captured class

Schools, Not War: Europe's Youth Asks One Question

France sent 70,000 police to watch its teenagers. 410,000 marched anyway. In Rome they chanted: "Spend money on schools, not war."

A. Kade

A. Kade

— 9 min read
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An empty school classroom with stacked chairs and a bucket catching water from a leaking ceiling, with blurred riot police visible through the window.
Spend money on schools, not war.

From Paris to Rome to Rotterdam, a generation is asking Europe one question: if you can find hundreds of billions to get us ready for war, why can't you find a nurse for our school?

By A. Kade · Sunday 25 October 2026

Yesterday France put 70,000 police officers on the streets to watch its teenagers walk (France 24).

Rallies were banned in Lyon, Nice and Montpellier. Paris changed the march route the night before and ran hundreds of checks at transport stations. Several cities were still under curfew from the week before. The Interior Minister, who had already admitted his police lost control in some cities the previous weekend and offered to resign, said the "instructions of firmness remain the same."

At lunchtime it looked as if it had worked. By one o'clock the police counted only 35,000 marchers (Rio Times).

By evening, the Interior Ministry's own count was 410,000, with 110,000 in Paris alone. The CGT union said 800,000 (AP / PBS; Rio Times). Most of the marches were peaceful. Near the end of the Paris route there were projectiles, then tear gas and water cannon, and the same in Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Nantes and Strasbourg. The Interior Minister put the arrests at close to a thousand (France 24).

So they came anyway. After the eye in Tours, the hand in Lens, the curfews, the bans and a bill to bill their parents, more than four hundred thousand people walked out again, by the government's own count.

"The young people who have been demonstrating have not been heard," a teacher named Bénédicte Pittion told AP. A nurse, Soumaya Abed: "They are using what happened last week as an excuse to quiet protesters." And a young man called Louis Ledoux-Xatard: "I never imagined that I'd be taking to the streets so much before my thirties."

Before my thirties. Remember that line.

And they're not only in France anymore.

•••

A month, eight countries

It started in mid-September at a school in Créteil, outside Paris: broken buildings, overcrowded classes and teachers who never came back after the winter. You know the rest if you've read Compatible and Solidairement: the eye in Tours, the jaw in Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, the hand in Lens, more than five thousand detained, most of them minors, and a bill that would let the state collect the damages from family allowances.

Then it crossed the borders.

By this week, according to Reuters, youth protests had spread to Italy, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Albania and Greece. In Rome, about 100,000 people marched on 17 October. In Italy, at least 141 police officers were injured and 160 people arrested, minors among them. In Germany, a group called Gen Z stands up has called rallies in 21 cities for Halloween, with more than 10,000 people registered so far. A Dutch student strike and an Italian general strike are set for 20 November (TBS News / Reuters).

In Tirana, students who say they can't afford university have spent weeks protesting against the sale of part of Albania's southern coastline to a luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner. Their prime minister, in office since 2013, answered: "Last year, we had elections, not a revolution" (Al Jazeera). In Liège, students were tear-gassed over cuts to French-speaking Belgium's schools (Brussels Times).

The UN human rights chief has raised concerns about rights violations during the protests in France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Albania (Anadolu).

That makes eight countries in a month.

Every country has its own trigger: a coastline, a budget, a leaking roof. But listen to what they chant, and it's the same sentence in different languages.

In Rome: "Spend money on schools, not war."

In the Netherlands, the student leader Evi Kras told Reuters: "None of us want to go to a battlefield and fight or be drafted for mandatory military service."

That's the sentence. And it should frighten every government in Europe, because it's the most reasonable thing anyone has said all year.

•••

Look at the numbers

Here's what a European under thirty is looking at.

EU youth unemployment was 15.4% in August, against 6.1% for the population as a whole. 24.2% of 15-to-29-year-olds were at risk of poverty or social exclusion last year, against 20.9% of everyone (TBS News / Reuters).

So one in four young people is at risk of poverty, and one in seven of those in the labour market can't find work.

Now look at the other side of the ledger.

EU member states spent €218 billion on defence in 2021. By 2025 it was about €381 billion, up roughly three-quarters in four years. Germany's defence budget has doubled since 2021 and is projected at €117.2 billion for 2026. France has allocated €68.5 billion for 2026. At NATO's summit in The Hague in 2025, allies pledged 5% of GDP by 2035. The European Defence Agency estimates that reaching the 3.5% "core" share alone would take EU spending to around €807 billion a year by 2035 (European Parliament Think Tank).

And in Germany, since January, every 18-year-old man has to fill in a military service survey. From July 2027, men born in 2008 or later must go through a draft medical examination. Service is voluntary, for now. The Bundestag can change that (TBS News / Reuters).

The kids being surveyed for the army are the same kids in the classrooms with the bucket under the leak.

•••

The deal they're being offered

Put it together and look at the deal Europe is offering its young people.

Pay for the past. The pensions, the debt and the housing market that went up for decades while their parents bought in and they rented. They pay with taxes on wages they don't have yet, from jobs that one in seven of them can't find.

Prepare to fight for the future. Fill in the survey, take the medical, and understand that hundreds of billions are going to tanks, drones and air defence, because the threat is real and someone will have to stand on the line.

And do both from here. From the classroom with thirty-five chairs and one teacher, the school with no nurse, and the university you can't afford, at the end of which is a rent you'll never cover.

And when they stand up, all at once, in eight countries, and say "schools, not war"? Then they get 70,000 police, curfews, banned rallies, and a fast-track law making their mothers liable for the windows. Then the President of the Republic, asked what he'll do for them, tells them he "heard" them (Brut).

They heard him too.

•••

Then someone made up a war

Something else happened this month, and it's the strangest part.

As French children marched for nurses, people far from France decided the protests were about something else entirely.

Donald Trump told Macron to "close your borders and take control before it is too late" (ABC News). Earlier he'd written that the protests weren't "about schools" at all, but about "Islam wanting to take over a once great Country" (Fox News).

And the pictures to prove it appeared on cue.

There was an elderly French couple in their underwear, "stripped and robbed" by "far left and migrant rioters," shared thousands of times. It was AI. Full Fact found the woman had three fingers and a masked figure had two heads, and the prosecutor's office said it had received no such report (Full Fact). There was a crowd waving Palestinian flags and throwing fireworks at the foot of the Eiffel Tower: "Paris has fallen." It was AI, traced back to a satirical article (Full Fact).

Macron, whom I haven't spared this month, called the foreign comments "as unacceptable as they are stupid" and said the images showed scenes that "never actually happened in France" (ABC News).

On that, he's right.

Think about how this works. A sixteen-year-old in Créteil asks for a nurse. Within a month, thousands of people on another continent have "seen" Paris fall, from a picture made by a machine and shared by people who've never set foot in a French school. The child disappears. The invasion is all anyone sees.

The French government is no better, by the way. It blames "the ultra-left." Washington blames Islam. Somebody is always to blame except the people who closed the schools.

•••

The case against me, at full strength

Here is what the people who disagree with this piece would say, and they deserve to be heard.

The threat is real. Russia is at war in Europe. In the past fortnight, drones have hit ships off Bulgaria and Romania, and sailors are missing. US intelligence believes a failed drone attack on Germany's Leipzig-Halle airport was an early step in a stepped-up Russian sabotage campaign against NATO allies (Just Security). A Europe that can't defend itself won't have schools to argue about. Defence spending isn't a whim, and nobody should pretend it is.

Some of the protests turned violent. Limoges city hall burned until its roof collapsed. Shops were looted in a dozen French cities. More than 140 police officers were hurt in Italy alone. Berlin police warn that extremists may try to use the Halloween rallies; in one Berlin incident, about 50 people with no link to the school entered a gymnasium and clashed with officers. The Gen Z organisers themselves say: "We clearly distance ourselves from violence in any form." They're right to.

And the anger has no centre. In France, 77% of young voters back either the National Rally or France Insoumise (TBS News / Reuters). That's not a generation moving left or right. It's a generation walking away from the middle, and the people who will try to harvest it don't all wish Europe well.

All of that is true. None of it answers the question.

The question is not defence or schools. A continent spending close to €400 billion a year on defence, and planning for double that, can find the money for a school nurse in Créteil. If it can't, that's a choice. And the choice tells a sixteen-year-old exactly how much she's worth to the country that wants her to fill in the military survey.

•••

What they're actually asking for

Strip away the curfews, the fake pictures and the speeches, and look at what the French students asked for before Macron's address (The Week):

  • school nurses
  • support for students with disabilities
  • the end of Parcoursup, the national admissions platform for higher education
  • reform of school timetables

That's the whole list. No revolution. Nothing that costs a fraction of one frigate.

Their governments' answer has been police, a bill and a meeting "in the coming days."

•••

Schools, not war

I've written this month about an eye, a jaw, a hand, a bill and a word.

This is what they add up to.

Europe is asking its young people to be taxpayers before they're workers, soldiers before they're students, and patient while the roof leaks. When they say no, it's insulted that they raised their voices.

Every adult who has ever said "the young don't care about politics" should go and stand in Rome and listen to that chant. They care. They've read the budget, and they can count. They've noticed the money exists. It's just not for them.

So here's my answer to the people who looked at children asking for nurses and saw an invasion, who made fake pictures to prove it, who said the young should be grateful and quiet and ready to serve. To the ones who sent 70,000 police to watch children walk, banned their rallies and called it firmness:

Fuck you.

They asked for a nurse. You built them a war.

And they noticed. In eight countries, in a month, in different languages, they've noticed. You tried to make the crowd smaller with police, bans and curfews. Four hundred thousand came anyway. You can't make them un-notice it.

Spend money on schools, not war.

It's the most reasonable sentence in Europe. And it's the only one nobody in power wants to hear.

•••

A. Kade writes The Kade Frequency, an investigative publication on institutional power, financial capture, and the long project of making democracy something real.

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•••

Sources and references

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