School in the streets High school students drifted back to school in February, after ten weeks of occupying schools and blocking roads. Andreas Sartzekis Greek teenagers' lives are dominated by preparations for the all-important high school graduation exams. High unemployment and the "modernisation" of the Greek economy has made young people desperate to enter university. Schools are underfunded and overcrowded, and many parents pay for extra lessons in the thousands of private cramming schools. No surprise that the suicide rate among high school students is rising.
Education reform was a central pillar of the centre-left government's "modernisation" programme. Prime Minister Kostas Simitis had promised to adapt schools to the modern world," (i.e. the 4 International Viewpoint #309 March 1999 short-term wishes of employers).
This was bad enough, but what actually sparked the student and parent revolt in December were the government's attempts to introduce "pedagogical coherence." But government technocrats made the old-fashioned and inefficient system worse. In early 1998, Education Minister Yerasimos Arsenis introduced a new teacher recruitment system which left thousands of auxiliary teachers out of work. This provoked a hard, two month strike by the OLME teachers' union, including violent confrontations with the police. Against teachers and pupils
After the August summer break, parliament approved the introduction of continual assessment, and measures supposed to remove the need for private extra lessons. Instead of one big final exam at the end of two years, students now faced 22 tests spread over the same period! In vacation. As in the French student protests in 1998, girls were more prominent than ever, reflecting the long-term gains of the feminist movement in terms of personal relationships among the young.
The government responded with provocation. In early January the media began to scream about damage supposedly caused by the occupations, with images of syringes and beer bottles, and overexcited 12 year olds on the fringes of the demonstrations. The aim was to frighten parents, and turn them against
The right wing and the Communist party were accused of manipulating young minds. Alongside police violence, small groups of anti-strike parents began to appear, often more ready to strike than
The number of occupations began to decline in January, but there were spectacular demonstrations on 15 and 21 January, with tens of thousands of students in the streets. Students also perfected their road-blocking techniques, causing dally collapse in the country's already overcharged road system.
Fed up with the daily confrontations, even the police federation demanded that
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Left advances as Basques protest the government find a political solution to the crisis.
By early February, however, most students had ended their occupations, in the hope of saving at least something from this academic year. A few concessions from the government, accelerated this procedure, and the conflict now seems to have ended in a draw. The aftermath of the protests
None of the major parties have benefited. The socialists neither enforced their reforms, nor withdrew them. They neither backed their unpopular minister nor replaced him. The conservative opposition claimed to sympathise with the student's concerns, but deplore their methods of protest. And the Communist Party had no idea how to deal with a self-organised protest movement that refused to limit itself to the interests of the party's parliamentary fraction. * *Includes material from our staff writers.
Portugal
On January 9th over 100,000 Basques marched to protested the dispersal of Basque prisoners across the Spanish state. It was one of the largest demonstrations in Basque The radical independence party Herri Batasuna and its partners in the left-wing Euskal Herritarrok movement continue to benefit from the more open mood following the After 20 years of boycott, the radical nationalist left has taken seats in the Basque autonomous parliament, giving external support to the moderate nationalist government, on the basis of a programme for peace (definitive ETA ceasefire, prisoner regroupment and release and measures to reinforce Basque sovereignty. EH says that increased autonomy from Madrid, and a nationalist project that accepts all those who live and work in the Basque country, is the only way to win over the 40% of voters who currently vote for the "all-Spanish" socialist and conservative parties. According to "Troglo" Castaños of the radical left magazine Hika, "much now depends on the struggle between the [centre-right ] Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the pro-independence left to take the head of this national-building project." [JP/JRC] * *The entire former leadership of Herri Batasuna are among the prisoners held hundreds of miles from their families, in contradiction of the Spanish constitution. dent militants have long been convinced of the need for an electorally viable alternative. People have wanted the intervention of organi-