I witnessed my first student grève (strike) today. Apparently, this has been happening all over France for weeks, but Lunéville's just a bit late to the party (fashionably late, you might say). Basically, students were blocking the entrance to my school, and marching down the streets with students from the other school to protest a new educational reform.
From what I've been told by teachers and students, the new reform would change the seconde year from 3 trimesters to 2 semesters, with each semester consisting of core classes and electives (sound familiar?). This would cause the secondes to go from 28 hours/week in class to 22 hours/week, which would also mean that teachers would lose hours. And this is absolutely unacceptable to students. However, I'm not quite sure why the students were manifesting, because Clotilde told me that Xavier Darcos, the French Education Minister, was supposed to announce yesterday something about the reform, but he didn't. Thus, "they have no idea what they are protesting."
I know, I know, this is totally stereotypical of France, but they do strike a lot, especially from an American point of view (because I remember one significant strike in my lifetime--the Tyson Foods strike). But hey, at least they're taking an active stance when their government does something they don't agree with, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment