As always, after a shock, you react; and France has reacted. Magnificently. Emotionally, socially, politically. People have taken to the streets. The country has commemorated. It has called, quite rightly, for a firmer stance to be adopted in the face of terrorism; and has stressed the need for building capacity in terms of security, surveillance and secular education activities. But we are still a long way from having achieved the desired objectives.
In fact, the bulk of work remains to be done: In order to do so we must realize that violence stems largely from frustration and misunderstandings that block integration and not from a so-called rejection of social integration in some of our fellow citizens relative to the values of French society. We all want to experience modernity, and the French, especially young people, seek something else only when it is not made available to them.
So what is the point of being tough on offenders if 50% of young people from deprived suburban areas have no other opportunities but illicit trafficking? What is the point of teaching secularism if it does not enable every human being to realize his or her maximum potential and if it only appears all too frequently as the victor’s ideology imposed upon the vanquished for those denied knowledge and success?
And it is critical for the country to understand that the priority task is to fight segregation to which the most disadvantaged are subjected: At a time when the country seems to veer toward the right-wing side of the road, the answer is a leftward shift.
Three forgotten projects, that I have been talking about for years here and elsewhere are now priority projects, without a doubt, in addition to police firmness.
Urban development and policy: Grouping together municipalities, installing town halls of merged municipalities in areas considered to be most difficult, suppressing departments, redirecting each other’s resources, and those of Pôle Emploi to the liveliness of neighborhoods and to create incentives for the founding of new businesses by the unemployed.
Guidance in school: Placing priority in teaching all to read and write fluently in French; stop sending systematically children from disadvantaged neighborhoods to technical and vocational schools and short technical training programs; for this to happen rethink guidance and career counseling, and first enhance the status of guidance counselor, mainly entrusted today to people who have not been trained for that, and who do not have an obsession in promoting social mobility as they should. This also requires, as I have already said in the past, closer relations between parents and teachers and the development of boarding schools throughout the country, especially for children whose parents cannot afford to provide them with the necessary space and peace of mind to study. Especially for girls because they bear the brunt of it all.
Lifelong training: Attracting after their school years those that school has failed to keep; today they are probably more than 3 million and provide the bulk of long-term unemployed. This requires us to reorient life-long learning to the unemployed; and therefore, urgently, call into question the law which has just entered into force and devoting to job seekers only 3% of the available funds.
Let it not be said that there is no money for all this: More than €40 billion is blown away on housing assistance, more than €30 billion on lifelong training, and even more on administrative duplication and overlaps. All this is more than sufficient to launch these projects, which in turn will be, incidentally, drivers of growth for the country.
Indeed, these three projects form an integrated whole: If we are so successful in France in our population policy, it is because we follow the child long before birth until his entry into school. We must do as well with our democratic political process, which means having in all things the obsession for social justice, and therefore of social mobility. It is an awesome societal project. We can be successful. We must succeed. At least in remembrance of those who have paid with their lives our negligence, for security and integration.
j@attali.com