National Library Board chief says ‘we want to see a nation of readers who are curious, thoughtful, discerning and equipped to navigate an increasingly complex world’
Singapore is encouraging its citizens to pick up a book for 15 minutes a day under a new five-year national programme to fight brain rot and strengthen the country’s reading culture.
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Meanwhile, here in France The Education Nationale ship (our public educative system) is sinking fast, depriving many kids of any chance to acquire let’s not even talk about any critical thinking ability but the most basic writing and reading skills, as well as the culture of reading that is supposed to go along. A culture which, btw, seems to already be a thing of the past for the generation of their parents, too busy doomscrolling their so essential social media feeds.
I love France.
I love every single part of it with all my heart and my soul. I love it even with its ugliest and shittiest parts and, yes I know, we have had more than our fair share of those. I love its past, its present, and I will try my best to love its future too. But for the last few years I’ve seen so little positive going on, and so many attempts to make things actually much worse…
Thinking about it, almost all of the positives I can think of were personal initiatives. Citizens and actual people trying to gather and to make something good out of the mess so many others insist on creating.
Education-wise, it’s people having to fight against our very own public educative system and its humongous bureaucracy, l’Education Nationale, in order to be authorized to home-school their own kids, in order to not ruin their kid’s future, actually teaching them useful stuff. But then, we’re seeing those same people giving up on the Sisyphean task, deciding the only viable solution is to move outside of France: exil educatif.
(If you don’t know the story: this 9 year old little girl is the youngest to have passed the Brevet des collèges (kids are usually aged 14/15 years old or so, you get the idea: those are teenagers while she is still a child). The parents decided to make her pass the examination as a way to show, well, that their girl was educated alright to say the least, to show that they were indeed competent enough (as they had to fight a lot against our bureaucracy to be allowed to keep home schooling her), and finally, I think it’s the dad who pointed it out in one of the interviews I’ve read, to demonstrate that said examination may actually be a little too… let’s say, not challenging enough. A few months later, facing even harsher opposition from our bureaucracy, they have decided to quit France and to move to Ireland.)
It’s unbelievably sad to see that happening.
Their departure should be discussed by our representatives at the Assemblée Nationale, because it’s a national issue. Not them leaving the country, they’re free to do what they want, but their reasoning, the reasons that convinced they had no choice but to leave the country for their child own good.
Representatives should be working hard to right that absurd and tragic situation, and to put our public educative system back on its tracks instead of allowing it to eradicate any independent attempt at demonstrating it’s possible to do a much better job than they do at educating kids.
France was once a great nation. One of the greatest—Sorry mister Trump, it’s not just me saying that). Its public educative system was highly regarded world-wide, and rightfully so. It’s population was daring and forward thinking.
We’re not that anymore.
I wish the best to this family. And I wish the best to those nations who are taking up the flame of public education we so carelessly dropped to the ground. Just, guys, don’t forget to thoroughly clean it up before passing it along to your own children as in our blind, impotent and utterly moronic rage we may have peed and pooped it. Sorry for that.
Disclaimer:
Don’t get me wrong: not everything is doom and gloom in France. Like not all schools are abjectly failing at their task (which is to teach kids, if they need to be reminded). But there is enough of that happening everywhere to make it a real major issue. And seeing so few of the population worrying about that and its consequences, and so few of our representatives with them, this doesn’t bode well.
You don’t have to listen to an old fart like me. Go ask the kids that are now in the streets how they feel about the way we’re preparing them for their adult life?
Published: 2026 Oct 16