On Monday, September 4, to mark the start of a new school year, Emmanuel Macron answered questions from the popular YouTuber Hugo Travers. Depressive disorders, climate change, shortened summer vacations, bullying, cost of living... For almost two hours, the French president tackled various subjects of supposed concern to those under 26, particularly emphasizing those relating to education.

Asked about a recent ban on the abaya in schools, a decision described by Travers as a "stigmatization," Macron referred to terrorist attacks to explain the context of the government's initiative. "We also live in our society with a minority, people who, hijacking a religion, come to challenge the Republic and secularism," he said. "This has sometimes led to the worst. We can't pretend that the terrorist attack and murder of Samuel Paty didn't happen in our country," he added, alluding to the teacher from Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (west of Paris) killed on October 16, 2020, a few days after showing Mohammed cartoons to his pupils as part of a lesson on freedom of expression.

Faced with his interlocutor's incomprehension, Macron said he did not want to establish a parallel between acts of terrorism and the dress worn by young Muslim girls. "I'm just telling you that the question of secularism in schools is a profound one," he said, adding these young ladies should not "feel excluded at school."

On the contentious subject of school uniforms, the president said he favored "experimentation" – in line with Gabriel Attal, his education minister – and "evaluation." But he added that as far as he was concerned, an agreed standard outfit "like a jean, a tee-shirt, and a blazer" could also do the job and perhaps be "much more acceptable for teenagers."

In addition to the fight against bullying and the organization of school time, Macron also touched on another, more symbolic subject, that of the environment, saying he wanted every student entering middle school to "plant a tree" this year to "help" meet the goal of planting a billion trees over the next ten years.

Macron also mentioned the creation of a single-fare "rail pass" in French regions along the lines of the one set up in Germany. But he did not elaborate. In Germany, a pass costing €49 a month allows unlimited use of public transport, notably regional trains and buses. At the same time, while Macon was advocating the use of trains rather than planes for journeys of less than two and a half hours, left-leaning and green politicians condemned the travel on the same day of Attal and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to Britanny – an hour and a half from Paris – aboard a government business jet.

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