PARIS — Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced Wednesday evening that all 528 occupied high schools across France will be demolished and rebuilt as fortified learning compounds, with students required to live inside them until they complete the full national curriculum, a process officials estimate will take between four and seven years.
« The anger of the young does not come from nowhere, » Lecornu said in a televised address. « So we are giving it somewhere to live. Permanently. With a cafeteria. »
Under the plan, each lycée will be surrounded by a twelve-meter wall, staffed by a rotating garrison of retired teachers, and supplied by a single weekly convoy of frozen cassoulet. Students who finish their baccalauréat early will be permitted to leave through a designated exit, provided they first complete a mandatory civic re-education module on the theme of « gratitude for the Republic. »
The first compound, in Dunkerque, is already under construction. Local officials report that the concrete pour required the evacuation of three adjacent neighborhoods, whose residents have been relocated to temporary housing in a repurposed IKEA.
« We are not punishing anyone, » Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said. « We are simply ensuring that no student is ever again deprived of courses for several weeks. They will be deprived of nothing. Ever. »
By next week, the Ministry of Education expects every prefecture to submit a list of local landmarks suitable for conversion into annex classrooms, including two cathedrals, a water park, and the entire left bank of the Rhône in Lyon.