Angry French students take to the streets. British students don’t – and I think I know why | Kitty Sayers

Young British people have plenty to be angry about. Crushing student debt, private-school privilege, a housing market they can’t enter. Yet unlike their French counterparts, they have little tradition of turning that frustration into collective action. I grew up in France as a Briton, and for years I have watched my French friends do something my British ones never seem to: take to the streets.

“To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! Let’s march, let’s march!” It shouldn’t be too surprising, given the rousing lyrics of La Marseillaise, that France’s revolutionary spirit is not a relic of the past.

The lycée protests in the past week have displayed the organisation and bravery of the French students. In Lens, a 15-year-old lost his hand to a police grenade during a blockade. More than 6,000 people have been arrested, many of them under 18. Hundreds of schools across France are either blockaded or closed. These teenagers know the risks and commit to turning up anyway, day after day. I can’t imagine that happening in Britain, so what makes the French so different?

First, there’s the history. France’s republic was born of insurrection and has never forgotten it. French pupils learn that protest, uprising and rioting are the origin story of their freedoms, so these methods are championed in promoting change. We grew up in school with the idea that if you don’t like something, you have the power to change it. The language of rights, citizenship and collective power is woven into French education. The French Revolution appears in the curriculum twice, for pupils aged 12 and then again at 16; the student protests of 1968 are taught at age 14 and again at 17. Debating is encouraged in schools from as early as collège, or at about 11 years old. Young people are expected to have an opinion and not be afraid to defend it.

Even I, at 11, started to feel patriotic during our moral and civic education classes, despite not having a French passport. Protesting is taught as a legally framed fundamental right and a civic responsibility. Of course, with lycéens not yet being old enough to vote, protest is the next best thing.

In the final year of lycée, pupils study Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social (The Social Contract), which argues that citizens should only surrender their unrestricted natural liberty in exchange for civil and moral freedoms. You give up your individual interests for the volonté générale (general will) – put simply, you pay heavy taxes and in return you expect the country to work. That bargain is how the French understand their relationship with the state. When the government raises the retirement age, lets electricity bills soar or cuts school budgets, that is seen as a breach of the social contract. Protest is the automatic response.

Britons, on the other hand, are subjects of the UK and are characterised more by an American-style individualism and a desire to live and let live. There is less collective spirit. Britain has an extraordinary history of protest, spanning Peterloo, the Chartists, the suffragettes and the poll tax riots, but there is arguably a different cultural relationship to these events. They can be remembered as stand-alone episodes and interruptions to the national story rather than as the story itself. The Thatcher era also did permanent damage to unions, contributing to the British public being a grumbling but compliant one, lacking in organising power.

Because these values are ingrained across French society, and in every generation, the student protesters are emboldened by the firefighters, nurses, lawyers and teachers who have joined them in solidarity. Across social media, you can see these moments of support and unity. A viral video of the mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko, protecting students from the police is a striking example of this. It’s difficult to imagine British teenagers taking to the streets, because they would be alone.

Parents have joined their children in protesting, and have called on other parents to do the same for the planned general strike on 17 October. (This is also a response to the police brutality witnessed in the past week.) Many parents were themselves lycée students and marched against education reforms and cuts. The anti-Macroniste parents (of whom there are many) don’t treat their children as delinquents, but as citizens exercising their rights.

That does not mean every French parent supports every protest, or that French society is wholly united behind its students. While the French state technically encourages protest through the curriculum, the force and violence with which it has met its students says otherwise. And there is resentment of the protests among some students, particularly those who come from conservative households and believe that the blockades are a leftwing plot.

Students in France are not necessarily more political than their British counterparts – young British people are active, but tend to take part in established and larger movements such as Extinction Rebellion or the Gaza protests rather than initiate protests themselves. The biggest difference lies in the French willingness to take to the streets, suddenly and en-masse. Unlike in the UK, the state is something the French are taught to engage with as citizens, and to challenge when necessary. If anything, the lycéens are just being good students.