Students should protest their education
Letter to the Editor of the Montreal Gazette. An edited version appeared in the 2005-3-3 edition under the heading “Students hurt only themselves”.
The students who are striking to protest the loss of bursary funding, would be better advised to demonstrate against the quality of their education which has failed abysmally to prepare them for the real world in which workers strike so as to financially penalize their employer. Who do the students think their strike is going to penalize, besides themselves? Teachers will be happy to have a break, and if the strike goes on long enough to delay graduation, the government will find it convenient to have those students remain out of the work force (and out of the unemployment numbers) for a little while longer. Do the students hope to embarrass the government into changing its mind? Hell will freeze over first, judging by last year’s object lesson in stubbornness and inflexibility given by newly appointed Education Minister Fournier when he was in charge of the Municipalities portfolio, and refused to modify even a comma of the law setting up agglomeration councils.