At first, the question began to arise discreetly. Everyone would share their own little anecdotes. We would laugh about it between classes, over coffee. And then we would quickly move on to something else because, after all, you don't want to come across as a reactionary.
But over time, the anecdotes have multiplied. Laughter has given way to questions, even dismay. What is happening?
And then suddenly, the ripples became a tsunami. In the space of a few years, a milestone was reached. A whole wave of delusions and stupidities hit the university: feminicides, inclusive writing, patriarchy, systemic racism, white privilege, decolonialism, and so on.
During classes, tensions with students have become chronic. Debates quickly turn into fistfights. The situation can change in a fraction of a second. At best, the students sigh and roll their eyes; at worst, the clash is head-on. A history teacher explains that she no longer dares to discuss slavery; a colleague says that the students deny him the right to choose the images he suggests as illustrations. He draws a bitter conclusion: I can no longer do my job.
And then there are the tears. Yes, the tears. It becomes chronic, often for nothing. The slightest annoyance is enough. We ask our colleagues if we have become a monster and we discover that everyone is confronted with it. Tears are now the predictable outcome of any debate of ideas, of any confrontation.
How did we get here ?
The drop in standards cannot be completely ruled out. Screens and social networks have been there, perhaps drugs too. But standards are a convenient excuse. Our young people are far from stupid. They are even terribly endearing with their obsession with inclusion and kindness, even if they do not see the contradictions. During the mobilization against pension reform, they spontaneously replaced applause with hand waving, without realizing that their solidarity with the deaf leads them to denigrate the blind.
The explanation therefore lies elsewhere. In reality, the new generations are torn between two considerable forces, the meeting of which is potentially destructive on a psychological level: on the one hand, family overprotection, on the other, an accumulation of terrors.
The first is the price of internationalization. To cope with increased competition, parents have increased extracurricular activities and pressures of all kinds in the hope of increasing their children's chances. The rise in real estate prices illustrates the return of a territorial struggle aimed at protecting one's family, while the massive use of private schools among the urban bourgeoisie has finished off a moribund public education system to the detriment of the middle and working classes. The introduction of Parcoursup, a terrible source of stress for these young people who are told that their baccalaureate is no longer worth anything, has added the last straw to this ocean of pessimism.
At the same time, young people have seen a proliferation of terrifying events: after the Islamic attacks, they have seen epidemics return. The Russo-Ukrainian war has given credence to the hypothesis of a war with China. And then there is of course the climate crisis, this new Great Millennial Fear, which makes students say that we must "save the planet" as if it were likely to disappear. This millennial anxiety is grafted onto a context of physical insecurity. Because young people experience it every day: the streets are no longer safe. You can die on the tram or outside a nightclub because of a sideways glance. Girls are rediscovering the fragility and vulnerability that they thought they had freed themselves from by their remarkable rise in society.
Yet, not only are all these fears distressing in themselves, but their effects are multiplied by the absence of solutions. No counter-narrative provides a lifeline, no alternative provides reassurance, no promise of a bright future provides a branch to cling to. The only prognosis envisaged by the media is that the National Rally will come to power, which corresponds to the worst-case scenario for this generation bottle-fed on the milk of anti-fascism.
If no collective narrative comes to take over, it is hard to see what could change. We must expect to make our students cry for a long time to come.
