‘Not a problem of short-term solutions’: French students demand structural change, better conditions

Staying with the story next, and we can bring in Goucher Tuncel, Doctor of Sociology and Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Paris-Est-Créteil. Thank you so much for joining us on the program today. How did a student movement here in France escalate so quickly? Thanks for having me. So it escalated very quickly because it began from a high school in Créteil, just outside Paris. so that school was missing teachers social work and school psychologists and about two weeks it spread to the whole Paris region then to the rest of France to universities even to Liège in Belgium and why it spread so quickly so first it is a highly materialist movement which means that it has deeply materialist demands so high school students talk about dilapidated buildings classrooms that are freezing in winter and overheated in heat waves teachers teachers who are absent and never replaced and also they are really conscious about this huge gap between high schools in the suburbs especially in Saint-Denis and the prestigious high schools of central paris what is striking is that the students the high school students in central paris is very aware of this huge gap and they are demanding more materialist solutions like dignified social and materialist conditions for the high schools in suburbs. So this is one of the reasons why it spread so quickly. So the high school students also used social media like TikTok, Discord which also contributes to its spreading but the main reason is that there are these materialistic needs that the young generation is very aware of and and that is the why it was so spread so quickly and massified also so quickly okay so the the high schoolers have been talking about calling for more resources uh to the more disadvantaged schools now the government has made some concessions in recent days they say they will deploy some 3,000 um teachers to um to fill in the gaps for those missing schools uh they've already started to deploy some but why have these concessions not calmed the protests out on the streets uh because because the i mean the protesters the young generation generation sorry uh for them and for the students unions also this is not enough because this is not a problem of uh short term solutions this is a structural uh problem that they are denouncing and um their demands are structural changes for example uh free public education as you know uh is written into the constitution in France so it's a social contract but this social contract is being eroded through underfunding and already through for example Bienvenue en France it's a policy which imposed much higher fees on non-European students since 2018 and also they are denouncing Parcoursup which is its main reason is that in universities there are not enough places there are not enough teachers in universities so um this is a system there which affecting their futures and they know it and so they want structural reforms they want for example the suppression of Parcoursup and they want much more um uh financial solutions for example 10 billion euro euros if i'm not mistaken was one of the revendication of one of the high school students unions and also students unions i want to ask about some of the language that that has been used to describe this movement because we have the french government and certain presidential candidates who are accusing the far left France Unbowed party of being behind this student movement how does that kind of language hurt the government um i mean the so there is elections coming up and I think that I mean we all know that this kind of movements can be instrumentalized by the political parties for example on the one of the Bruno Retailleau sorry accused La France Insoumise of organizing an insurrection and suggesting banning it La France Insoumise made a declaration that is I mean showing that this is the students movements organized by students um so i guess that it will not be very effective uh this kind of language to like damaging the movements and very briefly we have big protests being planned for saturday students uh plan on joining yellow vest protesters public sector workers farmers this is a sort of convergence that the government has been seeking to avoid Yes, so this Saturday is very important, and very concerning also in point of view when we think about the police repression so far. So one of the concerns is, of course, police repression and how the government will respond. And also the convergence is very important because political parties can begin to contribute more and more to the movements. And if the movement generalize, meaning that if it continues after the autumn holidays, which is very near, then it will become effectively a social movement, meaning that all of the sectors or the most of the sectors of society join the movement. And after that, I mean, the pressure on the government will be much more important. So this Saturday is important, but which is more important is the holidays in autumn, autumn holidays, sorry, at the end of October. Gucci, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you for joining us on the program today. Thank you.