Education Strike begins in Germany

[L.J.Solidarity]

Today the week-long education strike ("Bildungsstreik") began at the universities in Germany. School students and (unfortunately just a few) young workers will join the strike on wednesday for mass demonstrations in more than 80 cities.
At the moment I'm sitting in a lecture at the University of Hamburg being a scab (but I doulbt the word can be applied to student strikes). I was involved a bit in preparations (mainly in the school student mobilisation), but I didn't expect things to work as great as they do, people planned to close down three buildings at the University of Hamburg today and all three are actually blocked, with no lectures or courses taking place in them. Unfortunately I'm studying history and the building I'm sitting in right now (the biggest building on campus) remained open. I can't say much about mass support for the strike among the students at the moment, because no real mass activities are scheduled to take place before Wednesday, but it's certainly better than it looked before, I half expected overzealous business and law students to simply run over the pickets. The strike's been quite present in the media during the last week of preparation, and now it has begun there's a lot of (surprisingly positive) coverage. Of course, the bourgeois media don't say much about what we actually want, they mainly reduce it to an abstract call for "better education".

[PRC-UTE]

What are the demands of the strike?

[L.J.Solidarity]

There are some "minimal consensus" demands that were decided upon at federal-level conferences, actually by consensus, since the conferences where increasingly attended by people with autonomous views who declared having a vote on anything to be authoritarian. Local committees were free to add their own demands, so the school student committees of most cities and the individual universities that take part may have some extra demands.
The nationwide university student demands are (badly translated by myself):
- removal of admission restrictions by capacity increase
- abolition of tution fees
- financial independence for students - without loans
- abolition of every kind of (institutionalized) discrimination towards foreign students
- abolition of bachelor and master in their current form [this has to do with the traditional German system of university degrees, where there was no equivalent to the bachelor, the Diplom as a roughly equivalent to the master and a superior degree called "Magister". You had as much time as you wanted to obtain your Diplom, while now you have to finish the bachelor in 3 years and you may only enter most master programmes if your bachelor notes are particularly good]
- renunciation of the bachelor as the standard degree
- end of "Verschulung" [the process of studying becoming more and more similar to going to high school], time limitation and perpetual testing
- students shall be able to set their own learning priorities
- easier transition from one university to another
Democratisation of the education system
- reduction of economical necessities in education
- codetermination for all participants in the education system, e.g. through quarter parity in university bodies
- introduction of official student unions in all states [some southern states don't recognize student unions] now
improvement of teaching and learning conditions
- realisation of free alternative education concepts
- end of precarious work in education
- Increase of teaching personnel to a pedagogically bearable level! Creation of 8000 professorships, 14000 other university jobs
- advancement to all students instead of the creation of an elite
- the unity of reasearch and teaching

The school student's demands are:
- one school for all - away with the different types of secondary schools
- free education for all
- more teachers, smaller courses
- end the influence of the economy on schools
- Against "Schulzeitverkürzung" [the Abitur used to be done in 9 years+4 years of elementary school, now students are supposed to acquire the same knowledge in one year less]
- An end to repression against school students [some occurred folliwing last year's school strike in november]
- democratization of the education system

There are also short "self-conception" texts, but I'm too lazy to translate them now. They're available from http://www.bildungsstreik2009.de/

[ZeroNowhere]

This sounds pretty awesome. Hopefully it goes well.

[L.J.Solidarity]

Tomorrow (Wednesday) there will be demonstrations in more than 100 cities. 150000 people are expected to participate.
A few cities already had their demonstrations earlier, 80 students were forced off a road they blocked by the cops in Gießen, a guy was arrested for "inciting others to start a riot" (which apparently didn't take place).

[PRC-UTE]

100 cities? fair play to them. hope this inspires more actions throughout Europe

[L.J.Solidarity]

We had at least 250.000 people in the streets yesterday all over Germany, the majority of them school students. In Hamburg, 14.000 took part in the demonstration, it was really big, colorful and the participants appeared much more political then in last year's school strike. Almost everybody was keen to take and read every kind of anti-capitalist leaflet, and we had some really nice speeches that were well appreciated by the crowd.

Unfortunately the pre-school teacher's strike was banned some days ago so they weren't able to join our march, but one of the organizers gave a speech and we also showed our solidarity with the workers at Karstadt, a large chain of department stores that just went bankrupt.

Today, there are lots of civil disobedience actions, in most cities "bank robberies" are going to take place, i.e. we will go to banks in a peaceful way in order to show that in capitalism, loads of state money are given to capitalists to keep the system going during the crisis while the education system has been experiencing cutback after cutback for years now.

[Woland]

I just couldn't stop smiling :D

7,000 people here, which is pretty damn awesome for a city of 150,000. Some schools closed their doors so that no-one could get out, so we tried to push our way through, then the police showed up. Otherwise, what an awesome event! Biggest demonstration my city has had in decades. Definitely left-wing, I'd say the main topic was free education, but L.J.Solidarity covered the other points. And yes, the media responded quite well to the whole thing, some teachers openly expressed support for it, together with the Education and Science Workers’ Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEW.

[Rjevan]

In Munich we were over 6000 people, always accompanied by the police... isn't that nice of them? :rolleyes:
But still, it was great, we got lots of attention, leaflets were spread and the communist youth organisation SDAJ (Socialist German Workers Youth), Anarchists and even some Antifa-members were present!

Here are some pictures and clips from the demostration, presented by the SDAJ-Munich-site :D:
http://sdajmuenchen.twoday.net/topics/Bildungsstreik+2009/

[PRC-UTE]

We had at least 250.000 people in the streets yesterday all over Germany, the majority of them school students. In Hamburg, 14.000 took part in the demonstration, it was really big, colorful and the participants appeared much more political then in last year's school strike. Almost everybody was keen to take and read every kind of anti-capitalist leaflet, and we had some really nice speeches that were well appreciated by the crowd.

Unfortunately the pre-school teacher's strike was banned some days ago so they weren't able to join our march, but one of the organizers gave a speech and we also showed our solidarity with the workers at Karstadt, a large chain of department stores that just went bankrupt.

Today, there are lots of civil disobedience actions, in most cities "bank robberies" are going to take place, i.e. we will go to banks in a peaceful way in order to show that in capitalism, loads of state money are given to capitalists to keep the system going during the crisis while the education system has been experiencing cutback after cutback for years now.

Good luck with the "bank robbery". :thumbup1:

Is there any chance the strike will spread beyond just students? You mentioned a kindergarten teacher's strike.