For my non-French followers in the comments asking why/how this is happening, I will try to explain what is going on with the university/post-high-school mess that is going on in France.
Basically, the previous system was very complex. You have tons of possibiities after schools, going to bachelors, technical two-year degrees, professional two-year degrees, very expensive private schools, and everything is mixed in. You had to choose between those and if you didnât get in what you wanted, you were waitlisted. For public universities though, people would be selected via a random roll, which imo was bad, but everyone had a fair shot (even though thousands of students would be left with nothing every year).
Therefore Macron (our current president) and his government decided to scrap the previous system and replace it with a system that would allow selection at entry level for universities. And if you canât get in because people decide youâre ânot good enoughâ, youâre sent for a year of classes to âput you at university levelâ. Not only does he want to do that, but he also wants to get rid of our three-way (literary, economic, scientific) high-school to replace it with a common core and make other subjects mandatory and limited for every student.
The government also loves guilting young students (at the age of 18 !) into choosing one and only one possible orientation, and shames those who âlost years because they chose the wrong pathâ. And basically, the laxity of changing orientations will be, imo, very affected, not allowing you to make mistakes, and making education more elitist in the process.
Students therefore started to block university campuses in protest of this reform, and a few days later, groups of fascists (as presented above) started to attack, some of them even being let in by professors and deans themselves.
I would almost say that Iâm lucky to already be in a masterâs degree, because the state of our educational system is just going downhill imo. I heavily support the students fighting for our rights of education. France has always stated that education is a right, and selection is the opposite of that. And the fact that weâre being under attack by both the police and fascists, tells a lot about what our government thinks of our right to protest and occupy campuses (by the way Campuses are under protection since 1231 and Gregory IX and the police cannot evacuate a campus without authorisationâŠ).
TL;DR : While the previous system of university entry was really complicated and fucked up, the government is trying to make it even harder for students to access to higher education, which led to protests and students occupying campuses. However, we are being met with hostility and violence by both fascist groups and the police that is determined to make our protests stop at any costs.
Additional information : this isnât the only bad thing that is happening in France at the moment, for example, the government is trying to privatise the national railroad system, which is only gonna make the prices higher and close the smaller lines that âdonât make enough profitâ, and railroad workers are also met with the same kind of hostility in the media ; other public services such as airline workers, trash collectors, and public workers, are joining the movement to counter the right-wing politics Macron is trying to implement. The sigh of relief last year when Macron won the elections against extreme right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen was just a sigh of relief that she didnât win ; most French people (or at least leftist folks like myself) knew that Macron was, is and always will be right-wing. But this level of violence is unprecented, and this is the reason why I support all strikers and their right, because Macron will not stop there.
I hope this explains it all, sorry for the long post but I really needed to talk about it, because everyone in the world that isnât French and that is praising Macron right now definitely doesnât know the level of violence weâre enduring right now just because we dare protest for our rights. Police brutality is at an all-time high and protestors canât even go on strike without masks and first-aid kits with them in case of police forces attacking us. Please support us, we really need it.
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