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Unrest in France Has Warning for Precollegiate System

Public fears education won’t necessarily secure the future, analysts say.

Since swarms of French college and high school students took to the streets this spring to protest a youth-employment law, much of the subsequent hand-wringing has focused on problems in the European nation’s troubled public universities. But many believe the furor carried messages for the nation’s elementary and secondary schools as well.

The fight against the “first employment contract,” known in France as the CPE, shut down some universities for months. Besides withdrawing the law—which was aimed at reducing France’s high youth-unemployment rate by making it easier to hire and fire workers younger than 26—the government’s main response to the protests has been to name a national commission to examine ways to improve ties between universities and the workplace.

Still, an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 high schools in France were closed for days at a time because of the conflict, according to the national union of secondary-level teachers. And coupled with widespread street violence last November in poor French suburbs, including damage to certain public schools, the CPE dispute raises serious questions for the nation’s 59,000 public primary and secondary schools,...