DEMONSTRATIONS hundreds of thousands of school students took place throughout France on Monday November 12 demanding adequate resources for their schools. The movement, which started in the working class suburbs around Paris, has been growing since mid-October. Coordination is mainly in the hands of two ad hoc committees — one associated with a left faction in the Socialist Party, the other controlled by the Jeunesses Communistes (Communist party youth).
The students' central demand is for an increase in the national education budget to provide more teachers, smaller classes and repairs to schools. Behind this demand lies the fear of ending up unemployed or in insecure employment. Indeed, since 1986, of the 640,000700,000 school-leavers arriving on the
Cemment that "80% of the pupils should reach the baccalauréat [the French matriculation examination] stage" has led to growing resentment, given the substantial differences between the means at the disposal of schools in the richer inner-city areas compared to the suburbs. Thus selection continues in a different way.
The government, with president Mitterrand playing an active role, has been attempting to give an appearance of being interested in a "dialogue" with the school students without giving away too much in real terms. Promises of a more democratic regime in schools have been made, while the (inadequate) sum of four and a half billion additional francs has been given to regional authorities to use, if they wish, on education.
The movement has won considerable public support, including from teachers' unions as well as parents' associations at
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Parnell Square, Dublin 1, Ireland.
Continued from previous page er champions of what they call the territo-
NOTEBOOKS rial integrity of Eretz Isracl [the Land of
Israel]. The settlement policy and logic were also rebuffed by the Americans, as for study and research shown by the interruption of that dialogue of the deaf wrongly called the American-
Palestinian dialogue.
The situation created by the Atlantic
THE second edition of the Notebooks for Study and Research Number 1, "The imperialists' of the invasion
Arabian
Place of Marxism in History" by Ernest Mandel (40 pages, $3.50, £2, 20FF) is peninsula has undermined the very founnow available.
dations of the peace initiative and strate-
A complete review of the basic tenets of Marxism as they emerged from the gy adopted by the Palestinian National socialist movements of Marx's time, "This work by Ernest Mandel is not only
Council in Algiers in 1988.
an extremely precious educational tool - an initiation in Marxism from an activist and committed standpoint - but also an original contribution that
Mubarak can no longer be counted on as a enriches and renews the debate on the place of Marxism in history" (Michael mediator of an accord with Washington,
Löwy).
as those who conceived this initiative
All payments should be made out to Pierre Rousset; mail orders to NSR, 2 rue thought.
Richard Lenoir, 93108, Montreuil, France.
In turn, Washington, is no longer even thinking of demanding new concessions from the PLO leadership and still less of making demands or putting pressure on the state of Israel for the negotiations with the Palestinians that the champions of the peace initiative hoped to see held in
Cairo.
As for the Zionist entity, it is now concentrating its efforts on three objectives
- integrating hundreds of thousands of
Jewish immigrants from the
Soviet
Union, trying to put an end to the intifada and watching the events in Jordan and getting ready to confront them.
With these concerns, Israel is not even interested any more in the diplomatic
28 maneuvers connected with the settlement game". *
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