[Fdu] Quebec profs issue call for general strike

Sun Mar 25 21:00:46 EDT 2012

"We are all students."
Quebec profs issue call for unlimited general strike of campuses
This appeal by Quebec post-secondary teachers, signed initially by 21 professors, has now been signed by more than 1,600 others in support of their students.

As professors who strive to bequeath knowledge to all those who seek an education, we support the students striking in democratic defense of accessibility to university education and in justified opposition to the commodification of education. We say to these student youth who are standing firm that they are not alone.

Beyond the legitimate demands linked to the precariousness of student status, it is the future of education and Quebec society that is at stake in the conflict between the students and the government. This strike is an extension of the numerous struggles that have emerged in recent years challenging the subordination of the public good to private interests with the help of a scandalously obliging government.

An Increase That Impoverishes Education
The most immediate issue in the current conflict is of course the increase in education fees. This 75 per cent increase, we note, follows the 30 per cent increase imposed since 2008. These increases are draconian, and they fit within a logic of privatization of the funding of our public services. Among its most obvious consequences, we can anticipate a substantial increase in student indebtedness, as we see in the rest of Canada and in the Anglo-Saxon world as a whole, as well as a significant decrease in accessibility to education.

This privatization of university funding, based on a neoliberal premise, treats students as customers. To profit from their investment, they will be tempted to choose their area of study in terms of its financial yield and potential for employment. The logic of indebtedness regiments the students de facto in the world of finance, and subordinates their decisions to the bankers. The student thereby becomes an agent of reproduction of the social order, instead of a citizen participating fully in the evolution of his or her society. Academic freedom and the entire critical dimension of university education would appear to be threatened with obsolescence.

The discourse of the Liberals, the ADQ/CAQistes[3] and the university administrations claims that the increase will help solve the problem of "under-funding" of Quebec universities. But we should instead be talking about "malfunding," considering the huge transfer of funds once devoted to education and basic research to investments in real estate, private research, advertising and the financing of a powerful bureaucracy. In this sense, the central issue is less the under-funding than what we choose to fund in our universities. To what degree are we prepared to sacrifice courses considered unprofitable, to reduce accessibility to studies in order to feed the endless appetite of the boards of directors?

>From One Revolution to Another
Underlying the debate over the increase in education fees is a conflict between different models of education. Finance Minister Raymond Bachand evokes a "cultural revolution" when he attacks the achievements of the Quiet Revolution by returning education fees to what they were prior to 1968, when the university was essentially reserved to a male elite. The creation of a more egalitarian system of education, such as we enjoyed until the 1990s, was the end result of a broad collective debate expressed, for example, through the Parent Commission[4] and the vitality of the student movement of that time.

We note today that the conservative revolution being implemented by the Liberal government is not the product of any debate and is presented to us as an inevitability. Symptomatic in this regard is the Agreement to lift the lid on student fees (Pacte sur le dégel des droits de scolarité) announced in 2010. It was based on a sham consensus featuring the representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, the Conseil du Patronat and neoliberal think tanks (IEDM, CIRANO), organized of course under the leadership of the bard of the lucides, Lucien Bouchard[5] himself. The denial of any form of opposition or dialogue opened the way to Raymond Bachand's budgets, just as the injunctions of the "banksters" [English in original] have imposed austerity policies here and elsewhere in the world.

As a result, we have to consider the student movement and its demands as a voice of resistance. For several years now, the students have been presenting an intelligent analysis of the issues related to post-secondary education, and calling for a public debate, a débat de société on the future of education. This demand has been met by a dogmatic refusal to open the dialogue and recognize the students as legitimate interlocutors. This stiff resistance explains the fact that the debate is now being expressed in the streets. The violent police repression of the students is the material expression of the contempt for those who struggle, often imaginatively, to defend what they know is precious to each of us: education as a public good.

Everyone United Against the Increase
Considering that the increase in education fees masks an ongoing privatization of funding of the universities, that it challenges universality as a model of accessibility to post-secondary studies, and that it furthers the transformation of institutions of learning into mere market organizations, we think the unlimited general strike is a justified method in the circumstances and that the students' demands for a freeze on student fees and free education are legitimate.

The students are inviting us to build a new political way of thinking (imaginaire) that can revive the democratic and modern foundations of the educational system and of Quebec society as a whole. Within this perspective, we greet their call to general mobilization as an invitation to defend the right not only to higher education but also to the civilizing implications of the university. As professors, we respond: We are all students!

Authors:
Benoit Guilmain, Collège Édouard-Montpetit;
Anne-Marie Le Saux, Collège de Maisonneuve;
Stéphane Thellen, Cégep du Vieux Montréal.

Signatories:

Normand Baillargeon, Université du Québec à Montréal; Mario Beauchemin, Président de la FEC-CSQ; Claire Fortier, Collège Édouard-Montpetit; Isabelle Fortier, École nationale d'administration publique; Gilles Gagné, Université Laval; Frédéric Julien, Collège Édouard-Montpetit; Anna Kruzynski, Université Concordia; Benoit Lacoursière, Collège de Maisonneuve; Diane Lamoureux, Université Laval; Georges Leroux, Université du Québec à Montréal; Karim-Mathieu Lapierre, Cégep de St-Jérôme; Michèle Nevert, Université du Québec à Montréal, présidente du SPUQ; Jacques Pelletier, Université du Québec à Montréal; Martin Petitclerc, Université du Québec à Montréal; Guy Rocher, Université de Montréal; Cécile Sabourin, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières; Jean Trudelle, Collège Ahuntsic, président de la FNEEQ-CSN; Louise Vandelac, Université du Québec à Montréal.

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Endnotes:

1. An English translation: Broad coalition of the Association for student union solidarity.

2. In English: Coalition against fee-for-service and the privatization of public services.

3. A reference to the Coalition Avenir Québec, a new right-wing party led by François Legault, a former Parti Québécois minister. The CAQ recently absorbed the right-wing Action Démocratique du Québec (ADQ).

4. The report of the Parent Commission in the early 1960s launched a far-reaching educational reform that ended church control of education and led to the founding of a province-wide network of public universities and community colleges.

5. Bouchard, a former Parti Québécois premier, authored a right-wing manifesto a decade ago that was issued by prominent right-wing ideologues who called themselves "lucides," the clear-eyed realists. It provoked the publication of an alternative manifesto from leading progressives who called themselves the "solidaires," those promoting solidarity of the oppressed and exploited. The name was subsequently adopted by Québec solidaire.

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