Assorted Afflatuses

Today, French high school and university students protested. Again. And, once again, the students had crowded the streets of Paris to protest more liberal economic policies. The students think that a new government headed by the UMP candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, will strip them of workplace rights and create more unemployed young people in France.

Admittedly, unemployment, especially among persons 18-25, has become a real problem in Europe. In the more socialist economies of Spain, France and Italy, unemployment in that age group hovers around 25%. But the lack of work stems not from a lack of governmental regulation, but rather an excess of it.

Employers in France, for example, hesitate to hire new workers because obscene regulations make it very expensive to replace a worker, regardless of how little work the old worker does. Perhaps making it easier to fire people would mean more jobs because employers might actually posses the means to pay them. Quelle bonne idée!

But the real problem lies in education and innovation. When the French government realized that, just maybe, there was money to be made in online search, they did not make funds available for smart people to bring their smart ideas to market. Instead, they created a government-owned search engine, "Quaero." I doubt whether one in ten-thousand Americans has ever heard of Quaero. But even people living in rural China know what it means to "Google" something. Unsuccessful? Just a little.

And when it comes to education, just look at what students do during their free time. Do they sit in class and take advantage of a resource that millions of children would love to have, a free education? No. Instead they hold protests to advocate for change that will ultimately hurt them.

Admittedly, French students probably spend most of their time in class, though the whole "learn instead of protest" bit does make for a nice title. No, the real problem with education concerns the education itself: tests determine far too much of their fate. Rather than learning to think creatively or just learn in the first place, most students just learn enough to pass a test. The result is not terribly appealing.

When I spent a month in France over the summer, I met dozens of high school students who had taken five or more years of English. Only two of them, however, could actually string together a complete sentence. One university student explained that some university-level courses spend over a month teaching students something as simple as telling time.

France, Italy, Spain, Germany and every other socialist country in Europe needs their own Margaret Thatcher to break down the oppressive walls of protectionism and open Europe's eyes to the beauty of capitalism. To the French, then, vote for Mr. Sarkozy.