PARIS — Pupils blockaded French high schools on Tuesday as thousands of demonstrators marched in cities across the country to support the teenagers' demands for more education funding, increasing pressure on the government of outgoing President Emmanuel Macron.
Crowds waving flags and placards in Marseille in the south, Strasbourg in the east and other cities showed how protests that began at a high school in the Paris region in mid-September have grown into a nationwide movement — the latest to have marked Macron's nearly decade-long tenure.
“The only response they’ve received so far is repression,” Sigrid Gerardin, a Paris high school teacher, said of the pupils.
Felix Barney, a university student, described the police response as disproportionate. “It doesn’t have any sense to hit minors,” he said.
More than two weeks of class boycotts and school blockades, along with a forceful police response that has led to more than 6,100 arrests, mostly of minors, have also become a flashpoint in the early days of the presidential election campaign. Macron cannot run for a third consecutive term. His successor will be elected in May.
The teenage protesters have struck a chord amid widespread discontent in France. Frustrations extend beyond immediate difficulties, such as fuel prices that have soared because of the Iran war, to broader concerns about constraints on public spending, rising poverty and wealth inequality under Macron. Against that backdrop, pupils' complaints that education funding shortfalls are endangering their futures have found a sympathetic audience.
“You say ‘young people are the future’ so listen to them,” read a handwritten placard attached to a metal barrier outside a Paris school.
At the Hélène Boucher lycée, or high school, in Paris' 20th district, protesters on Tuesday tipped trash cans and bicycles on their sides to create a makeshift barricade.
Like hundreds of others around the country, the school was closed. Authorities began shutting schools last week to take some steam out of the demonstrations after widespread damage to schools and mounting injuries among staff, students and police.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez on Tuesday defended policing methods used against high schoolers, despite a growing list of gruesome injuries blamed on officers' riot-control weapons. The latest was a 15-year-old who lost a hand on Monday, seemingly ripped off by a police stun grenade.
Nunez said the police response has been proportionate in “almost all cases.”
The widespread use of arrests, tear gas and riot-control weapons against teenagers is fueling defiance and angering some parents and teachers. Nunez said protests transformed at times into rioting, requiring police intervention. He said 715 officers have been injured.
At Hélène Boucher, parents and other adults positioned themselves Tuesday between protesters and police keeping watch.
“They are our children. Teachers, parents, federations, we all share the same goal: the protection of children’s rights, and it is a legitimate right to demonstrate and to make demands,” said Emilia Sichili Suriam, who is a member of an association of parents.
School blockades and protests began in the Paris region in mid-September before spreading to other cities and towns. Demonstrators have voiced a range of grievances, often centering on a lack of resources and opportunities for students in disadvantaged schools despite the promise of France's national motto: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."
Students have drawn attention to rundown classrooms that lack basics such as desks and chairs, become sweltering in summer without air conditioning and, in some cases, are infested with rats. Other common complaints include staff shortages and exhausting workloads. French high school students’ compulsory classroom hours are among the highest in Europe.
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Associated Press journalists John Leicester in Paris and Mike Corder in The Hague contributed.
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