A country cannot continually teach its children to despise their inheritance and then act surprised when some decide it is worth destroying.
That is the warning I took from British educator Katharine Birbalsingh’s recent discussion of France on her podcast, Strictly Education. Known as “Britain’s strictest headmistress,” she puts into words something I have been struggling to articulate: large-scale immigration creates an even greater challenge when the receiving country has lost the confidence to teach its own children why its culture deserves respect.
France’s unrest is heartbreaking. A country with an extraordinary cultural inheritance is again confronting destruction in its streets. Recent reporting describes a movement that began with complaints about teacher shortages and deteriorating school facilities and broadened into protests over public services and living costs, accompanied by rioting, looting, and shooting and burning teachers. Those grievances deserve a hearing. Violence deserves accountability.
Birbalsingh’s argument goes beyond the familiar debate about immigration. In the podcast, she challenges commentators who attribute everything to migrants and their descendants. She points to the participation of white French young people, including students from affluent backgrounds. Her question is why children raised within a Western country would become so hostile toward the society that raised them. That question deserves serious attention.
What happens when children repeatedly encounter a version of history in which their country is principally an oppressor, its institutions are suspect, it’s history is evil, and its traditions are embarrassing? What happens when rebellion carries moral prestige while gratitude is treated as ignorance?
We should teach slavery, colonialism, discrimination and injustice honestly. (For instance, America was one of the least of the slave cultures.) But an honest education must also explain the freedoms, achievements and reforms that are part of the same inheritance.
This is what Secretary of State Marco Rubio was talking about in his speech last week in front of the Acropolis in Greece. He was touting the greatness of Western civilization and giving the Greeks credit for their part in it and encouraging governments to stand up for our Western cultures.
Children should learn how people expanded voting rights, challenged discrimination, defended religious liberty and built institutions through which governments can be held accountable. They should understand both the failures of their society and the principles that make correcting those failures possible.
Otherwise, we give them reasons for resentment without giving them reasons for responsibility.
Birbalsingh describes a corrosive combination: hostility toward Western civilization, weakened respect for authority, inadequate relationships between children and adults, and rapid demographic change without sufficient shared belonging.
That is her interpretation of the crisis. I believe its central warning is compelling.
When immigration occurs on a large scale, integration requires serious effort. Schools, families and public institutions must communicate what membership in the country means: learning its language, obeying its laws, respecting equal rights and accepting responsibilities toward fellow citizens.
A society that cannot confidently explain those expectations makes integration harder.
What, exactly, are newcomers being invited to join if the host country presents its own culture as something shameful? How can schools build a common identity if children from established families and immigrant families alike receive the message that the country around them deserves contempt?
Welcoming people requires more than opening a border. It requires helping them become part of a functioning society.
That includes a government’s willingness to manage the pace and scale of immigration according to its capacity to provide housing, education, public safety and meaningful integration. Leaders who dismiss those practical limits leave communities to deal with the consequences.
But Birbalsingh’s argument also places responsibility squarely on the adults already there.
Parents and teachers help shape whether children view authority as legitimate, whether they feel connected to their community and whether they understand that rights come with obligations. She emphasizes the importance of teachers combining firm expectations with caring relationships. Children need adults who believe in them enough to insist on better behavior.
That principle should extend beyond the classroom.
A peaceful protest is a legitimate exercise of freedom. Burning a school or attacking a teacher violates the rights and safety of other people. A grievance cannot confer permission to destroy what a community needs.
Adults who blur that distinction abandon the very children they claim to defend.
For Americans, the warning reaches well beyond France. We, too, must decide what we want children to understand about their country and what we expect of people who come here to build their lives.
We can acknowledge our failures while teaching that our freedoms deserve protection. We can welcome immigrants while expecting a commitment to our laws and civic principles. We can encourage children to improve their country while helping them feel that they belong to it.
Those commitments reinforce one another.
My concern is the combination Birbalsingh identifies: large-scale migration alongside an education and public culture that weaken shared identity instead of building it. That combination creates conditions for deeper division at precisely the moment a country needs stronger bonds.
France’s troubles have several causes. But the question her argument leaves us with is unavoidable:
If we want the next generation to preserve a free society, are we teaching them why it is worth preserving?
