(Riots in Athens, the Greek Syndrome)
People here always ask me if France is different from Canada. I found one difference.
The students are on strike.
For some time, the French government has been trying to reform the school system, reforms spearheaded by the sinister sounding national education minister Darcos. I haven't been able to figure out exactly what the reforms are (their newspapers don't give as much context as ours), but they seem to involve cutting things and are unpopular.
The teachers were on strike earlier. It was a wussy strike, compared to our teacher strikes. They aren't mandatory here. In fact, I still had to teach class during the "strike". Grumblings about the reforms kept on however.
Recently, the government backtracked on a couple of key reforms, fearing an outbreak of "Greek syndrone" (the picture above), in other words a repeat of the recent, endless youth rioting in Greece.
Nonetheless, there still must be something controversial going on (I am a rather informed commentator, aren't I?), because I found there was a strike outside my school this morning.
The students had blocked all the entrances. Occasionally, they chanted. It wasn't Greece, but then again, I'm not in Paris. Since I'm just a youthful English assistant, I easily gained entrance, with only minor controversy. One student (they weren't my student) was annoyed, shouting "but he's a prof!". Strikebreaker am I.
Mostly I wanted to check my email. There wasn't really much for me to do inside in any case. My class had one student. The strike has to block students who want to go in of course, otherwise what's the point.
So I don't anticipate having to do much work today, unless the strike folds on account of "it's freezing out here! Let's go inside." It's happened before.
But things may yet go according to plan, which was, as described to me by an American exchange student:
"They want to reform things here to make them more like the States. People don't like that so they're protesting. They'll shout and block things here for a bit, then everyone is going to the bars."
Oh yeah, that's another difference. They let the young'ins into bars here.
Update: This gets even more hilarious. I had wondered why they were protesting after the reforms were withdrawn. I guess they're just ill-informed. I'm in a far out rural area. They missed the actual day of protests, found out late about them, and decided to show their solidarity.
Despite the goals of the protests already having been achieved.
Oh well. Reminds me of a story a prof told me when I first found out about student strikes (which apparently started only in 1986....it's never too late Canada). Students ran around the halls of the school, telling the others in the classroom to come out, there was a strike.
"What for?"
"I'm not sure, but come on, we've got to strike!"
update 2: Strike is over, in time for lunch.
