Maisa, a 17-year-old in a poor Paris suburb who aspires to be an English teacher, joined tens of thousands of other students and their supporters this week in protests that spread across France over dilapidated schools, classroom overcrowding and teacher shortages, Reuters reports.
At Lycee Le Corbusier school in Aubervilliers, a suburb north of Paris in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, protesters said schools in poor neighborhoods like theirs faced the worst conditions.
“Last year I took the high school French exam without a French teacher, and teachers have a huge impact,” Maisa said.
"These are not conditions to study in."
As protests raged at more than 1,200 French high schools this week, police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets in some cases. More than 5,000 people were arrested, and some protesters were seriously hurt with eye injuries, broken teeth and blows to the head. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez called it a "climate of unacceptable violence" and called for order.
Amelia, 15, joined Maisa in the crowd outside the school gates and held a sign reading, "Our address should not decide our future". She said she was demonstrating to demand the same rights as students elsewhere in the country.
"The education authority is not investing enough in the suburbs. It's classist and racist," she said.
Ulysse Rabate, a political scientist at Paris 8 University, said the protests show the way that France's marginalised urban neighbourhoods are increasingly influencing national politics.
"When there is a collapse of the public service, of public education, those who feel it the most, and the most violently, are those at bottom," he said.
