Education

Students on strike Quebec have won public displays of support from Montreal-based rock band Arcade Fire and Quebecios actor and director Xavier Dolan. Hundreds of thousands of students have been on strike across Quebec for more than 100 days against fee hikes, defying intense government repression. MontrealGazette.com said on May 21 that members of indie rock band Arcade Fire appeared on the May 19 episode of Saturday Night Life, hosted by Mick Jagger, sporting the red squares, that have become a symbol of the student struggle, on their outfits.

”Nothing is working anymore in Quebec City.” So began the report on Radio Canada (French language CBC) of the collapse of negotiations between the Quebec government and the four associations of post-secondary students on strike. Around 4 pm on Thursday, Minister of Education Michelle Courchesne walked out of the talks.

Anger and concern is spreading as people become aware of the scale of the cuts to the TAFE sector. The Baillieu government said it would slash $300 million from the TAFE sector in Victoria. At a public meeting titled “TAFE Cuts, Education and the Capitalist Crisis”, the president of the National Tertiary Education Union’s University of Ballarat branch, Jeremy Smith said 57 courses were being totally axed at Ballarat TAFE.

Students from the only remaining full-time Auslan course in Victoria have been learning to sign the words “protest rally”, and “Parliament House”, Lana Schwartz told a 250-strong rally to save the course on May 30. Auslan is the sign language used by the deaf community, and Schwartz is a student in the Auslan diploma offered by Kangan Batman TAFE in Melbourne. But the TAFE announced the course would be axed at the end of the year.

Guillaume Legault, a leading member of Quebec’s CLASSE student organisation, will join this year's Resistance national conference “A Time of Revolution” over July 20-22 in Adelaide.

Victorian TAFE teacher and student Tashara Roberts released the open letter below on May 29. * * * Dear Mr Baillieu, I would like to tell you my story. I am of English, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. I had an abusive childhood; my parents divorced when I was about 12 years old and we had moved around a lot until I was about 15. I went to 5 different primary schools and 2 different high schools.

More than 400,000 filled the streets of Montreal this week as a protest over a 75% increase in tuition has grown into a full-blown political crisis. After three months of sustained protests and class boycotts that have come to be known around the world as the "Maple Spring," the dispute exploded when the Quebec government passed an emergency law known as Bill 78, which suspends the current academic term, requires demonstrators to inform police of any protest route involving 50 or more people, and threatens student associations with fines of up to $125,000 if they disobey.

Quebec’s student movement, and the swelling ranks of its popular allies, staged a huge rally and march in Montreal on May 22. The march supported the students’ fight for free, quality public education and rejected government repression. Estimates by some mainstream news outlets and by many independent observers put the number of participants as high as 400,000.

A student rally against the Victorian government’s TAFE cuts on May 23 projected a mass mobilisation next semester. The rally against the TAFE cuts was organised by RMIT TAFE students. Protesters from several TAFE institutions in Melbourne met at the RMIT Carlton TAFE campus where speakers denounced the consequences of the Victorian government funding slash. Afterwards, chanting "No ifs, no buts, no education cuts” they marched through the city to parliament, slowing down traffic and stopping trams.

In Occupy-style, they are pop-up and pop-out protesters on Montreal's streets. A jester threw juggling clubs high in the air, a masked face beamed — the sweat of the warm day glistening over her make-up — and the nose of a clown tilting up to figures on stilts, occasionally twisting round in a dance-trot. An impromptu band shook beans in glass bottles and beat drumsticks, while an accordion played old favourites. Whistles tried to organise the crowd. Dogs menaced one another, tying themselves up in their leashes as their owners passed by.