Soon a baccalaureate, patriot mention? On March 25, Édouard Geffray, Minister of National Education, announced, at the Paris Forum for Defense and Strategy, that participation in “defense and global security” classes would be « mentionnée sur le diplôme du baccalauréat » et “Valorise sur Parcoursup”. These classes, aimed at middle and high school students as part of their education, will last three years, compared to only one until now, and will be renamed, at the high school, “defense and national cohesion classes”. Objective: to raise awareness of defense issues in an international context of rising tensions and the threat of conflict. But, while these classes are becoming more widespread, the way in which some are carried out is puzzling.
Playing police and demonstrators
On November 6, 2025, a citizens’ rally – a day of discovery of professions in uniform – is organized for the “defense and global security class” of the Michelet high school in Fontenay-sous-Bois (Val-de-Marne). The Fresnes prison guards’ stand offers students a “Live my life as an inmate” workshop. On one side, a team of young people put on the protective equipment of prison guards. On the other hand, another team plays the role of inmates. They are invited to “test the solidity” of this material… by hitting the first team with a baton. The recalcitrant fake detainees are then pinned to the ground by real prison administration agents. The educational objective of the activity? Make these teenagers understand that it is futile to revolt against the police.
This scandal pushes Virginie*, the mother of Roman, 14, who attends a college not far from Dijon, to contact us. “During the back-to-school meeting, we were told that my child’s class trip was organized as part of the “defense class,†without answering our questions about what that consisted of.†By searching on the internet, she understands that the defense class will result in regular interventions by soldiers in her son’s class. “For me, defense and citizenship are two contradictory things, the army is a hyper-hierarchical institution which is in no way emancipatory.”she explains. With a few mothers of the students, she let the establishment know that she did not consent. In vain.
A fascicle financed by Stérin
The college then invites Colonel Benoît Royal, head of the territorial unit of the army responsible for leading this defense class, to present the system to the parents of the students. Virginie is far from reassured: through her research, she discovered a France Bleu report on the citizens’ rally in Dijon, in 2025, which took place under the command of Colonel Royal. The children learned to “Repelling hostile demonstrators with all the paraphernalia of the mobile gendarmerie”she learns with fear.
His annoyance rises further when his son returns from one of the colonel’s conferences with the booklet “My First Military Ceremony.” The booklet is written by Isabelle Lecointre, the wife of the former army chief of staff François Lecointre. And is sponsored by large arms companies, such as Dassault, Safran and MBDA Missiles. He would also have benefited from 30,000 euros from the far-right billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin, according to The Chained Duck.
The booklet “My first military ceremony” was written by Isabelle Lecointre, the wife of the former chief of staff of the armed forces, is sponsored by large arms companies, and would have benefited from a financing from Pierre-Édouard Stérin. The booklet deals with the military ceremonies of July 14 and November 11 (but not May 8 with the victory over Nazism).
“For a year or two, we have been alerted to open defense classes without consulting the boards of directors.”deplores David Dumont, deputy general secretary of the Federation of Parents’ Councils (FCPE). During the Paris Forum, the Minister of Education explains that he does not want “not arbitrate at national level the obligatory or voluntary nature” of participation in these classes. It is therefore up to each establishment to make it compulsory or not. If the system is not always voluntary for students and their parents, it is supposed to be for teachers. However, Sophie Vénetitay, from the FSU, reports pressure on teachers to create this type of class, particularly in Seine-et-Marne, where 70 classes of this type have been launched. This pressure is also exerted through teacher training.
Grégory, history professor at the Créteil academy, has registered to attend, on February 13, 2026, an academic training session entitled “Teaching and transmitting peace, through the archives of the Quai d’Orsay,” offered by the Association of Teachers of history-geography. “A general in uniform, displaying his medals, gave us a speech around the idea that war and peace are part of the same cycle, that we must overcome all sentimentalism and prepare to confront it. The objective – admitted by the organizers – of this training was to encourage teachers to create defense classes. Not to recruit, they explained to us, but to change the vision that students can have of the army. They seemed dissatisfied at not being able to reach the most distant circles of the military world.”reports the teacher.
Industrialization of defense classes
This myriad of frictions forms the foam of a groundswell: that of the rise in power of the system of global security defense classes (CSDG). Created in 2005, they remained little used until 2016. From 160 classes this year, they will gradually increase to reach 1,200 classes, or 32,000 students, in 2025-2026. And this, in particular thanks to a long go with me publié à l’occasion du plan « Ambition armée-jeunesse 2022 ».
“A defense class is an interdisciplinary and multi-year educational and educational project, linked to defense, carried out on the initiative of a school, in partnership with a sponsoring entity of the Ministry of the Armed Forces. It consists of times of meetings and exchanges between students and the military spread throughout the year.describes the document. They are aimed in particular at REP (priority education) districts and “isolated rural areas” rather than schools in city centers or wealthier neighborhoods, without it being explained why this priority was set.
Are the military trained to intervene with middle and high school students? Is there control of these interventions, according to what criteria, and by whom? When requested, the Ministry of National Education did not respond to our questions.
The CSDG classes are the bridgehead of a millefeuille of measures intended to strengthen the links between the army and national education, presented in a summary manner in “Acculturating youth to the spirit of defense”, a small khaki booklet published in November 2025. The military can meet young people during career discovery days, observation courses for second and third graders, and during defense and citizenship days… These latter have been refined at summer 2025. On the program, a ceremony to raise the colors while singing The Marseillaise in the morning, laser sports shooting workshop, and, to stay with the theme, the students have lunch with a “soldier’s ration” at midday.
The army goes to even greater lengths to attract students from professional classes. “Marine-colored” bins are offered by the French Navy in more than 100 high schools, while the Army has created “military periods of specialized development” within its units, aligned with the periods of training in a professional environment, compulsory for students, providing them with accommodation and providing them with food and clothing. “The ambition is to guarantee constant and sustainable flows between educational establishments and operational units of the Army offering courses corresponding to professional education courses. The volume of partnerships could increase considerably in the short and medium term.”indicates the small camouflage-colored booklet.
Love of the homeland and pacification of the social body
“The government makes military engagement something rewarding, through this promising social recognition. The army particularly targets the most popular classes, those who, due to lack of social capital, cannot find internships. It’s a way of bringing these young people into line.”estimates Bérangère Basset, of Sud Éducation.
These multiple systems – there are more than 150 of them, according to the Collective against the militarization of National Education – are the fruit of a long-standing partnership. The first army-school protocol was signed in 1982 by the socialist ministers Charles Hernu (Defence) and Alain Savary (National Education).
More or less close depending on the period, these links between school and military institution go back to the origins of public education. “The public school was created by the men of the IIIe Republic, traumatized by the amputation of the French territory of Alsace and Lorraine after the defeat against Prussia in 1870, then by the Communeexplains Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, lecturer in political science and author of The Factory of the National Republican Novel (Amsterdam, 2025). Contrary to Condorcet’s conception of education, who wanted to “make reason popular”, and give students the tools to become enlightened citizens, the creators of the public school assigned it the mission of making political morality popular. Love of the homeland is for them the keystone of the pacification of the social body. With, in our sights, the hope of reconquering these territories”he analyzes.
The fear of recruitment
The historian cites the ruling of July 27, 1882, by which Jules Ferry ordered teachers to make students love “La France et la mère patrie” : “From the age of 11, little boys must be educated in the use of weapons, coordinated marches, topography and gymnastics, in order to assert their temperament and prepare them to be good farmers, workers… and good soldiers.” »he continues. These programs, and manuals like The Tour de France by two childrenwritten in 1877, aim to « nationaliser le roman républicain »believes Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison. “This is how millions of young people died during the First World War, because this war and its objective – reestablishing national sovereignty – were in their eyes legitimate.
The millions of deaths from the two wars, combined with the rise of socialism and teacher unionism, changed the situation. “After the Second World War, there was a certain consensus among teachers on the need to educate for peace. Today, we are witnessing a complete reversal of the paradigm, according to which peace education is almost an obstacle to neutrality… unlike defense education.deplores Paul Devin, former national education inspector and president of the FSU research institute. “School is there to develop critical judgment, but this is not at all the role of the military, who are not known for leaving room for any contradictory debate.”he emphasizes.
“Build a Chinese wall between the army and national education”
The political pressure to bring the army into schools, whether in establishments or in programs, is of course linked to the intensification of conflicts on the international scene and the emergence of powers hostile to the European space and its values (again) democratic. “But above all it corresponds to the doxa of the far right, and now, of the “central bloc†, which thinks that there is a collapse of authority that should be restored through school.â€judge Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison. “However, we must build a Chinese wall between the army and national education. Public education must be provided exclusively by education professionals, not by soldiers whose role is not that. We must teach, not love of France, but education in republican values such as freedom, equality, freedom and the defense of fundamental rights.he said. We have just pantheonized Manouchian, he did not fight for France, but for democracy and revolution. »
“School serves to educate, to forge critical thinking so that citizens can make their decisionsâ€recalls researcher Olivier Schmitt, former scientific director of the French Institute of Advanced National Defense Studies, that It just is! interviewed at length. Faced with the military doctrines of hostile regimes, like that of Putin, which “provide for targeting of civilian populations, through strikes and sabotage operations on essential servicesâ€he is in favor of training the entire society in defense issues. But “The risk is to reduce national defense, which involves all sectors of society, to military defense alone. By wanting to inform about the armies, we paradoxically risk disempowering citizens.”he warns.
