Student strike

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A student strike is a form of student protest . With the boycott of lectures and other courses, the public should be made aware of the concerns of the students and free space should be created for the students to be able to participate in campaigns. In contrast to the protests of the 1968 movement , student strikes have so far usually focused on direct concerns of the students, only partially had general political concerns and were non-violent.

In 1988/89 the so-called "UniMut" strike started at the Free University of Berlin and extended nationwide (initially primarily Hesse, then the whole of Germany). It was the first major series of occupations of institutes and university buildings. The FU Berlin was administered by "occupation councils" for almost a whole semester (until February 25, 1989) and became a so-called "Liberated University". Numerous institutes have been given new names. In Frankfurt / Main the situation is characterized by "newly created forms of self-organization such as action committees, central student councils, and general assemblies". The consequences were the introduction of student-administered project tutorials until 2002 and the introduction of a reform course in human medicine.

Coming in from the University of Giessen outgoing student strike in 1997 was against the shortage of universities, the largest student protest movement since the '68 movement . The wave of protests broke out in the autumn of 1997 and reached its climax in December with nationwide student strikes, some of which lasted several weeks. Although most of the German universities were involved in the protests and the goals of the students were also supported by politics and society, the wave of protests subsided at the beginning of spring 1998.

In summer 2009 a nationwide education strike took place. Among other things, due to the financial crisis and the imminent federal election , but not least because of the deficiencies in particular with the new Bachelor / Master system, a broad alliance of schoolchildren, students and trainees formed throughout Germany . Those willing to strike organized preparatory coordination meetings, especially at universities. The education and science union (GEW) supported the call for an education strike in a resolution passed on April 27, 2009. On Monday, June 15, 2009, the central strike week began with symbolic occupations and spontaneous demonstrations in several German university locations. In the following week, the grievances in the education system were discussed through numerous campaigns, flash mobs, as well as in lectures and panel discussions. The nationwide demonstrations in many German cities and university cities on June 17 brought a total of around 250,000 people to the streets. For autumn 2009 further nationwide actions were planned as part of the education strike.

The implementation of student strikes is controversial among the students themselves, since the students do not produce a product like workers, but are themselves "products" of the university ( human capital ). In contrast to strikes by workers, there is no economic loss for the universities on strike and the universities are usually not the opponents of the strike. Rather, it is the students themselves who have to accept a loss by not taking courses. The strike thus initially has a more symbolic meaning, but with sufficient participation (as in 2006 in France during the protest against the CPE ) it can also have a direct political effect, comparable to that of strikes among workers.

Student strikes are often accompanied by other activities (lectures in public spaces, media activities).

With a student strike in Prague on November 18 began in 1989 in Czechoslovakia , the Velvet Revolution .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ End of immodesty , leaflet on the student strike, University of Frankfurt / Main, November 21, 1988: "The newly created forms of self-organization such as action committees, central student councils, and general assemblies offer the opportunity to develop political content and forms of action that oppose the transparent Assert interests of the university leadership, the party-dependent groups and against the profiling neuroses of individual student politicians . The dynamism of the manifesting protest now enables a university-wide strike to be organized. An ACTIVE STRIKE in the next few days offers the chance to develop our unease and criticism of the conditions at the university and beyond, regardless of everyday student life, across all faculties. The strike will show to what extent the protest does not remain a mere ephemera in everyday university life, to what extent criticized study conditions become student criticism of the conditions. "
  2. ^ Education strike 2009 - Decision of the GEW trade union conference ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gew.de
  3. ↑ Tagesschau.de ( Memento from June 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ): Education strike begins with occupied lecture halls

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