{"id":5182,"date":"2026-10-15T00:03:46","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T22:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=5182"},"modified":"2026-10-15T00:03:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T22:03:47","slug":"striketober-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/striketober-updates\/","title":{"rendered":"Striketober Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last night, Kristian and I attended the annual meeting for the parents’ association for Lilian’s English-language section at school. Normally, they’d spend most of the time talking about stuff like budgets and bylaws, but last night it was allll<\/em> about the student protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Gee, I wonder why). <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Bright<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A few new things that I learned:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • The high school students have been remote-only for the past several weeks. They’re not supposed to learn any new material during this time, and apparently there have been quite a few Zoom bombings (I’m guessing I’m not the only person having flashbacks to 2020).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • In deference to the fact that one of the students’ demands is that they not have so much work piled on them, the school is being very careful about assignments during this time. They have a plan to phase things in gradually once students are back in class.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • In addition to the high school students, some of the teachers have also gone on strike.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • One of the reasons that the high schoolers are remote-only is they’re worried that letting them into the building would cause disruptions in the middle and elementary school (lyc\u00e9e\/high-school and coll\u00e8ge\/middle-school share a space, and the primaire\/primary students are located just behind the coll\u00e8ge).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Most of the “incidents” outside the school have been perpetrated by outside agitators. There have been several cases where students from the school intervened to try and keep things from escalating. That being said, they had another confrontation yesterday, and there were definitely some of our students who were part of it. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Disruptions are likely to continue until the national elections in 2027. (zomg!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    We knew what we were signing up for when we moved to France. I’m glad<\/em> that we get to live somewhere that people advocate for their rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For the most part, life goes on as usual for us. Primarily what we experience is the aftermath of protests (mainly graffiti). I did<\/em> bike past some intense-looking scorch marks outside the lyc\u00e9e near our apartment on Monday. I wish I’d had time to stop and take pictures, because it was quite the scene. There were a bunch of municipal workers out there scrubbing. The entire sidewalk was practically black. <\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Graffiti<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    For now, the biggest disruption for us is that the French classes that Kristian and I go to at a local university keep getting canceled. Partially because the classes are taught by university students (who have joined the gatherings) and partially because the building keeps getting barricaded and shut down. For me, personally, the two training programs I’m in have been a pretty intense language immersion. I’ll be happy when things are back to normal, but I’ll be much happier if they can come to a good solution. I did make it to a class on Monday and the teacher spent some time explaining the context of everything that’s going on, as well as talking about why she and the other university students have joined in. She feels like their school is relatively well funded, but they’re concerned about the education of students at less resourced schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That’s a refrain you hear a lot from the students around here. They wish their studies were better funded, but they’re extremely concerned about the schools that have fewer resources than theirs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There was a large march here yesterday, as part of a series of gatherings all across the country. It was relatively incident free, although I did read that police shot tear gas at one point. Saturday is going to be the biiiiig<\/em> protest. I have a “formation” (training series) meeting then, and we’ve had to make sure that everyone can get there safely. Public transit will likely be shut down, and there will be disruptions all over the city. One of the other students opted to join via video conference, because her transit options were going to be limited. They also adjusted the schedule slightly, because one of the guest lecturers won’t be able to get into the city. Luckily for me, I live a 4-minute walk from the studio, so I’ll have no problem getting there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    (I told the teacher that, if I can’t make it, we’ve got much bigger problems). <\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Bright
    Just do it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    Next week will be the start of a two-week school holiday. Things will probably die down a bit during that time, but the students have asked the unions to keep up the pressure on their behalf (a lot of French families travel over the school holidays). We’re going to Normandy for that first week, so I guess I’ll have a chance to see what the atmosphere is like there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What I want to emphasize is that we\u2019re not<\/em> living in a war zone here. Yes, there have been incidents, but they are mostly limited to the immediate areas around the high schools. Most people (including me!) seem to agree that there are some very real issues with the French educational system. As one small example, the roof of Lilian\u2019s school leaks all over the place every time it rains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The question is, how do they fix the problems, and (even harder) how do they pay for it? The last time a large movement like that happened with the students, the government was able to make some real changes. This time around, they have a lot less money to play with. I hope that they can come up with something, because students here deserve a good eduction in functional schools. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Of course, ask me about how everything feels tomorrow, after the large-scale mobilization that’s planned for the plaza about a 10 minute walk from here. I’ll let you know how it all goes. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In which I give you an update on how the student strikes are going here in France. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[65],"tags":[80,79],"class_list":["post-5182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-france","tag-manifesting","tag-protesting"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-1lA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_1990-2-scaled.png?fit=1920%2C2560&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5182"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5190,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182\/revisions\/5190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}