BY DEREK JEFFERS
PARIS - Demanding more teachers, fewer students per class,
and better study conditions, 500,000 high school students, out
of a total of 2.3 million in France, participated in
demonstrations in 350 cities throughout the country October 15.
"A thousand of us - half the student body - came from my school today," said Béatrice, a student from Étampes, a suburb 20 miles south of Paris, at the demonstration of 28,000 in the French capital. "Our school was built for 1,000 students, but now there are twice that many."
Other students described similar problems. Maud Germain, 17, from another working-class suburb, Montgeron, declared, "We want to have the means to be able to study in good conditions. Even when a teacher is absent for a month, he's not replaced. The buildings are in bad repair and there are 35 students per class."
About 280,000 demonstrated October 20 in 240 actions across the country. This time the government mobilized over 5,000 police in Paris alone, where 25,000 protesters turned out.
The cops tried to intimidate the youth, carrying out 18,000 identity checks and arresting 76 young people in Paris.
Predominate in the Paris demonstrations were students from working-class suburbs, many of them young women. Students chanted, "High school students are angry, we're fed up with this mess!" and, "All together, all together" - the popular slogan of the November 1995 wave of strikes and demonstrations that forced the government of former Prime Minister Alain Juppé to back off from some of its attacks against public health care and retirement benefits.
In Paris hundreds of enraged youths tore apart parked cars and broke into some shops, making it difficult for many school contingents to reach the demonstration route On October 13. Demonstrators responded to these actions by massively chanting, "Only one solution - demonstration!"
The afternoon of October 15 Claude Allegre, education minister in the government of Socialist Party prime minister Lionel Jospin, met with a delegation of 10 high school students chosen by the organizers of the demonstration.
A series of further meetings were planned on specific points, but members of the student delegation explained that "no really concrete measures" had been announced. "We are still skeptical and wary. We ask the students to stay mobilized," declared Loubna Méliane, a participant in the delegation.
Teachers unions are supporting most of the student demands and were considering participating in further national high school student demonstrations planned for October 20. At the October 15 demonstration in Paris, students cheered a small group of teachers who stood with a union banner along the march route.
Derek Jeffers is a member of the General Confederation of Labor at the Alstom transformer plant in Saint Ouen. Jean-Louis Salfati contributed to this article.