For Whom the School Bell Tolls

Four students — out of a class of nearly 50 — sit patiently but dejectedly on the floor outside my university classroom. They are waiting for something they have a right to: an education. But the door itself has been double-locked by the janitors, all the furniture removed from inside, and here, at the French university where I normally teach, there will be little, or no, education taking place today — as was the case yesterday and the week before. That's because a significant number of students have been en grève — on strike — protesting against the modest but to...