For days now, there have been protests by students and pupils in various French cities.They are protesting against the measures imposed by the government, which are harming young people on many levels. For example, since September, schools in France have been left open without adequate health protection.
Students, on the other hand, have been locked out of universities since last October and have only online classes. This is also reflected in the mental health of many students. In addition to the consequences of the curfews and the absence of social contacts in the university, many students have also lost their jobs and are now facing the fact that they can no longer afford their housing, for example. Even though the government is now trying to give in and gradually offer attendance classes in the universities again, as well as cheap meals for students in the refectories and free psychological counselling, these are only drops in the ocean. In part, the old French state also showed what it thought of the protests and let the brutal cops loose on the young people. The comrades of the Jeunes Révolutionnaires, who took part in the protests in many cities, said about the situation of the students and pupils in a speech:
"On Friday 15 January, a medical student in Paris took her own life. The week before, two students from Lyon also attempted suicide. These tragedies are sadly reminiscent of the suicide attempt of Anas, a student from Lyon 2 University, just over a year ago, who set himself on fire in front of Lyon's CROUS to denounce the precarious situation of students.
This despair of many students is not by chance. It is the consequence of an economic system, capitalism, which keeps billions of people in poverty for the benefit of a few thousand exploiters, millionaires and billionaires. The social violence of this capitalist system is present in the whole society and therefore also affects students from the proletariat. It must be said loud and clear that what politicians, media and bosses call "equal opportunities" does not exist! The children of the rich go to schools for 10,000 euros a year, where they are among themselves, among members of the same social class. These schools train the exploiters of tomorrow, the executives, the big bosses, the financiers and the personnel managers who daily exercise their violent domination over the rest of society. Too many children of workers do not even have access to higher education. Too many of them are unemployed or live on precarious and alienating temporary jobs. This is not a coincidence! The school system, the education system, corresponds to the demands and the will of the exploiting class, it aims to educate in an absolutely separate way, on the one hand, those who will form the bourgeoisie tomorrow and, on the other hand, those who will form the proletariat tomorrow. And these inequalities also show up in higher education: If only a minority of workers' children go to higher education, how many of them get a degree? How can one study properly if one is forced to work at McDonald's or Uber Eats while studying to pay the rent for one's unhealthy 9-square-metre flat? How can one live on scholarships that are far below the poverty line, scholarships that foreign students are not even entitled to? How can you not get depressed when the combination of work and study means you don't even have time to see your friends and enjoy the pleasures of life? This is the daily life of too many students, it drives too many students to drop out of their studies and increases the inequalities between the children of the bourgeoisie and the children of the workers.
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Faced with this situation, we must organise! We are in a revolutionary era in which this system will be swept away. We want a society in which education does not depend on the demands of the employers, but is organised in such a way that society functions in the interest of the whole population! This is only possible in a society led by the working class. Our task today is the conquest of power through socialist revolution. To fulfil this task, we must organise ourselves to struggle and resist. Dare to struggle, dare to win!"
