High school students protest massive cuts

Over 130,000 high school students in over 100 cities demonstrated all over France on March 8 to demand the repeal of a new law restructuring their schools. They also want the minister involved, François Fillon, fired. These were the first nationally coordinated demonstrations on this issue, after many regional ones in February.

In France, education at all levels is a national responsibility.

Opposition to Fillon's plan was so strong that the government had to declare it to be an "urgent bill" to get it through parliament. Basically, it limits almost all students to a "basic level of education." They will be trained to read, write, calculate and use a computer. History, geography, modern languages, science, literature, economy and sports would be options that the state would no longer fund.

Special funds that have been allocated to North African, West African and other immigrant communities, as well as poor rural areas, are also slated to be cut. Some 50,000 jobs in education would be eliminated.

Diplomas will vary from school to school. This means that union contracts currently in force won't apply to the starting salaries of students who go directly into the work force. The bosses will be allowed to pay whatever they want.

The right-wing government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and President Jacques Chirac picked January and February to put through the changes because the winter vacations make it difficult for the students to organize a massive national protest. While the right wing has been trying to restructure education in France since 1986, this is the first time it has managed to get a bill through parliament.

So on Feb. 15 the students had organized regional demonstrations. At least one protest was held in every major city and in many small ones. The largest were in Paris and Marseilles.

The weather was miserable in much of France, with hail and cold, blustery winds. Nevertheless, 15,000 protesters turned out in Marseilles, France's Mediterranean port, and from 50,000 to 100,000 in Paris, according to organizers.

As trains from the Paris suburbs--where the workers, immigrants and poor live--discharged the students, they formed up and jogged to the subway, chanting and shouting: "Students on strike! Fillon resign! Fillon, students are going to boot you in the ass!" It was an impressive display of raucous, political anger. But controlled, giving the riot cops in the stations no excuse to intervene.

At the Place de la République, the crowd was exuberant, chanting, dancing, jumping up and down, but it waited until 2 p.m. for the march to the Bastille to begin. Besides focusing on the cutbacks, the slogans and chants made it clear that Fillon's plan would make it much harder for working class youth to get the high school training needed for further education or a skilled job.

All the major education unions in France had contingents in the student-initiated demonstrations, because Fillon's plan not only cuts 50,000 jobs, it also requires unpaid overtime and slashes the services that schools can offer their students.

While primary schools have not had a formal restructuring, Fillon has changed the way enrollments are counted, which has meant some classes are cut and the remaining are overcrowded, by French standards. Parent groups have responded by occupying their local schools and also by participating in the high school protests.

A coalition of trade unions is planning a one-day general strike March 10 of all public employees to raise the issue of the 35-hour week, attacks on the retirement system and to push for a general wage increase. Fillon's plan obviously will also be attacked.

Dunkel was in Paris in February.