Politics
• Analysis
France school closures: Monday's press asks how the student crisis ends
France school closures headlined Monday's press review of 5 October, but the papers' focus was the way out: Le Parisien's front page asked "How to get out of the crisis?", Le Monde carried a blockading student's op-ed, and Le Figaro and La Croix gave voice to classmates and parents. The same review, under the headline "Mum if you see this it's for my future", also followed Boulder, Colorado's climate damages case and this year's Comedy Wildlife Photography awards finalists.
By Haut Monde Post
• October 5, 2026
• 3 Min Read
More than 400 schools were closed across France on Monday, 5 October, and French high school students were set to continue their blockades. Monday's press review, published under the headline "Mum if you see this it's for my future", kept returning to one question: how the confrontation ends. The same review also followed Boulder's climate damages case and this year's Comedy Wildlife Photography awards.
A front page asks how it ends
Le Parisien gave the mood its sharpest form. Its front page on Monday asked, in full:
"How to get out of the crisis?"
Inside, the paper's editorial offered one possible answer: the government may simply wait the crisis out, in the hope that rain forecast for Thursday sends the protestors back indoors.
The blockaders' case, and the pushback
Le Monde gave the movement its own voice, printing an op-ed by one of the protestors. In his view, the school blockades were not the work of "out of control teenagers", but the expression of an anger that had been contained for too long. He cited chronic shortages of teachers and decrepit school infrastructure among the reasons behind the protests.
- •Le Figaro headlined a different anger: that of children with no sympathy for the protestors, even though the protestors are their own classmates, blockading or forcing their schools to close.
- •La Croix followed parents torn between supporting their children's demands for improvements and fearing they will be hurt or implicated if the protests degenerate.
Boulder takes ExxonMobil and Suncor to the Supreme Court
The review also crossed the Atlantic. The US Supreme Court is set to examine the case of Boulder, Colorado, which is seeking billions in damages from the oil majors ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy for damage caused by wildfires.
- •The Washington Post counts it among about 60 disputes in which city, county and state authorities are demanding damages from major historic polluters.
- •For The Atlantic, such cases could pose an existential threat to the oil industry, and a test for so-called "attribution science", the effort by scientists to confirm which events are specifically attributable to greenhouse gas emissions, and which companies bear what share of the responsibility.
Finalists with a wink
The review closed on lighter ground, with the Guardian's look at the finalists for this year's Comedy Wildlife Photography awards: a giraffe's outlandish hairdo, a friendly azure damselfly and a mafia of walruses.
High school students are set to keep blockading schools across France, while Boulder's damages claim now awaits examination by the US Supreme Court.
