The kids might have brains, as you say, but they also have parents. Parents who are French. Parents who will gloat. Let the kids stay home and help them finish up the wine.
I agree, French kids' parents may well have brainwashed them, but these are just kids, adolescents. And we have a chance to prove to them what America and Americans are really like. This might not seem so important, but look what happened to Natalee Holloway. What if Joran Van der Sloot raped and killed her, the latter probably to shut her up, and then dumped her body somewhere. What would motivate such behavior? Alcohol, drugs, basically no supervision But he's Dutch and grew up in Holland. There's a lot of anti-American feeling in Holland going back years and years, not just the latest flap over GW and Iraq. What if back in Holland, as Joran grew up, the VDS dinner table conversation consisted of discussion of world affairs and in general, America bashing? Wouldn't he take special pleasure in giving this American 'slut' as he called her to her mother's face, what she 'deserved'?
Sounds far-fetched? Some years ago, a Dutch family moved next door to me in MA. Several children, two parents. After a year or two, they became American citizens, and continued to go back to Holland fairly regularly to see family. One trip ended in disaster when two of the Dutch cousins, a teenaged girl and her brother, called my neighbor's daughter, 11, an 'American bitch' and threw her into a canal. They endured endless anit-American rants at family gatherings, curses to curl your hair, and they stopped going to Holland.
This American visit for French kids might be a perfect antidote to the usual venom they hear on a daily basis back home.