In the past two weeks, Europe has witnessed demonstrations and riots in several countries. What began as an earnest protest against the poor quality of some suburban French state schools has now become a pan-European movement. Protests in Spain over high rental costs pushed the country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, into calling an early general election, while in Belgium, demonstrators complained about the poor educational outcomes emerging from the nation’s Francophone education system. Violent protests have also taken place in Albania, challenging its potential entry to the EU.

On the surface, these apparently disparate movements have little in common. Yet look a little deeper, and there are a number of common threads beyond the obviously violent nature of some of these protests. But first, we have to look at France.

There is no such thing as a “European dream” to rival the notion, inherent in the American dream, that any individual can progress to a better life through education and hard work. Yet there has been, since World War II, an expectation in some liberal democratic countries that each generation would improve on the chances of the previous one. In France, this was best captured in the postwar period through the financial boom of the Trente Glorieuses, the 30 so-called........

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