Strike 3!

You might remember that my first day in Laxe half of the teachers (and students) were not present because of a teacher strike.  The students have gone on strike on a few occasions as well, which still seems quite strange to me, I don’t think I will ever truly get used to the idea students can strike.  In the newspaper 2 weeks ago they had an article about an upcoming strike, no not the general strike in Spain, but a different kind of strike in France.  In France, the parents were having their children go on a homework strike.  Parents believed that there was too much homework being given out in the primary school, but their main argument was that homework was leading to student inequality because some students had parents who could help them and some students didn’t.  This part of their argument completely baffled me.  First of all, students should be doing their homework on their own and it shouldn’t be so dependent on the help of a parent.  Second of all, this was in the primary school, we’re not talking about high school calculus or a literature class.  It seemed like such an awful example of reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator.  Homework is an important way for students to reinforce and actually remember what they learned in class; by eliminating homework parents are reducing their child’s potential for future success.  I thought parents hope for their child to have a better life than they had and if a parent can’t do basic math, they would want their child to have that skill.  I guess I was wrong.  During one of my breaks the teachers were talking about this strike and how crazy it is.  They said it’s just another aspect of how parents do everything for kids.  The math teacher complained that one student asked to call his mother because she forgot to pack his homework in his backpack for him. He called her and she brought the homework to school for him.  I told the teachers about how Daniel rollerbladed to school one day in fifth grade and forgot his shoes. He had to call mom from the principal’s office and ask her to bring them to school for him but he had to help mom in the garden for the next week to repay her.  They laughed a lot at the story, sorry Daniel. 

Protesters in A Coruña

Thursday, March 29th was the general strike in Spain.  The huelga general, or in Galician, folga xeral.  All across the country, people went on strike to protest the cuts the government is making.  Not everyone went on strike though.  At my school only half of the teachers were planning to strike, and I was planning on going to school with the teachers who were still going.  They ended up telling me not to bother coming in since there would only be about three students in each class.  I didn’t mind sleeping in since we had just had daylight savings the past week and I was super tired.  One of my friends in A Coruna was going to the protests with a teacher from her school and she asked if I wanted to join, but I decided not to go.  Since I’m here as a guest of the government and they pay me on time each month, and I’m leaving in May, I have no reason to complain or protest.  My friend said essentially it was everyone from the opposing political party who was protesting, but that overall what she saw was very peaceful.  There were some pictures online on the website for the Galician newspaper which showed smoke bombs being thrown into cafes near the protests that had decided to stay open; or open businesses in the shopping center near my house being forced to close.  But it was nowhere near as chaotic as in Madrid where public transport was essentially shut down, and I’m very happy I leave tonight for France instead of a few days ago.  In Barcelona the police became a little violent; this is not much of a surprise since the police in Barcelona were the ones who responded to protesters with force last summer.  Happily the strike is over and hopefully there won’t be any more strikes before I leave in two months.   I had a lovely day off, I went to the gym and then enjoyed the beach, which was surprisingly crowded.  After the protests ended around two o'clock I guess everyone decided to hit the beach.