Vive les Manif's!!!

Hey everyone, 

I realize that I posted yesterday, but something happened today that was worth taking note of and I wanted to write it down before it gets dwarfed in my mind by Paris this weekend.  

First, as many of you know, the French are renowned for their consistent use of the protest as a tool for social change and discourse.  The world was yet again reminded of this when more than 2 million people were united in a national one day walk out last thursday to protest their governments response to the current economic crisis.  Today I was fortunate enough to be on a bus that was stopped by a manifestation (protest).  I got off the bus to take some pictures, but also because it wasn't going anywhere and then looked for someone who seemed approachable enough to ask what all the fuss was about.  

Some time this afternoon a group of what looked like around 600 students from the Université de Tours François Rabelais took to the streets chanting in unison and carrying signs.  When they arrived at a busy intersection in downtown Tours they proceeded to sit down and block traffic accompanied by the completely unobtrusive presence of local police officers.  They were observed by some bystanders and joined by others  singing chants proclaiming their desire to see better accessibility to education for all and a general opposition to the policies of the current government in this regard.  The protest was very peaceful and unfettered by law enforcement personnel, who were present in surprisingly low numbers for the size of the crowd.  I circled the crowd several times looking for someone handing out pamphlets or something and ended up talking to a guy carrying a large banner at what seemed like the front of the group.  He explained to me that they were protesting the fact that they were voicing their concerns that educational opportunities were not universally accessible to students and that they felt the government need to work toward increasing equity in this regard.

It was at this point that I began to be confused.  After a month in France I have learned that post secondary education is heavily subsidized by the French State.  To the extent that with the exception of a comparably small number of private schools, university is FREE for french citizens and virtually universally accessible.  Still, I knew that their were some fees associated with school and that it was difficult to get loans and/or work during school so I asked a question of clarification: "So are you saying that you think the academic fees at French universities are too high?"

He said: "No, not at all."  He explained that although all citizens can go to university in France virtually free of charge, courtesy of his government that there are two tiers in the education system.  In order to get into the second tier, which is where most of the professional programs are taught, one must compete in what is called a Concourse.  Basically, all applicants to professional programs (law school, commerce, pharmacy, medical, engineering etc.) must write a series of exams and are admitted to the program based on their marks on the exam as well as their course marks.  The exams are extremely difficult and students are forced to compete for a limited number of spaces in their desired program.  If they don't make the grade they are left with no choice but to pursue and general arts or science degree and are faced with limited employment prospects after school.  

The man explaining was speaking very quickly and emphatically and so I was not sure if I had understood him.  I asked some further questions of clarification and then thanked him for his time wishing him all the best.  I took some more pictures as the crowd proceeded to march peacefully back toward the university campus escorted by the police who blocked traffic at upcoming intersections for them.  

As I walked away I became more and more disturbed by what I had seen.  I agree with the fact that the university system is very single minded in its learning/teaching style and that if you are unable to adapt to the going methodology and can't get the grades, you are S.O.L in terms of grad school/professional program placements.  Further, that as a result of this, the system looses people who would be potentially very strong in their respective discipline due to the fact that they have an unconventional learning style.  I have experienced this in my program at The University of Guelph.  But, as far as I understood from the gentleman at the protest, this was not what the group of students were arguing.  Basically, they wanted people to be able to get into any professional program, regardless of their grades.  This way, everyone would be equally assured of an opportunity to get a good job upon graduation regardless of their natural ability and willingness to work hard in school.  My first instinct was to laugh at the underlying socialist principles that were driving this movement.  But after a little thought, something about the socialist label wasn't really working for me.

Having studied marxism to a certain extent as an economics student, I believe that even a well run socialist dictatorship would have some kind of vocational aptitude testing in order to streamline their education system.  At a young age, citizens would be tested to determine their levels of proficiency towards mathematics or science or sanitation services; future educational opportunities in any particular discipline would only be given to those naturally endowed with the respective ability.  What was being proposed by these students was the ability to basically study whatever interested you regardless of ability or work ethic.  They seemed to want to be able to have their cake and eat it too.  It seems to me that given limited resources, and demand greatly exceeding supply for programs like law and pharmacy; that the only reasonable criteria for choosing who gets into a program and who doesn't would be to choose the hardest working and the brightest.  This group of students seemed to think that having to opportunity to go for free and the only requirement being to possess a minimum level of intellect, or at least being willing to work hard enough to make it appear so, was in fact too much to ask.  So it's too the streets!!!

I struggled as I sat on the fence between really disagreeing with this protest and the fact that most of the people in the crowd seemed like cool, hippy types that I would really want to be friends with.  What a dilemma, but still, it seemed like as good an excuse as any to cut an afternoon of lectures and march in the streets with some friends, singing and shouting and carrying signs.  And yet, the whole event reminded me of some discussions I have been having lately.

Due to the large protests in France last week, the topic of les manifestations has come up in several conversations I have had with young French people.  Opinions very as to their efficacy and willingness to participate as much as anywhere else.  One conversation, I'll be it, with a hair dresser that was giving me a much needed hair cut yesterday yielded an interesting thought.  She asked me if they had protests in Canada and I explained that yes of course we did but in nowhere near the frequency that they did here in France.  She cited a news story that I believe dates back to a WTO protest in the 90's where a couple of protesters were killed by police, or possibly video she saw of riot police tear gassing kids in bandanas...something like that.  She asked if it was because we didn't have the same rights as they did in France.  I resisted the urge to scoff, that their democracy was free'er than ours and thought about the question for a second.  I explained that we had the same right to protest peacefully but that Canadians didn't frequently resort to protesting and I stopped there because I didn't feel I could adequately address the reasons why.  

This brings me to the feedback section of this post.  I am interested to know your thoughts as to why you think that Canadians do not exercise their right to protest regarding the many social issues faced by our society more often.  Is it because we are apathetic, is it because we are lemmings and don't care at all, is it because we have some other forum for public discourse to let the government know what we're thinking?  What do you think?

With Love