La Grève

My students went on strike today. There was a “grève générale” in France so about 20-30% of the postal workers and teachers went on strike. But my students went on strike too. The strike was planned in advance, students handed out flyers at the door to the school on Friday, so I knew there was a possibility I wouldn’t be working today. It still isn’t really clear what they were striking against or what they hoped to achieve. The schools I work at are well-funded, teachers are intelligent and dedicated. The kids, for the most part, come from fairly wealthy families and have little to worry about, at least as far as what they receive from the public school system. Strikes are a part of the culture here though; student (high school that is) strikes happen about once a year and teachers have come to expect it.

I also read an article in the New York Times this morning about the current health care legislation being debated in the U.S. Congress right now. This is an issue that French people, including my students, are very interested in. To them it is a huge contradiction for the United States to allow such a large portion of the population to be left without health insurance. While they respect the U.S. and much of what it stands for (at least now that Obama is in power) things like the death penalty and a lack of a public health care system absolutely confound them. They see these reforms as necessary steps towards modernity that the U.S. should have taken long ago.

Anyway, the article I read addressed just this issue. It talked about how the debate in Congress has been more about partisan politics than the issue at hand, but it also talked about how the heart of the issue is a very basic moral debate. The choice that stands before us is between providing care to the millions of Americans who need it but don’t have it, and cutting ties with our roots as a nation of rugged individualists who don’t look to the government for help or hand-outs. In France, I can see that much of the population has come to expect this kind of help from the government. When things are going poorly, the people look to the state to bail them out. While a student strike, to me, seems childish, irresponsible and counterproductive, it is a necessary side-effect of a state that takes care of its citizens. The conflict for me is that I don’t want to see high school students on strike in the U.S. Ever. We’re not like that and I don’t want to turn out like that. When the French do it, it seems whiny and counter-productive and it’s very inconvenient for me if I want to teach a class, receive my mail, or take a train. But, I also find it bothersome that so many people in America are without healthcare.

Up until this point, when my students have asked me about why people oppose Obama’s healthcare reform, I have told them that it’s because many Americans don’t understand the difference between socialism and communism. When Americans hear “socialism” they go into McCarthy mode. They have flash-backs to the Cold War and have an uncontrollable urge to hide under their school desks. (I also love to ask Americans who wear the trendy Ché Guevara tee-shirts about their reasons for deciding to use their wardrobe support the Cuban Revolution at this particular moment in history.) I essentially tell my students that many Americans are ignorant of what this reform really means and entails. After watching these kids outside my school today, complaining about nothing and demanding something (though none of them seem to know what), I am coming to realize, that maybe I have underestimated my fellow Americans. We may, at this moment, be considering a sacrifice of some of our deepest national values and I may be the one who was being ignorant and uninformed.