The last musical notes of the campsite’s “foam party” are still ringing in the heads that we must already relive, on this morning of Tuesday September 1st, an often traumatic experience after several weeks spent in shorts and flip-flops: putting on pants again. Put both feet down, the work starts again. The colleagues are still there. The avalanche of emails too. Nothing has changed, or almost nothing. However, whether we are anxious or enthusiastic, depressed or excited, the start of the September school year remains, each year, a special moment.
It will be particularly so, in France, for hundreds of thousands of high school students who will, unwillingly, be amputated as soon as they cross the gate of a part of themselves: their smartphone will be snatched from their hands at the entrance to the school, as Emmanuel Macron wished just a few months ago.
Restart the machine
This is, symbolically, the main change in the start of the school year that the Minister of Education, Édouard Geffray, promises without fuss or controversy. For the rest, from elementary to middle school, nothing but the very classic: we will worry before noon to know if our children, who were nevertheless starting to gently attack us on the system, are going through their first hours of school peacefully with their new teacher. Then we will focus, during this first half of September, on relaunching the machine and the precise organization of our personal diaries.
This delicious routine, that of “real life”, will take over again, a modest lull to savor before sliding, whether we like it or not, down the dizzying slide of this 2027 presidential election. It is difficult, for the moment, to measure the outcome and the consequences. But let’s not think about it just yet. After putting away the flip-flops and putting the pants back on, there is indeed a little time before we hold our hands on our waists, “so the caterpillar doesn’t derail”.
