Student Protest

[Burn A Flag]

Anyway, today one student in my history class wrote a letter to our teacher which was signed by many students as a petition in a way. We are trying to have the amount of essays we must memorize reduced from 6 to 4, as well as giving us one re-do (we are assigned essays by dice roll). However, our teacher laughed at us and said "that's cute".

Now imo, the next step is to take some kind of strike/boycott action at an appropriate time. However, the problem is convincing the kids to go along with it. It's an "advanced class" so the kids are looking out more for their grades than others. I think a strike action could be sucessful and acheivable, but I'm not sure how to get kids onboard.

Any arguments or things we could try?

[Who?]

Any arguments or things we could try?

Try memorizing six essays, you all signed up for an advanced class, you knew there would be a heavier workload. I know it must be a pain and it is fairly undemocratic but if I were in your position I would just buckle down and do the work the course requires.

[Burn A Flag]

Well I just thought it might be fun and a good experience to organize something, since it was someone else who wrote the letter, but yeah we probably won't do anything.

[La Comédie Noire]

I think your request for one redo is eminently reasonable, push for that. It's a more moderate demand that shouldn't scare away the more grade conscious students.

[Jalapeno Enema]

You don't specify; if you're in college you can always take your concerns to the department head (keep it polite, and they might talk to the instructor.)

If your department head isn't sympathetic, or you're in high school, then I suggest studying.

[ellipsis]

I would say pick your battles and don't let this be one of them. Teachers never cared about petitions, even student government because anybody will sign a petition in the hallway and if school decisions were made that way, oy!

[Bitter Ashes]

Handing over a list with the ringleaders and troublemakers at the top to a person of authority is never a good idea. Most petitions I see about these days just seem to be ever more ingenius ways to get onto Huddersfield SWP's mailing list anyway...

[Enragé]

I would go for the chance to have a re-try. *****ing about the workload is a bit weird if u yourself chose to be in an advanced class.

First maybe, go 'higher up' in the school hierarchy presenting the same letter. Once you get the door thrown in your face a few times, this will radicalise your fellow-students. Then, just talk with them what they want to do. You can do anything as long as people actually want to do it. Also try to get your parents on your side, and some teachers if possible. Always helps.

Are there other advance classes who might have the same problem? If so, try to contact them.

[Enragé]

Handing over a list with the ringleaders and troublemakers at the top to a person of authority is never a good idea. Most petitions I see about these days just seem to be ever more ingenius ways to get onto Huddersfield SWP's mailing list anyway...

i understand where you're coming from but petitions are, and have been for a long time, the initial way people go from accepting the situation to 'doing something'. Its not so much a question whether or not to make a petition (people will come up with that anyway in most cases), but of using it as a stepping stone.

Remember, the uprising of 1905 in russia started with peasants and workers (led by a priest!) presenting a petition to 'Father Tsar' pleading if he could please make sure they're not fucked over that much and maybe have a little more food.

[Burn A Flag]

Good advice but I think the little petition has been forgotten. I will remember this advice for future action. Yes I also agree that getting our essays changed is a silly thing to petition, but I would like to be involved in some type of demonstration/activism. There isn't anything else I can get politically involved in locally so I guess you have to start somewhere. There aren't even many things we could protest since our community is pretty wealthy and our school is pretty high standard.

[Bitter Ashes]

Well, I'll put it this way. If you were presented with a petition signed by the WTO/IMF urging you all to abandon the class struggle, would you pay any attention? Of course not. They won't listen to us. We won't listen to them. Draw a line under it, move on and start using the tactics of the enemy when they want to persuade people i.e. Threaten thier homes, jobs, ability to get access to food, transport, etc. They do it to us workers every day and it's enough to convince a lot of workers to shut up and just go about thier buisness of making the rich even richer, so it's a tried and proven tactic.

In short, "Go for the eyes!" lol