How far away those days seem when our ‘little blond-haired children’ were the future of the nation! Ever since the beginning of the high school student movement, they have been treated by the police as vermin to be crushed, and by the media as barbarians to be tamed (‘assimilated’) as quickly as possible. But before it came to that, they first had to be stripped of all their humanity. And that is precisely where technological development does its job.

From apps such as Pronote and Parcoursup through biometric terminals to connected devices, technology has upended schools to the point of completely reshaping them in just a few years.

This process, far from being neutral or inconsequential, is central. Driven by political decisions, economic lobbying and industrial manoeuvring, technologies create genuine dependencies and trap us in all-encompassing systems from which it is impossible to escape. They materialise the grip of the powerful and embed, in our immediate surroundings and everyday practices, our subjection to both the state and the major industrial groups that impose them on us. They are the armed wing of the enemies of earth and freedom.

The youth ends up being treated like cattle, mere data, zeros and ones that need to be sorted into, on the one hand, the future engineers who will ensure the maintenance and improvement of the techno-industrial social order, and, on the other, the ‘Uberised’ workers, deskilled and destined to drift from one deadening and dangerous temporary job to the next. All this in a world of utter uncertainty, destined for robotic wars, widespread automation driven by AI, and environmental chaos from which nobody will survive.

A brief selection of the 1,001 reasons for young people to rebel, each one more ‘violent’ than all the burnt-out bins you’ll ever come across in your life.

High schools: how to test technology on non-consenting guinea pigs

If you left school more than ten years ago, chances are you wouldn’t recognise anything. Today, schools, temples of knowledge, intelligence and critical thinking, where tomorrow’s citizens are shaped, have instead become the playground for companies and multinationals imposing their gadgets on them.

Among the grievances voiced by high school students and teachers, there are frequent complaints about the multitude of connected devices and apps which, ultimately, cause more problems than they solve. Take, for example, the many digital tablets that do not last four years because they cannot be updated, the ‘interactive’ whiteboards that break down, the inaccessible learning software and the laptops that are beyond repair (or prone to exploding[1], all of which have flooded schools within the space of a decade. All this equipment hinders teachers far more than it helps them, while doing nothing for students except harm them[2]. It matters little, however, since it serves above all to line the pockets of a few flagship companies in the national digital industry and to keep France in the technological race – while reassuring the ‘users’ of run-down public services with yet more grand announcements.

Apps to rule them all

Pronote is a school management software deployed in more than 10,000 schools by Index Education, a private ‘EdTech’ (education technology) company. Accessible via the smartphones of students, teachers and parents, it allows them to manage attendance, absences, lateness, disciplinary measures, grades, comments, school reports, homework diaries and assignments, messages, communication with parents, timetables and room allocations, etc. Though this app may seem very handy at first glance, it gets students used to being constantly monitored. Every move they make is recorded there and is accessible to both parents and teaching staff. Genuine digital profiles are built up as ‘data’ relating to individuals is entered, reducing each person to their ‘file’:

“For teachers, for the administration, for higher education institutions, for future employers, and sometimes even for the student’s own parents, the real student is nothing more than the student in Pronote. And this student is described for a single purpose: to handle administrative procedures, to enroll them for the following year or to reassign them quickly if their educational placement proves unsuitable, to compare their profile with others in order to rank them on Parcoursup, and so on.”

Translated from Face à l’école numérique, nous ne sommes pas seuls, Collectif de l’appel de Beauchastel, Editions La Lenteur, 2026, p. 56

School boundaries have been abolished: since Pronote can be accessed anywhere, school is now intruding even into high school students' beds. A foot in the door of the all-digital world, this app prepares youth to be constantly monitored and to live with an omniscient hierarchy watching over their shoulders. Combined with security cameras and biometric terminals, it is indeed a techno-totalitarian society that the youth is being conditioned for. And every new social movement, every new tragedy in schools, provides the media with an opportunity to justify the deployment of an ever-expanding security apparatus in schools.

How about Parcoursup, the algorithmic system for sorting students’ applications for higher education? Introduced in 2018–2019, and at the heart of the demands of the high school students’ movement calling for its abolition, this opaque system ultimately reveals the school for what it is: a vast, ultra-selective and profoundly unjust process of sorting individuals, some better off than others, within an inhumane industrial society gripped by automation. Analysed by an algorithmic ‘black box’, the youth sees its future fed to the system by AI, even as AI systems have been causing a decline in hiring among 21–29-year-olds for several years, as revealed by a study published on 8 October[3].

And it is, as always, technology – the technocrats’ magic wand, with which they believe they can solve all of society’s ills – that is supposed to quell the students’ anger. 3,000 contract staff deployed thanks to “an AI-powered tool that enables more accurate geolocation and measures teachers’ journey times[4]” (mercenaries, in short) and a pitiful “online complaints platform”? Timetables are unbearable, unmanageable and incomprehensible? Let’s use AI[5]!

Thus, the double discourse surrounding digital technology is, of course, a sham: whilst smartphones have been banned in high schools since the start of the 2026 academic year, whilst Edouard Geffray said last April that he wanted to introduce ‘a mandatory day of digital disconnection’ once a month[6], whilst the harmful effects of screens on pupils (lack of sleep, sedentary lifestyles, obesity, vision problems, mental health issues, attention disorders) are constantly being harped on about everywhere, and whilst the caricature of young people addicted to TikTok is repeated ad nauseam in the media to discredit them, EdTech continues to be imposed and to establish itself in schools, driven by a logic of self-expansion.

After all, what does it matter if schools are crumbling, overheat during increasingly intense and frequent heatwaves, and are riddled with mould and asbestos[7], since new technologies allow lessons to be taught via private apps, with screens (made from materials extracted through violence – the real kind – and blood in every corner of the globe, and assembled in Asia) interposed? The authorities have clearly understood this: trialled during the Covid crisis, online classes are being introduced to circumvent the protest movement.

This is indeed what tech does: it replaces reality with digitality; it creates a separate, artificial world. It renders humans – and nature – obsolete. That is no doubt why millions of French people can stand by and watch young teenagers being beaten up by heavily armed CRS troops without batting an eyelid, whilst swallowing the media’s narrative, which focuses solely on the ‘violence of the rioters’. Screens and the media create a distance, a glass wall between the facts and their perception, ultimately leading to a widespread derealization.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter the Technological System

EdTech technologies dont come from nowhere. They are the product of an ultra-complex industrial system, which we will call the ‘technological system’ or the ‘techno-industrial system’. For Pronote to function, Index Education's data centres are needed, and for these data centres to exist, mines and factories linked by transport infrastructure are required. Accessing Pronote requires a smartphone or a computer. Manufacturing a smartphone or a computer requires lithium, palladium, cobalt and tin, all of which are mined under appalling conditions in Asia, Australia, Central Africa and South America, while the devices are assembled by workers performing mind-numbing repetitive tasks in factories across South-East Asia[8].

Within the technological system, society as a whole is subject to the imperatives of efficiency and production. For such complex systems to function in a coordinated manner on such a large scale, every component must be in its proper place and fulfil its designated function. Every part of the mechanism must fulfil its role. Every road must be clear and passable so that materials and goods can be transported; every factory must be operational to process the materials delivered to it and supply transport operators with products; every point of consumption must be open to accommodate transport operators and consumers; every data centre must be powered to store and distribute digital data; every power station must generate electricity to power the data centres; every user terminal must be connected to use and generate data… Everything must work. Everything must flow.

As for living beings… To keep a road clear, the vegetation must be cut back and animals must be diverted (or crushed). For a factory to run, the workers must commute to it (along clear roads) and keep up with the pace of the machines. For a retail outlet to be open, it needs staff; and for customers to visit it, it must sell things they cannot find elsewhere: food they can no longer produce themselves – or ultra-sophisticated gadgets promoted by mass advertising, for example? For a data centre to store data and for a power station to generate electricity, the local communities must be prepared to put up with the associated nuisances. For the techno-industrial system to function, people must be docile, obedient and predictable. This is instilled in them at school. But technology offers far more effective ways of securing control over populations than simply taming them: from data profiling to widespread surveillance, right through to digital identity. The individual, entirely digitised and at the mercy of a rigid, cold and completely opaque system. This is what we get used to from school onwards, through Pronote and Parcoursup.

Within the technological system, pacifying populations who are rebelling against their alienation and exploitation is a technical necessity, for without this, the megamachine slows down, glitches and could even, without prompt intervention, come to a halt in its infernal race. Hence the necessity to know these populations as intimately as possible. And indeed, why not even anticipate their every move?

In such a complex, sophisticated and extensive system, choice and freedom are nothing but illusions. The only ‘choices’ we are left with are the products we consume.

In this context, how can one believe in the myth of the ‘Republic’s school’ offering equal opportunities to every individual? Under the Parcoursup system, high school students are sorted by algorithms according to their ‘skills’ recorded on Pronote. Their future is all mapped out; they cannot even harbour the illusion of choosing a path in higher education: they are assigned to posts within a vast technical system that is out of control and in disarray.

And chances to do what? To find a place in an increasingly gridlocked job market, by stepping on their classmates’ heads? In the hope of what? Earning a pittance whilst waiting for repeated droughts, heatwaves or resource wars to shatter their daydream[9]?

The technological society, driven by the productivist imperative and born out of industrial empires now hegemonic, is an all-encompassing reality that imposes its logic of efficiency and profitability everywhere. By destroying the natural world and replacing it with a wholly artificial environment, it locks away the future of the youth plagued by anxieties that were virtually unknown until now – anxieties that the term ‘eco-anxiety’ only begins to scratch the surface of.

Against this inhumane and unliveable system, rekindle the flame of revolution

In light of this, continuing to call for more funding for schools is a dead end. The state is not there to guarantee a bright future for the youth; it has always been there to exploit its territory and its ‘resources’ – whether natural or human – as efficiently as possible. And in their eyes, that’s all we are: resources. Overwhelmed by all-powerful multinationals that shape – and effectively control – its infrastructure, the state is powerless to do anything other than crack down on its subjects until order is restored and investors reassured.

It is against the industrial and technological order – which seeks to reduce us to docile and malleable zeros and ones – that we must rise up. The high school student movement, following in the footsteps of the recent uprisings that have shaken the world, is further proof that the thirst for dignity has never ceased to drive us, no matter how high the walls of our technological prison may be.

All that remains for us to do is to carry on and meet in person, drawing on the strategic and tactical lessons of past struggles, to make 17 October and the days that follow historic days that will finally rekindle the flame of freedom!

The welfare state is dead? Long live the revolution!