Here is a op-ed I translated coming from this morning Le devoir. The text was written by the president and the vice president of a major student federation.To learn more about the strike , see my other diary on the subject here.
Students in strike , intransigent you said ?
Wednesday, the student population will underline a sad anniversary. This fateful date that is March 30, 2004 marks the implementation of a clear message: Superior education cannot be accessible to every layer of society. However, is this message the one of the multiple social consensuses present in Quebec or the one of a government clearly in margin of what is the Quebecoise society since the last 40 years? We believe that to ask the question is to answer it.
At first sight, we seems to scream and mobilize massively for something that seems extremely simple, pragmatic and disproportionate compared the social advance of the quiet revolution. However, behind the sum of 103 millions dollars, shouted many time during the last year, is hidden the preoccupation of a whole generation. The object of this cause goes widely over the frame of the simple amount asked. The tangible image of 103 millions is bore by the will to get a fair place facing other generations.
Globalization and international comparison
several plausible factors made possible this sudden movement, but one in particular can be a draft of explanation of the development of the events. We are a generation which grows under the concepts of globalization and international comparison. Moreover, this globalization and these comparisons exert a pressure on our collective wealth. This pushes this generation to constantly justify the social consensuses we inherited from our parents, including access to superior cycle education. The loans and grant problem is in fact a realization of the damages of neo-liberalism, which accentuates the gap between the social layers and on which our generation can have a direct influence. Therefore, the current will of the students is the just reflection of the saying: Think globally, acts locally.
In contrast with 1968, it is only to maintain the social gains made by previous generations that we rise today .It has been a politic orientation of the Quebec society to favor education as a tool of collective profitability. This will translated, by aiming at the accessibility to superior cycles education, by the creation of CEGEPS and the network of "University of Quebec", but also by the creation of the loan and grant program. Still today, we see how widespread is the support of the different actors of the civil society for this stake that this consensus continues. This government, with politics opposed to every notion of sustainable development, is imposing a pull-back incompatible with the political will of Quebec's citizens to maintain an accessible education system, from which conclusive result come since many year.
Also, the message sent by the expression of the students solidarity is the confirmation the irrevocable priority for a society to keep accessible the only tool of social mobility: The access to superior cycle education. The inter-generational aspect touch the main actors present in the importance to keep equity between people, an inalienable truth , when facing the challenges of the demographic shock. We do not understand why this government is stubborn in taking from us these essential tools to confront the future.
Divert the debate
This government spends much more energy to divert the debate from the important thing at stakes, by multiplying the declaration on the violence of demonstrator or by threatening to dismantle the school calendar. The objective of this government is to discredit the motivation of this fight of students to limit it to an egoist demand from a special interest group putting their interest in front of others. It was predictable they would act this way because, on the question, the lack of long-term perspective and the negligence of the repercussions which guided this decision are not justifiable in any way.
While a generation is speaking to defend the Quebec education system as an harbor of democratization of superior cycles education, it is by numbers that this government answers to the validity of ideas that do not fit in the north-American frame. This attitude, coupled to a year of indifference to the student population made the problem bigger, and this one crystallized around a counter-offensive never seen before. In this context, how can we imagine a different reaction?
This reaction, that some may judge intransigent, is only the image of what we are, of what we want and of the role the student movement plays in society. This social role consists of thinking the future of our collectivity. So, it is fundamentally unjustifiable and impossible to caution a reduction of the grants.
Globally, our generation just demonstrated that we are not paralyzed by cynicism an apolitical attitude. Now, let's give ourselves collective means to build the Quebec of tomorrow to the size of our ambition, of the creativity and the enthusiasm that is animating us.