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20 October 2010 Last updated at 07:09 ET
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France's 'children of the revolution'

By Hugh Schofield BBC News

High school students block the entrance to the Lamartine high school in Paris, on 12 October 2010, to protest against the government reform bill on pensions. The education system is pumping out a generation whose expectations exceed their prospects

Every morning for the last 10 days, the headmaster at the Lycée Sophie-Germain in the desirable Marais district of Paris has arrived to find a pyramid of rubbish containers piled up against the entrance to the building.

Student leaders take it in turns to climb to the top of the pyramid and harangue their friends with talk of strikes and blockades. Those wishing to attend school are turned away.

The story of the "lycée under siege", and its "suffering headmaster" Michel Vaudry, was told in Le Monde newspaper.

Why I went on strike

Karim Boursali

Karim Boursali, 17, student at the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris

High-school students have a culture of demonstrating, and when people feel directly concerned, as they are now, they demonstrate.

Today we see in the employment market that there are 10 million job seekers, three million unemployed, including a third who are young unemployed. If older people have to work for longer, when young people arrive in the labour market, there won't be any jobs left, and we will end up unemployed at the age of 25 and we won't be able to contribute long enough to be able to get a pension.

This government is not interested in listening to us. They have a liberal agenda. This reform is not at all social. This government is completely irresponsible, immature, schizophrenic and even lying. I want this reform withdrawn.

I don't want the public debt to be financed just by employees. It should be equally burdened by businesses and employers. I want a solution which doesn't involve me working for another two years.

"The worst day was the first, Tuesday, when about 50 troublemakers came, some with death-masks on, some in hoods or with their faces hidden. They attacked us with an almost military precision," Mr Vaudry said.

"They forced us against the entrance with the container-bins, which we were trying to remove, then they started flinging bins and barriers right in our faces … We had to take refuge inside the school."

On another occasion, Mr Vaudry said he was confronted by a young man who was not from the lycée but was clearly organising the protests.

The man took his ground in front of the headmaster and said: "I can't work out what it is that is stopping me planting my fist in your face!"

What is it that makes French students revolt so?

Across the country similar scenes are being acted out daily now, as tens of thousands of lycéens join in the anti-government protests.

A kind of delirium has set in, propelling teenagers onto the streets in a re-enactment of an imagined revolution.

That French lycéens have reason to be concerned about their future is perfectly true.

The school and university system is pumping out generations of youngsters whose expectations vastly exceed their prospects.

Most survive on placements, extra studies and part-time work before finally landing a proper job in their late 20s.

Their argument for opposing Nicolas Sarkozy's pension reform - that the longer old people stay in work, the longer youngsters will have to wait to move into their shoes - may be debatable economics.

But you can see why the future looks less than rosy.

Students face riot policemen as clashes appeared between students and police during a demonstration against the pension reform on October 14 2010 in Dijon, eastern France. Like in 1968, student protests are still largely a middle-class phenomenon.

And if French students believe they have good cause to protest, the method follows quite naturally.

Carefully handed down from generation to generation, the modus manifestandi has become part of national lore.

Quite consciously, the makers of this student rebellion are acting out the parts created by their forefathers and -mothers in that greatest of all student rebellions: May 1968.

The rituals are identical: the 'general assemblies' in which budding leaders bellow into bull-horns, the arm-link procession, the look of beatific joy.

The slogans are straight from 1968. The students chant: "Sarkozy, t'es foutu, la jeunesse est dans la rue" (Sarkozy you're screwed, the youth is in the street) - which apart from the name is a formulation unchanged from De Gaulle's time.

Bizarrely, even the clothes look the same. Today if you want to look like a student radical, you wear floppy jeans, scarves, hats and badges that could be your parents' castaways.
Continue reading the main story
All out, teacher's too old

In April 1909, The New York Times carried this report: "The hold which the strike idea has on the imagination of France is illustrated in such incidents as the strike of a primary school near Paris this week. The children complained that the teacher was too old." According to the report the 50-year-old was removed after the student body picketed the school gates. "Each age has its usages. Mediaeval times had the children's crusade; modern days produce the children's strike," its correspondent mused.

Some things have changed of course. Today's lycéens have the extraordinary organisational tool which is SMS texting and the internet.

Ahead of each day of action, millions of text messages circulate like wildfire, and the more radical lycées have their own blockade Facebook pages.

Not surprisingly there are suspicions of manipulation.

It would not be hard for far-left groups to infiltrate the movement and incite the protests, though this is vehemently denied by students.

Also today, lycée students have a much greater sense of their own power. Back in 1968 la jeunesse had genuine reasons to feel excluded.

In today's youth-centred zeitgeist, teenagers are constantly being told how important they are.
Middle class phenomena

Ségolène Royal, the defeated socialist contender in the 2007 presidential election, said last week: "At 15 or 16, I believe that young people are responsible and understand why they are taking to the street. What is more I ask them to come down to the street, in a peaceful way."

She denied she was encouraging school children to demonstrate, but how else would you interpret what she said?

One other thing remains unchanged from 1968. The student protests are still an overwhelmingly middle-class phenomena.

Back then they were demanding social change. Today they are demanding the opposite: the preservation of a social system. But in both cases, those protesting are not the poorest.

Michel Vaudry noticed the same thing at his besieged lycée in the Marais.

"The ones who are doing the blockading, above all they are ones who are best-off - the ones who have nothing to lose because their parents can always pay for private lessons so they can catch up," he told Le Monde.

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It's OVER!!!

October 22, 2010
French Senate Approves Upping Retirement Age To 62

by NPR Staff and Wires

France's Senate approved an overhaul of the state pension system that would raise the retirement age to 62 amid massive nationwide protests aimed at stopping the change.

The Senate approved the measure by a vote of 177-153 following some 140 hours of debate. The lower house, the National Assembly, had already passed the overhaul and the two chambers were set to approve a reconciled bill next week.

Meanwhile on Friday, French police dislodged a blockade at Paris' main oil depot.

The changes have been pushed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has argued that revitalizing the nation's money-losing pension system is crucial to ensuring that future generations receive anything at all. It's a choice many European governments are facing as populations live longer and government debts soar.

French unions say retirement at 60 is a hard-earned right, and that the working class is unfairly punished by the proposed change. They fear the overhaul will herald the end of an entire network of welfare benefits that make France an enviable place to work and live.

As protests became more violent in the past week and refinery workers shut down oil refineries, thousands of filling stations ran dry. The government on Friday ordered oil companies to pool fuel to ensure gas stations are stocked, particularly for this weekend as nationwide school vacations begin.

Sarkozy ordered regional authorities to intervene and force open depots, accusing the strikers of holding the French economy and citizens "hostage."

Helmeted officers in body armor descended overnight on the main Granpuits depot in Paris, where workers had been camped for 10 days in front of the site, blocking access. The site is run by oil giant Total SA.

The Interior Ministry said the operation succeeded "without incident," but the CGT union said three workers were injured in the melee. Emergency workers brought stretchers to the depot in Grandpuits east of Paris, the closest source of gasoline supplies to the capital.

The head of the national petroleum industry body says it is struggling to import fuel to make up for the shortfall.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon convened oil industry executives Friday to look at the country's lagging fuel supplies, which have been disrupted by strikes at depots and oil terminals. Fillon said it will take "several more days" for a return to normal.

Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said there was no question of rationing gas supplies.

Police vans and water cannon trucks stood ready Friday in Lyon, where city workers cleaned up scattered glass from rampages the day before. Police used tear gas and water cannons against youths hurling bottles and overturning cars.

"It is not troublemakers who will have the last word in a democracy," Sarkozy told local officials in central France, promising to find and punish rioters.

The protests have also blocked hundreds of ships at the Mediterranean port of Marseille, and even forced Lady Gaga to cancel Paris concerts.

Even with the Senate's vote on Friday, unions were preparing to continue their labor actions, with two more days of strikes and protests — on Oct. 28 and Nov. 6.

"The protests are not stopping. We just have different views on how to proceed," Jean-Claude Mailly, a leader of the Force Ouvriere union, told RMC radio.

The final text was expected to be adopted next week by both houses.

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report