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International Student Movement / Call for a dutch anti-neoliberal movement
Hi all,
What started with occupations of university buildings in Croatia, has sparked an international student protest against the adverse effects of neoliberalism on (higher) education—making education an object of trade and fit for competition and commercial exploitation, through standardisation of teaching practices, tests and exams, credit systems, university organisations after standards for big business, and aligned with big business, through commodification by imposing tuition fees and lowering student grants, and through debt—making education fit the neoliberal economy of low wages and high profits.
Student strikes and occupations have swept through Europe and are now reaching The Netherlands, a country which has since its conception been hard to unite for (any) change—a country since the '80s and take-off of neoliberalism absolutely dominated by neoliberalist and christian parties, a country with a government which has since then been the first to jump on the bandwagon of neoliberalist reform, making the market king of our country. All without a strong force to resist it.
Neoliberalism has been codified in our laws, in treaties and declarations. Now, they want to codify it in our minds! We have to preserve and restore what is ours—we have to preserve and restore our educational system!
I ask all people on this forum to actively support the struggle which has been going on for months throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
Please, visit http://www.onderwijscrisis.nl/wiki/ for information about the Dutch student movement and student movements worldwide and show your support by leaving a personal note (name/username/signature/e-mail address) under the 'supporters' caption on the main page.
If you want to support the movement in any other way you may do so by adding content to the wiki (mild restructuring permitted/is fine) and/or contacting me via my user page (User:Sos) or via email (see my user page on the wiki).
I hope we can count on your solidarity and support.
Best wishes,
æ
"Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt."
¡Viva la hermandad entre los pueblos!
Hi, I'm active in student movement in Croatia.
I want you best wishes!
Thank you!Hi, I'm active in student movement in Croatia.
I want you best wishes!
Best wishes and solidarity, to you!
"Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt."
¡Viva la hermandad entre los pueblos!
In the United States we are dealing with some similar things. There have been occupations at the California public schools UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and San Francisco State against tuition increases.
At my school, Vassar College in New York, there are two student groups organized against faculty and staff reductions, we have been having protests and vigils, and one of them just went off a hunger strike.
Solidarity to our comrades in Europe.
When is the first student strike happening? If possible I'd like to update our webpage to announce demo's and such. If possible I'm interested in publishing an interview. Please pm me
I think, thus I disagree. | Chairperson of a Socialist Party branchMarxist Internet Archive | Communistisch Platform
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Also in the US Hampshire College divested from Israel. Not an occupation but definitely a blow against Empire the cousin of Neo-liberalism.
Thanks for your (moral) support!In the United States we are dealing with some similar things. There have been occupations at the California public schools UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and San Francisco State against tuition increases.
At my school, Vassar College in New York, there are two student groups organized against faculty and staff reductions, we have been having protests and vigils, and one of them just went off a hunger strike.
Solidarity to our comrades in Europe.
Good to hear that that (even) in the US students are protesting bad education policy! And it's even more promising that it spreads to other colleges than those of UC, as well!
Are the protests in the US like most in Europe (for total abolition of tuition fees, when already in place and against (further) marketisation / "postneoliberalism"), i.e. is there a uniting agenda on (more) fundamental grounds?
Also great that more and more students protest the situation in the Middle-East, and reckon it's basically us that legitimise the unjust there!
In the UK, after the war/attack on Gaza, students have protested Western/UK support of Israel and have occupied many universities, including Cambridge and Oxford! And what is happening now is called a start of a new 1968.
I am confident that we can get this off the ground in The Netherlands, as well.
Solidarity to the students in the US!
æ
"Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt."
¡Viva la hermandad entre los pueblos!
NL is a small country, but with many disillusioned and apathetic students, as you are probably aware of. We have started efforts to get local student platforms off the ground, but this approach seems workable in only a few cities.When is the first student strike happening? If possible I'd like to update our webpage to announce demo's and such. If possible I'm interested in publishing an interview. Please pm me
I will try to get in touch with as many as possible and when there are enough people start meetings in public places on university campuses. By holding every meeting in a different city I hope to amass enough people to meet in a large lecture room and continue with meetings and debate from there (all with permission of the universities, of course).
The epicentre of the "movement" now still lies with a informal subsidiary of the most-leftist national student union: "Comité SOS", which tries to reinstill a sense of urgency in the local student unions.
"Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt."
¡Viva la hermandad entre los pueblos!
In the United States we are much further behind the gains of most European education. Tuition even at public schools is skyrocketing. The protests at the U of C system are over a 33% increase in tuition the board of trustees just voted on. I go to a private school, tuition is something like $45 000 a year, but mine fortunately is very heavily subsidized by the school itself and federal loans
All across the board though we are fighting against neoliberalism. Vassar is a very small college (2 400 students I think) and the administration has been taking a meat axe to food, administration and upkeep staff, and is now moving onto faculty positions for the last two semesters. In response we are trying to organize protests that show unity of students, staff and professors. Unfortunately many of our most experienced activists disagree with the approach of organizing a mass movement and have preffered elitist methods like a hunger strike, which accomplish nothing and alienate people from being a part of the struggle. The U of C struggle has had similar problems, for example some groups have pushed forward occupations etc without the backing of a mass force, and to pre-empt attempts to build one. We will have to see how things go, I am cautiously optimistic.
can I post a lil supm supm from our (two years)student occupations and riots?
On our wiki, you mean? As long as it is related to education, you may!can I post a lil supm supm from our (two years)student occupations and riots?
I would suggest anyone who wants to post stuff to create an account, though... your ip is visible to all, otherwise, and you only have to provide a screen name and e-mail address (which isn't publicised).
Are the protests and occupations now in Greece linked in any way to reforms to the education system/effects of neoliberal politics/the Bologna Process?
Excuse my ignorance about the situation in Greece. In our educational system only the top 5% gets to learn (ancient) Greek :-p
"Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt."
¡Viva la hermandad entre los pueblos!
Yes, I can see how students in some countries are difficult to mobilise and easily alienated. The US and UK are now the model for education reforms/"harmonisation", and people are less likely to oppose it than in countries like Germany, where the influence of people like Von Humboldt (and the many (pre-)Enlightenment and Romanticist philosophers) have really shaped a different kind of university—more disposed to the Humanities/'Geisteswissenshaften'.
The problem with The Netherlands is that it has become (for same time now) the first country to gradually implement these "harmonising"/anglo-saxon changes to its education system. That makes it doubly hard to now restore what we have lost. The memory of students is only that long.
The real problem then is that other countries can easily hide behind us when they are critised.
And to make matters worse, most institutions of higher education have only been founded in the '80s here. Only one university dates back to the Renaissance and is rather elitist.
So, no picnic here, either :-)
But as we have just started doing the ground work and since a momentum can easily spread in such a tiny country, I am not at all pessimistic.
2010 is going to be a new 1968 for Europe and hopefully for the US and the rest of the world as well, since 1968 plus the answer to life, the universe and everything is.... 2010 :-p (which thus must be the year that real socialism and soon after communism starts :-s , socialism only being short and pre-paradigmatic, for sure—people now really must come to terms with reality).
And we all lived happily ever after!
"Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt."
¡Viva la hermandad entre los pueblos!
And it indeed always starts with economising on stuff like food and administrative or cleaning staff.
And then they figure that's not going to be enough and they lobby for more money from the government, which the governments seeks for elsewhere and... boom!... all student grants are abolished (that's what they intent to do here now).
You can always get a student loan, but it creates an economy of debt, where wages/government expenditure is low and profits/salaries at the top high.
How much does an average president of an executive board in public education make in the US?
They'd tried to abolish public education altogether a few years ago by giving students higher grants (which certainly soon were to be replaced by loans), but they wimped out.
How does the federal loans system in the US work? Is it that you only have to start paying the money back when you earn above a certain amount?
"Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt."
¡Viva la hermandad entre los pueblos!
no,i want to post it here,but i ask if someone thinks its irrelevant with the subject,cause we been through it all 2 years ago.
about my ip,i dont give a fuck,if cia wants to keep an eye on me,it wont be cause of a link i posted.i mean cmon man...this is athens!
yes,the protests and occupations (and other,legal or illegal moves)where connected with all that Bologna/neoliberal shit.But,although it got voted,we kept it a "dead law",its not being used.
nevermind the ancient greek.even we are learning on a top 5% for real!
anyway,firstly i would like to post this video from that period,it shows riots,occupations and some artwork students did mostly for the prime minister and the ministers of education and public safety.it makes me remember what a cool period that was!
+ YouTube Video
Um I don't know what exact position you're talking about (dean, president etc), but it varies all across the board, and there's a huge drive to push up salaries to keep them "competitive" and swipe people from other schools
No. It depends on what kind of loan, there are a few different kinds, but you have to start paying them back after graduation, on a fixed interest rate, like 5% or something. So if you want to go to a good school here (even a good public school), you better be from a rich family, get a ton of scholarships, or financial aid. Like I lucked out, I have $33 000 a year financial aid coming directly from the school and some of the rest coming from federal loans, and some I will owe to my mom.
+ YouTube Video
another one!
the subject of the movement was some laws that the New Democracy goverment wanted to change,including:
-no more asylum in universities.
-deleting students that have more than (their cememsters)+(half of them),which was making imposible for the poor students that was also working to ever finish with their schools.
-no more free books from the university.everything students need,had to buy it themselves.
plus the creation of private owner universities.
PS.the song was made by some students and talks about the situation!very funny song!the chorus goes "marieta yanakoy(education minister) listen to the occupations and ask Arsenis(ex minister that was resigned after students movement) what is ahead of you"
No comrade why would you think that?
It wouldn't have been irrelevant if you were talking about 1807 just as long as you were talking about student movements.
