Furthermore, even if in France the imagination of some working-class theorists remained more open to alternatives than did those of their English and German counterparts, the failure actually to implement any alternative national educational policies there was equally apparent. Despite the evidence that class-conscious workers all over Western Europe were aware of the class character of the education their children were receiving in the public schools, the fact remains that organized political movements acting on behalf of the working classes rarely went beyond asking for higher budgets for and more equal access to the very schools they criticized.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes (Page 114)