Source: International Herald Tribune
On December 30, 2005 the International Herald Tribune reported, "Europe's failure to integrate a growing population of immigrants, many of them Muslims, starts desperately early: in education systems that still systematically neglect these and other disadvantaged children, trapping them in uneducated poverty and depriving them of a sense of worth and belonging. The daughters and sons of Turks in Germany, North Africans in France and Pakistanis in Britain are more likely to do worse in school, drop out and end up jobless than their German, French and British peers. Many are grouped together in poor schools and disproportionately few make it to universities. The result is anger - as the autumn rioting in France so powerfully illustrated - and a waste of youth and potential at a time when Western Europe shows lackluster growth and has an aging population. According to Andreas Schleicher, an education expert at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the precondition for turning Europe's uneasy side-by-side with immigrants into a successful multicultural society is to build an education system that actively fights rather than perpetuates inequality of opportunity."