Please excuse my English. This opinion by M. Gouzevitch is both balanced and extremely insightful. But I feel there is one facet he did not mention : class distinctions.

Here ,in the States ,where ,of course ,we do not have an ancient nobility, or a rigid class system, most young people do not feel it is beneath them to perform a variety of jobs after graduation. Their family expects them to work. To expect welfare payments from the state when you are young and healthy is unheard of.

So it is impossible to meet a young person of age 26 who has not held a gambit of jobs, all of which took him up the ladder, and provided adventure as well. Pizza delivery, life guard, baby sitter,gardener, cook, baker, secretary, clerk, museum guide, volunteer, etc. Almost everyone regardless of family position goes through this rite of passage, and it is enriching. One of my nieces who now is a manager with FedEx, went to Alaska at age 19 and worked on a Russian fishing boat. My nephew who graduated from Amherst went to Ecuador and helped plant trees to revive the rain forest. He also went to Nepal and meditated in a Buddhist community for 6 months.Before I married and raised a family I worked au pair in Paris, hitch-hiked all over Europe, found a job teaching tennis in Italy, returned to New York and worked as a correspondent, sales clerk, waitress, and analyst, all the while going to night school at Columbia University four nights a week. No one gave me a penny. I paid my tuition and supported myself.

So I feel if French youth could let go of ’class’ distinctions and see the early working years as a ladder upwards, (in every sense : financial, social, spiritual) it might free them from the idea of needing a « guaranteed » job immediately upon graduation.

I am sorry PM de Villepin was not given a chance to see if his plan could have worked. He is ,in my estimation, a visionary. Contrasted to M. Sarkozy, who seems nrepulsively venal and nakedly ambitious, PM de Villepin impresses me as a sensitive and brilliant man whose voice has been stilled by a hyserical crowd that mas manipulated by the unions. I hope he does not fade away—France needs leaders like him who display moral courage in the face of a street mob.

We do not feel it is a stigma to work our way up, whether we have a degree or not. It’s normal.