I'm not as charitable as you are. Chollet left for the USA, LeCun for Canada. France has an extremely small, but great math community via the ENS/Sorbonne/X sc

I'm not as charitable as you are. Chollet left for the USA, LeCun for Canada. France has an extremely small, but great math community via the ENS/Sorbonne/X schools, but it hardly reflects on a larger trend -- general education. The topic isn't the culturing of a select, few elites, but the education of the larger population.