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Half a century of student protest
Apr. 22nd, 2012 09:55 amThe other day, I was in a park in Gatineau with my partner and our young grandson, while students from the Université du Québec (and others, many from Montreal, who were sympathetic to their cause) marched through the neighbouring streets to protest a planned tuition hike. All of which led me to speculate on how student protest has changed (or not) over the past few decades.
For my generation, the seeds of dissent were sown in high school, if not earlier. We protested against the rules regarding hair length and skirt length and dress codes in general. We protested against corporal punishment and detentions and the requirement that we all recite the Lord's Prayer in the morning. We protested compulsory school attendance and compulsory courses. I recall that our high school handbook (which had to be brought without fail to every guidance class) defended its endless list of rules with a statement something like: Any organization which is part of the community and supported by public funds cannot afford to ignore public opinion. The school authorities were soon to discover that the statement was perfectly true - though not quite in the way they had envisaged, as the winds of public opinion were definitely blowing in the direction of greater freedom for students!
One of the vehicles for our discontent was the school newspaper, The Oscar, named after a mascot for our sports teams. The name later changed to The Agony and the Ecstasy. But while it was student-run, editorial policy was monitored by the staff so that freedom of the press was far from guaranteed. Towards the end of my time in high school, the student editor actually managed to publish an excerpt from the recently-released book "The Student as Nigger" though at the last minute, a teacher (or perhaps the principal) intervened and insisted that a disclaimer-slip be inserted to emphasize that the views expressed in the excerpt were not necessarily those of the students or staff of our school!
But it wasn't only our own little insular world that we complained about. We had student chapters of Pollution Probe which protested phosphates in detergents. We marched in the annual Miles for Millions walk which benefited Oxfam and drew attention to famine and poverty in the Third World. And of course there was the peace movement and the protest against the Vietnam War. Overtly political groups tended not to be allowed to meet on school property but we had contacts in the university communities and learned about evening and weekend meetings of groups like Amnesty International.
Once I got to university, freedoms were of course greater and suppression of dissent considerably lessened. I discovered the joys of women's centres and gay rights movements and campaigns for the legalization of marijuana (something we still haven't accomplished in Canada, except for medicinal purposes). And yes, we also protested tuition hikes. In one year alone, tuition fees rose about $100, which may not seem like much nowadays but in fact constituted a hike of about 20%. Despite our protests, and despite youth culture and the overall climate of the times, the tuition hike went ahead. Ontario's Big Blue Machine was alive and well!
Which brings me back to the current protest by Quebec students. Do they have a leg to march on? University tuition fees in Quebec have long been lower than those in other provinces, even for (Canadian) nonresidents of the province. On the other hand, Quebec taxes are quite high, so a convincing argument could be made that they have earned their right to low-ish tuition fees.
Some folk say that these students are just a bunch of spoilt brats who have grown up (or not grown up) in a culture of entitlement. They're part of an intellectual elite, the argument goes, and since they'll be earning the big bucks once they graduate, then they can jolly well invest their own money now to reap the dividends afterwards in the form of a privileged career and security in their old age.
Humph, I say. Far from guaranteeing an upper-crust lifestyle, a university degree (maybe even a postgraduate degree) has virtually become a lowest common denominator for entering the labour market. Once they get there, earning little more than minimum wage, many of our young people will face years of student debt repayment. The days of a guaranteed career for life are long gone and as for company pensions, employees who are lucky enough to have them at all are increasingly getting the "defined contribution" variety, which is at the mercy of the business cycle, rather than the "defined benefit" type that the postwar generation grew up with. Public pensions? I think they'll still be there, though there's a disturbing trend with this government to move towards eroding those as well.
So while I definitely don't condone the violent means that a few of the more militant students have brought to bear in the current round of protests, I do support the ends they are trying to achieve. Keep fighting the Good Fight, folks!
For my generation, the seeds of dissent were sown in high school, if not earlier. We protested against the rules regarding hair length and skirt length and dress codes in general. We protested against corporal punishment and detentions and the requirement that we all recite the Lord's Prayer in the morning. We protested compulsory school attendance and compulsory courses. I recall that our high school handbook (which had to be brought without fail to every guidance class) defended its endless list of rules with a statement something like: Any organization which is part of the community and supported by public funds cannot afford to ignore public opinion. The school authorities were soon to discover that the statement was perfectly true - though not quite in the way they had envisaged, as the winds of public opinion were definitely blowing in the direction of greater freedom for students!
One of the vehicles for our discontent was the school newspaper, The Oscar, named after a mascot for our sports teams. The name later changed to The Agony and the Ecstasy. But while it was student-run, editorial policy was monitored by the staff so that freedom of the press was far from guaranteed. Towards the end of my time in high school, the student editor actually managed to publish an excerpt from the recently-released book "The Student as Nigger" though at the last minute, a teacher (or perhaps the principal) intervened and insisted that a disclaimer-slip be inserted to emphasize that the views expressed in the excerpt were not necessarily those of the students or staff of our school!
But it wasn't only our own little insular world that we complained about. We had student chapters of Pollution Probe which protested phosphates in detergents. We marched in the annual Miles for Millions walk which benefited Oxfam and drew attention to famine and poverty in the Third World. And of course there was the peace movement and the protest against the Vietnam War. Overtly political groups tended not to be allowed to meet on school property but we had contacts in the university communities and learned about evening and weekend meetings of groups like Amnesty International.
Once I got to university, freedoms were of course greater and suppression of dissent considerably lessened. I discovered the joys of women's centres and gay rights movements and campaigns for the legalization of marijuana (something we still haven't accomplished in Canada, except for medicinal purposes). And yes, we also protested tuition hikes. In one year alone, tuition fees rose about $100, which may not seem like much nowadays but in fact constituted a hike of about 20%. Despite our protests, and despite youth culture and the overall climate of the times, the tuition hike went ahead. Ontario's Big Blue Machine was alive and well!
Which brings me back to the current protest by Quebec students. Do they have a leg to march on? University tuition fees in Quebec have long been lower than those in other provinces, even for (Canadian) nonresidents of the province. On the other hand, Quebec taxes are quite high, so a convincing argument could be made that they have earned their right to low-ish tuition fees.
Some folk say that these students are just a bunch of spoilt brats who have grown up (or not grown up) in a culture of entitlement. They're part of an intellectual elite, the argument goes, and since they'll be earning the big bucks once they graduate, then they can jolly well invest their own money now to reap the dividends afterwards in the form of a privileged career and security in their old age.
Humph, I say. Far from guaranteeing an upper-crust lifestyle, a university degree (maybe even a postgraduate degree) has virtually become a lowest common denominator for entering the labour market. Once they get there, earning little more than minimum wage, many of our young people will face years of student debt repayment. The days of a guaranteed career for life are long gone and as for company pensions, employees who are lucky enough to have them at all are increasingly getting the "defined contribution" variety, which is at the mercy of the business cycle, rather than the "defined benefit" type that the postwar generation grew up with. Public pensions? I think they'll still be there, though there's a disturbing trend with this government to move towards eroding those as well.
So while I definitely don't condone the violent means that a few of the more militant students have brought to bear in the current round of protests, I do support the ends they are trying to achieve. Keep fighting the Good Fight, folks!
