Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: French Invoke Curfews to Quell Youth Rioting, 11/09/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec05/france_11-09.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is a riot?

2. What can a government do to stop a riot?

3. What is a curfew, why are curfews used?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What is happening in France and how is the government responding to the situation?

Cities all around France have set curfews in an effort to quell violent rioting by youths that has plagued the European country for almost two weeks.

2. What instigated the rioting?

The rioting, which has grown into a nationwide insurrection by disillusioned suburban youths who complain of discrimination and unemployment, was sparked by the accidental death of two teens Oct. 27.

The two youth were electrocuted at an electricity sub-station in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, after locals claimed they were chased by police.

3. How severe is the rioting?

The violence has impacted nearly every major city in the country and is the worst civil unrest in the nation for nearly 40 years.

Thousands of cars and buses have been burned, one elderly man was killed by rioters and more than 100 police and fire personnel have been injured, some seriously.

"It spread, like a sort of shock wave across the country," National Police Chief Michel Gaudin told the New York Times.

4. Who are the rioters? Why do they say they are rioting? Is religion a factor?

Although most of the rioters are the children of Arab and African immigrants born in France, many feel like permanent outsiders.

"I am French. I have the paper French. But when you go to the post, the police station, you are not French," a young man told Independent Television News.

Most are Muslim, but the police say the violence is not being supported by Islamic groups, and Muslim leaders issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims from joining the riots.

5. According to the article, how do the young people who are rioting in France feel about their futures?

Alexis Debat, a former French defense ministry official, said the violence is sustained by prejudice that makes the young people feel uncertain about their future.

"Today a French Muslim has one-eighth to one-tenth the chance of a non-Muslim French national with a non-Muslim name to get a job," said Debat. "I mean there is a pervasive, very dark racism in French society that associates the second generation Muslims, these second generation immigrants with trouble."

6. How did the interior minister contribute to the situation?

The rioters were further incensed by comments made by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who called the rioters "racaille," the French word for scum.

7. How role is politics playing in the situation?

Official response to the riots has been slow. President Jacques Chirac did not speak publicly about the violence until Tuesday, the 12th day of violence. The president, who suffered a stroke in September, is considered a lame-duck president with two people, Interior Minister Sarkozy and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, battling to replace him in 2007.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. According to Michelle Rosso, a French teacher, the rioting in France is similar to the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s. Do you agree or disagree? How are they similar? How are they different? Do you agree with the tactics of the rioters? Why or why not?

2. Do you think the French government is responding correctly to the rioting? What would you do differently?

3. What is an egalitarian social system? What does that mean in practical terms? What are some other countries that claim to be egalitarian? Are they successful? Why or why not?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.