Here are some excerpts from an excellent essay on May 68 by a writer named Cyril de Pins. Several French websites have mentioned the article:

We are the heirs of May 1968. It is indubitable. But we no longer see ourselves only in that light. Those, like myself, who were born after 1970, only inherited what was bequeathed to them by the preceding generation, the generation of those who were in their twenties during the springtime festivities regarded by so many as a revolution. And this heritage is indeed impoverished: it consists of a juvenile proclivity to publicly complain and denounce, of an unlimited and blind confidence in youth and in oneself, of a hatred of the principle of authority, and of a hateful rejection of the past.

The Communist Internationale said, "Let us make tabula rasa of the past." May 1968 and its lyrical little soldiers did just that, shouting: "Run, comrade, the old world is behind you."

The least one can say is that they pretty much succeeded: there is no longer a student who knows who Danton or Marat were, who can distinguish a Romanesque church from a wash house, or who can even say who Lenin and Mao were. Students today use history in the same way as their elders: history is good only insofar as it proposes imperfect rough drafts of our modernity.

He describes how spoiled and privileged the generation of May 68 was. How they had never known war, how they had been lavished with the excellent educational resources France then possessed, including knowledge of the regional dialects.

Like all spoiled children, they destroyed what they received, what history had preserved for so long, those languages, those traditions, the instruction inherited from the Jesuits and spread by the Republic. They replaced all of that with their whims, their fantasies and by the memory of their youth.

My generation is the first to have received nothing: no regional language [...], no training in the classics (Latin and Greek classes have closed almost everywhere despite efforts by our elders, such as Madame Jacqueline Worms de Romilly), and what is more serious, no national culture: our students know almost nothing about the history of France, of its classical literature, and their knowledge of French is confused and lax, a consequence of the only demand that is ever really made on them – self-expression (as opposed to just expression). [...]

We received only the narcissism of history's spoiled children and their "feel good" notions; we received no knowledge, no savoir-faire. Therefore, is it not up to our generation to judge the record of May 1968 and the actions of its participants, rather than the generation that has already done enough to deaden the minds of its descendants and deprive them of culture? But THEY are the only ones we hear! For forty years they are all we hear, as if France had begun with their shouts and their slogans; every day they strut, like veterans of a war, when in fact they are recent pensioners. The REAL resistance fighters, who owed their careers to their commitment, had both courage and modesty.

The crisis of French identity is not difficult to explain. Since May 1968, and in conformity with the credo of its participants, France is considered as the land of human rights, and nothing else. [...]

France is a country of rich and numerous traditions: scientific, linguistic, historical and academic. It is a land with an inexhaustible patrimony, but it is threatened by indifference (more and more churches and châteaux are being destroyed one after the other by deadly transformations, or simply from neglect).

The actors of May 68 hate the idea of heritage so much that they believe it can never be sufficiently blamed, or sufficiently shackled, for to them there is no greater iniquity than a heritage. [...] The actors of May 68 have forgotten one important thing: any inheritance is accompanied by debts. They were the first to enjoy the fruits of an inheritance without recognizing the debt, beginning with the one contracted on receiving the inheritance - the obligation to transmit it to the next generation. This debt is a debt left not only by those who preceded us, but also, and especially, it is a debt that ties us to those who will follow us and to whom we must entrust memory and knowledge, for they are the future.

What will those of my generation transmit to those of the next generation? A nation and a history are not built with a good conscience and a few comforting symbols. A nation is built from memories and from the language, not on the sidewalks shouting useless slogans - the same ones for thirty years (the only songs the young have in common with their elders are the very ugly songs of the demonstrations...)

Those who acquired their pensions by throwing bricks would like us to admire them for having enjoyed their privileges for so long without sharing them, and at the same time to shed a heart-felt tear over their exploits. It is not odious any more, it is obscene.

More on May 68:

Remembering the Sixties, 13 February 2008

Rivers of Blood and the Mentality of 68, 14 April 2008

Dany at the Elysée: The Apotheosis of May 68, 17 April 2008

The Meaning of May 68: Population Replacement and Hatred of the West, 21 April 2008