修复破碎的教育体系仅仅是个开始。对于那些冷漠的政治阶层来说，最大的挑战是终于开始关注这个被忽视的群体。
当青少年抗议政府未能保障他们的受教育权利，而政府的回应却是派出防暴警察时，政府就已经失去了控制局面的能力。
Fixing the broken education system will be just the start. The biggest challenge for an aloof political class is to finally pay attention to an abandoned generation When adolescents protest that the government is failing to uphold their right to an education, and the government’s response is to send in riot police, the government has lost the plot.
法国以外的人可能在过去一周里观看了巴黎和其他城市的学生抗议活动，心想‘法国向来就有反抗的传统’或者‘这就是法国人的作风’。
People outside France may have spent the past week watching the student protests in Paris and other cities, and thought, “Well, France has a long tradition of insurrection” or, “That’s just the French being French.”
但实际上，引发这些高中生罢课和青少年愤怒的原因，很可能与他们想象中的法国形象大相径庭。
But the situation that has provoked the high-school walkouts and teenage anger is most likely not one they would immediately associate with the France of their imaginations.
法国政府所能提供的，只是一系列应该让他们感到羞愧的统计数据：在最新的经合组织教育排名中位列第27位，学校里天花板不断掉落、教室里有老鼠，甚至在巴尼奥莱的一所学校里连饮用水都没有；平均每班学生人数从2010年的27人增加到了现在的30多人；一半的小学和高中在开学时缺少教师，其中许多学校甚至没有代课老师或替代人员。’亚历山大·赫斯特在巴黎为《卫报欧洲版》撰稿。他的回忆录《绝望的一代》现已出版。
In place of its lost plot, the French government has a collection of anecdotes and statistics that it should be ashamed of: 27th place in the most recent OECD education rankings, schools with ceilings collapsing and rats in classrooms and, in a school in Bagnolet, no drinkable water; an increase in the average number of students per class from 27 in 2010 to over 30 today; half of primary and high schools missing teachers at the start of the school year – many of them with no substitutes or replacements. Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir Generation Desperation is out now