September 2, 2024 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French
On the night of August 19-20, at least 2,043 children slept on the street. Unicef’s count only takes into account calls made to 115 (the emergency accommodation service) that found no solution. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other minors are also sleeping rough this week. Since 2020, this figure has been rising steadily, a far cry from government promises to make the plight of young people a priority.
School in the eye of the storm
Poor neighborhoods are often synonymous with dilapidated schools: not enough furniture, rodent infestation, rain infiltration. In Marseille, some teachers have to teach in the corridors. And while money is rarely lacking to turn buildings into bunkers in the name of safety, thermal insulation is still lagging behind in many of the 51,000 schools – the Senate did issue a report in June 2023, noting that the available funds were largely under-utilized and promising a law, but nothing has moved.
At the start of the new school year, there is a shortfall of at least 3,000 teachers, who have not been recruited due to a lack of candidates for the competitive examination. The profession has lost its appeal. Teachers’ salaries have fallen 25% behind the cost of living over the last 20 years. Job cuts have made family reunification transfers more difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. Working conditions have deteriorated.
So local districts plug the holes as best they can, hiring contract staff who are all the more reluctant to stay as they are even more poorly paid than permanent staff. In the end, it’s our children who suffer. For in bourgeois circles, it’s been a long time since offspring have attended public schools, while that small fringe of private schools only attract the offspring of the rich.
They’re playing for time…
And yet, if National Education Minister Belloubet is to be believed, everything is going swimmingly. She assured the press that the “reforms” underway would be completed. Level groups in French and math in 6th and 5th grade are unanimously decried, because they will accentuate an already strong social sorting in the French education system. Should we rename them “needs groups” and call it a day?
Neither Belloubet nor the rest of the government seems in any hurry to resign. Yet they were largely outvoted in the elections at the beginning of the summer. And among the working classes, the Macronists (followers of current President Macron) are not just rejected, but detested.
… Let’s send them packing
In its weekend editorial, [big daily newspaper] Le Monde expressed alarm at Macron’s failure to appoint a new Prime Minister, with “the risk […] that the French will feel that voting is pointless and that protest will take to the streets.” Good point, except for one detail: it’s not a “risk,” it’s the solution!
It’s not from the [presidential] Élysée Palace or [prime minister’s residence] Matignon that we’re going to get, for example, the repeal of the pension reform that obliges people to retire at 64, let alone a return to 60 years of full pay for all. The potential PMs are leaning more towards retirement at 66!
The same applies to just about every problem we face. The only way to solve them is through struggle, not through these institutions made by and for the owners.
School bus drivers in several towns will be on strike in the next few days, and teachers in the French education system will be called on to strike on September 10. It’s a good thing that anger is being expressed right from the start, but this can’t be a one-off. For their part, the [union confederations] CGT and Solidaires are calling on all workers to take action on October 1. It is imperative that we do not limit ourselves to isolated days, but to move towards an overall struggle, towards a general strike. Unite our anger to make the rich shareholders and big business pay.
