Dutch youth rises up against bad education

[Wanted Man]

Student strikes continue to sweep across the country

MIDDELBURG - The Netherlands today saw a second wave of high school students' protests against the 1040-hour norm, high workloads and the poor quality of the education system. In at least fifteen cities, youths abandoned their schools and took to the streets. Police have cracked down on them heavily, leading to riots. Students threw eggs, cans and fireworks while the police used baton charges.

Dozens of students have been arrested, several wounded and some hospitalized. The police claim to do this to prevent an "uncontrollable situation". Students have been charged for "baldadigheid" (indecency) and "openlijke geweldpleging" (open display of violence). Of course, police officers employing violence are just trying to curb riots and are therefore not doing anything illegal.

The students are opposed to the 1040-hour norm of the Education Ministry. The norm entails that all high school students have to be in school for 1040 hours every year. However, given the amount of teachers and their pay, this is unworkable in practice. As a compromise, schools often schedule "study hours" where students are kept in school for longer in order to fulfill the norm.

Today in the Dutch show "Netwerk", images were shown of the police violently attacking a protest in the town of Middelburg, where students had blocked a crossroad. The police called upon them to clear the road, "or violence will be used". Soon after, we can see a police officer swinging his baton at the teenagers, shouting "stop preventing me from doing my job!"

One boy makes a defiant stand even though the officer clubs him several times (video will be posted when it becomes available online). The mayor of Middelburg looks on. When a journalist asks him: "Isn't this a bit much?" (camera zooms in on more police officers beating up kids), he responds: "We'll talk about it later". It later turned out that the mayor feels that a research into the police's actions is "unnecessary".

In the same broadcast, Netwerk interviews Sywert van Lienden, the chairman of LAKS, the high school students' union. He refutes the logic behind the 1040-hour norm and supports the protest, but says that LAKS will not be organizing for them unless the political debate on Monday fails to satisfy their demands. The LAKS website Stop 1040! (http://stop1040.nl/) calls for solidarity with the protestors, but does not want new actions until the 26th, and disassociates from "(possible) misbehaviour from rioters" in earlier actions. However, after seeing the recent images, Van Lienden emphasizes that the police are completely out of order, and that it should be no surprise that students react to police provocations.

Marja van Bijsterveldt, junior minister of the Education Ministry, has responded in a remarkably detached manner. She understands the concerns of the students, but believes that quality education will automatically fill up the quantitatively strong 1040 hours. Her uninterested response, and the media focus on the riots (identifying the teenagers as the ones guilty of starting them) serve only to delegitimize the necessary call for better education.

Sources:

www.netwerk.tv (http://www.netwerk.tv)
www.stop1040.nl (http://www.stop1040.nl)
Planet (http://www.planet.nl/planet/show/id=62967/contentid=899006/sc=3979ad)

[Wanted Man]

Video of police in Middelburg:

http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/32737/5dc6...scholieren.html (http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/32737/5dc6906c/staking_scholieren.html)

Also, according to HV Zeeland (http://hvzeeland.nl/nieuws.php?id=6661), the school board is angry with the police actions. The rector of the school wanted to talk to the students, but the police denied his request and attacked.

People who saw what happened stated that the protests started peacefully. Things only got out of hand when the police showed up and demanded that the students disperse. It's illegal to disobey a direct order from the police, so there's the "justification" for police brutality.

[The Author]

Hmm...


The students are opposed to the 1040-hour norm of the Education Ministry. The norm entails that all high school students have to be in school for 1040 hours every year.

Here in the United States, I was in high school for about 7 hours a day, 180 days a year. Doing my math, that comes to 1260 hours a year. So apparently, it seems Americans on at least the East Coast spend more time in high school per year than the Dutch. I don't know if you can safely compare and contrast the two numbers, I'm not familiar with the Dutch school system in terms of whether high school applies to what other countries would call "secondary school," part of "primary school," or whatever. But I would say the Dutch youth are a lot more adamant than their American counterparts in fighting for lesser time spent in school.

[Wanted Man]

It's not just about lesser time, but also quality time. If there were actual classes taught, that would be one thing. But the fact is that many schools can't fill the hours, and thus simply keep the students there to have them do homework and all that.

[Faux Real]

VB, do you know what parties (besides LAKS, if any others) were involved in organizing the protest?

Damn, if only students in the US held similar actions...

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

This isn't a worker action. Moved.

[Wanted Man]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 01:35 am
VB, do you know what parties (besides LAKS, if any others) were involved in organizing the protest?

Damn, if only students in the US held similar actions...
None, as far as I know. It seems to be a very spontaneous movement, which is pretty cool.

To be honest, I didn't expect this kind of militancy either. If you'd told me a week ago that this would happen, I would have laughed. But now that it's on, I've certainly found it very inspiring and I hope to be able to help them organize next week.

[An archist]

What is also interesting is that the demonstration was started by a simple msn message that travelled really fast, informing a lot of people, the authorities are quite worried over this.

[Red October]

This sounds pretty awesome. Have leftist groups gotten involved with it much?

[Wanted Man]

Not as far as I know. However, the Communist Youth that I'm a member of has written an article on it. We also declared our solidarity with the students. Who knows what next week will bring?

[Tower of Bebel]

I read about these insurrections the other day and I noticed how the newspapers were attacking these youngsters by systematic emphasis on vandalism instead of the liberal policy which is the cause of these insurections.

But this is no surprise of course.

[jaffe]

You shouldn't read 'De Telegraaf' ofcourse :P

[Wanted Man]

Or "De Pers" for that matter, if you saw their frontpage article today. :angry:

Anyway, yesterday saw more actions. In some places, like Amsterdam, there were once again riots. I was in the town of Deventer for a college assignment, and things remained quiet there. I still got some good interviews, and Deventer turned out to be a nice town.

LAKS has called for a national strike on Friday. Schools all over the country will strike and demonstrate in The Hague.

[Marxist1917]

It is amazing that students are able to pull something like this off. In the US people are too passive to every do anything like this. They are basically indoctrinated to be ignorant of politics.

Hopefully good things will come of this.

[Wanted Man]

Well, that's how I used to feel about Holland, too. I found high school miserable, and I was very pleased to leave. Now I wish I was three years younger. The fact of the matter is that it can flare up at any time.

[Wanted Man]

Nationwide school strike tomorrow. There will be an action in Amsterdam starting at 12.00 at the Museumplein.

[Tower of Bebel]

Flemish youth also got on the streets to sympathise with the Dutch with the same demands. But they get no support (partialy because their demand seems to be chosen because of lazyness, not because it is a real problem).

[Wanted Man]

Actually, sometime last week, I watched a Belgian news report on the Dutch strikes, including an interview with LAKS chair Sywert van Lienden. It was rejuvenating to see a news program reporting in a matter-of-fact tone, without treating its viewers like 5-year-olds like the Dutch media do.

Anyway, the national action went pretty well. There were no real riots. LAKS organized stewards for the protest. Those stewards (mostly 14-16-year-old high school students) were attacked by a few hundred "Amsterdam Hooligans" (mostly not even schoolgoing anymore). They still held out so that the police would not intervene. Of course, as soon as a police officer took a single step forward, these brave "hooligans" turned tail and ran as fast as hell. I guess they only dare to fight teenagers.

Luckily, those assholes failed in their objective of doing the police's job by busting this action.

[Wanted Man]

Originally posted by Red [email protected] 24, 2007 05:54 pm
This sounds pretty awesome. Have leftist groups gotten involved with it much?
At the national action, there were about 20 Socialist Party members.

The Communist Youth were there with flyers. In them, we supported the students and called for further organized strike action. As far as I know, we were also the only ones who realized that the 1040-norm is not coincidental; it is part of the neo-liberal education reforms that are going on throughout Europe. Particularly, the "new learning". This comes straight from the pipelines of the European Round Table of Industrials, who have declared that students should stop "being educated" and should "learn" instead.

This means that students will no longer have a teacher doing classes, but mostly do homework on their own instead. As a result, schools can cut spending on teachers. Teachers will only be "coaching" about 80 students at a time. Of course, students "need" more hours for this. This also serves to prepare them for the corporate 36-hour working week.

As for other groups, I didn't see any members of the CWI branch, except for the end when one suddenly showed up and shouted "Hey, Great Leader Mao!" at us. I guess it was frustration at not being able to sell their boring-as-fuck paper*. I also saw one IS guy trying to sell papers. Yawn. I expected more, as they initially supported the action on their website.

The real heroes were the students themselves, who refused to be intimidated by the hate campaign that the media mounted against them. Also, the LAKS who organized all this.

*On their website, they do have an article about the actions. In it, they accuse the students of "lack of leadership and organization" (i.e. they had nothing to do with it) and of being "unfamiliar with the tactics of collective struggles of the workers' movement" (i.e. going somewhere and trying to sell papers).

[Enragé]

Those stewards (mostly 14-16-year-old high school students) were attacked by a few hundred "Amsterdam Hooligans" (mostly not even schoolgoing anymore).

o0 were you even there?????

The stewards were university student union members (i.e 18 years old at the youngest, LSVB), those "amsterdam hooligans" numbered in their 30's at the most and were in fact of school-going age, and the stewards were NEVER attacked, their line was only smashed through once when they put themselves in between the cops and the highschool students after the cops had arrested 2 people who did absolutely nothing.


Also, the LAKS who organized all this.

LAKS are a bunch of twats. The demo they organised before all of this happened was purposely announced too late so the turn out by students would be minimal (so they could be controlled). Moreover, if they had anything to say about it there wouldnt even have been any strikes, and now they're calling for the students to return to school so they can "negotiate", even though the government has said it will not reverse the 1040 norm. If by the end of februari (like, WTF?!) there has been no solution to this matter, LAKS will call for actions again.
By doing this they are effectively crushing the student oprising (or, at least, trying to).

So fuck LAKS, fuck those little bureaucrats.


I also saw one IS guy trying to sell papers. Yawn. I expected more, as they initially supported the action on their website.

We were there with about 5 people, myself included, not selling newspapers tho myself. I simply followed the heat of the movement, going where shit was happening.