France Solves Teacher Shortage by Making Riot Police the New Substitute Teachers
Officials say the officers' existing equipment will double as classroom supplies, from shields for group projects to batons for pointing at the whiteboard.
With hundreds of schools already short on staff, the education ministry unveiled what it called a 'cross-departmental solution' to the vacancy crisis: deploying riot squads directly into classrooms as permanent substitute teachers.
According to the plan, officers already stationed outside schools during the protests will simply walk through the front doors each morning instead of forming a perimeter. Their helmets, the ministry noted, meet all existing safety codes for shop class, and their shields can be repurposed as presentation boards during group work.
"We came together as one administration, divided," said a ministry spokesperson, "before excusing ourselves to attend a subcommittee on whether tear gas qualifies as a science demonstration."
Teachers' unions have reportedly asked how a force trained to disperse crowds will handle a room of distracted ten-year-olds, but the ministry maintains that crowd-control experience translates smoothly to hallway monitoring. Students, for their part, say the new arrangement at least guarantees someone will finally show up to class on time.
The ministry says it will evaluate the program's success by whether disruptions decrease, though it has not clarified whether it means disruptions to lessons or disruptions to traffic.