question, practise, and apply knowledge?
Why do we continue placing enormous importance on examinations that can capture only a portion of what a young person knows and can do?
The OECD's PISA findings offer a particularly sobering reminder that performance is not the only educational outcome worth considering. In its analysis of PISA 2022, the OECD reported that 65% of students across OECD countries worried about poor mathematics marks, while 55% felt anxious about failing mathematics. Mathematics anxiety was also negatively associated with achievement.
We should perhaps ask ourselves whether an educational culture obsessed with measuring achievement has occasionally forgotten to cultivate the confidence, curiosity, and intellectual independence that make achievement meaningful.
But here is where my frustration becomes considerably more personal.
I sit on the board of a parents' association. Recently, I suggested that our organization become more actively involved in questioning the substance of education itself, including what children are taught and how they are taught.
The response was predictable.
That would be going too far. Those matters are outside our purview. We must respect established responsibilities.
In other words, parents are welcome to participate, provided they remain within the boundaries drawn for them.
How wonderfully convenient.
I am not suggesting that every parent association behaves this way, nor that parents should suddenly appoint themselves amateur curriculum specialists. I am suggesting that an organization representing parents should not confuse respecting professional expertise with surrendering its responsibility to ask whether the educational system is adequately serving children.
If parents' organizations are unwilling to question the very purpose and effectiveness of schooling, what exactly are they protecting? The children, or the comfort of the institutions responsible for educating them?
There is, moreover, a substantial body of research supporting the importance of parental engagement. The Education Endowment Foundation's evidence reviews show that constructive parental involvement can contribute positively to children's learning, although the effectiveness of different approaches varies.
Admittedly, that research does not prove that parents should dictate curriculum or education policy. But it does demolish the convenient notion that parents are merely peripheral participants in their children's education.
Parents are not educational decorations. They are essential stakeholders.
And stakeholders have every right to demand accountability.
Imagine, for a moment, parents across communities asking educational authorities to explain, with evidence rather than slogans, how schools are preparing children for a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.
Imagine parents demanding transparent discussions about curriculum relevance, assessment practices, student engagement, teacher preparation, and the human competencies that young people will require in the coming decades.
Imagine parents asking elected representatives to explain their educational priorities in concrete terms, rather than accepting the familiar parade of promises about excellence, innovation, and preparing students for tomorrow.
What would meaningful reform actually involve? What evidence would demonstrate progress? What would change in classrooms, and when?
These are not unreasonable questions. They are precisely the questions a democratic society ought to be asking of institutions entrusted with its children's futures.
For too long, educational change has been treated as a leisurely undertaking, something to be studied, piloted, reviewed, revised, and eventually reconsidered by the next committee after the previous committee has retired.
Unfortunately, artificial intelligence has not agreed to respect our administrative timelines.
Neither has the world of work. Neither have the social, economic, and intellectual challenges our children will inherit.
And increasingly, neither have the students themselves.
I do not pretend that every student marching through the streets is demanding a fundamental transformation of education. Many are protesting specific and legitimate conditions, and we should listen to what they actually say rather than conveniently interpreting their anger as an endorsement of our favourite educational theories.
But their protests should prompt us to ask a much larger question.
What happens when a generation begins to lose confidence that the institutions preparing it for the future actually understand the future?
That is the question that ought to keep educators, administrators, policymakers, and parents awake at night.
Instead, I fear that many will respond with another strategic plan.
I have spent much of my professional life in education, and I remain convinced that meaningful change is possible. I have also spent enough time watching institutions defend the familiar to know that possibility and probability are two very different things.
Which brings me back to parents.
You do not need a doctorate in education to recognize that the world your children will inhabit is fundamentally different from the one for which many of our schools were designed. You do not need to understand every detail of artificial intelligence to insist that schools take its implications seriously. And you certainly do not need anyone's permission to ask difficult questions about your children's futures.
You do, however, need the willingness to challenge comfortable assumptions, including your own.
The future of education is far too important to be left exclusively to those who administer it. It belongs to students, families, educators, and the society that depends upon them.
Perhaps my expectations are unrealistic. Perhaps parents will continue to remain largely silent, reassured by the occasional innovation showcase and the annual declaration that everything is being done in the best interests of children.
Perhaps our institutions will eventually discover a sense of urgency all on their own.
I wouldn't bet my grandchildren's future on it.
The students are making noise. The institutions are defending their routines. The future is arriving without waiting for permission.
And the parents?
They may be the last people with enough collective influence to demand a different future. The question is whether they will find their voices before their children discover that nobody was listening.
Bibliography
1. OECD. (2026). OECD Digital Education Outlook 2026: Exploring effective uses of generative AI in education. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/062a7394-en The report distinguishes AI-assisted task completion from genuine learning and argues for protecting independent thinking and foundational human skills.
2. UNESCO. (2023). Global education monitoring report 2023: Technology in education—A tool on whose terms? UNESCO. Official report Supports your criticism of poorly evaluated innovation and the difficulties involved in implementing educational technology at scale.
3. OECD. (2024). PISA 2022 results (Volume V): Learning strategies and attitudes for life. OECD Publishing. OECD findings on mathematics anxiety Provides documented evidence of students' anxiety surrounding mathematics, performance, and examinations.
4. Education Endowment Foundation. (2025). Parental engagement. Teaching and Learning Toolkit. Official evidence summary Summarizes research on the contribution of parental involvement to student learning. It does not, however, establish the effects of parental participation in curriculum governance.
5. Education Endowment Foundation. (2021). Teacher feedback to improve pupil learning. Official guidance report Documents the importance of formative assessment and actionable feedback, providing a useful evidence-based counterpoint to an excessive reliance on summative assessment.
6. Associated Press. (2026, October). Policing of France's school protests clouds Macron's final months and sparks uproar. Read article Contemporary reporting supporting the opening discussion of student protests in France.
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