French high-school blockades are continuing across the country, and the government's handling of the movement is drawing a pointed historical comparison. In a column for Libération, Sophie Binet writes that not since May 1968 has a government responded to a high-school mobilization in this manner, according to the paper.
The unrest has also produced a serious injury. Edouard Geffray, cited in Le Monde's live coverage of the school blockades, described as "humanly dramatic" the fact that a 15-year-old student had a hand torn off in Lens, Le Monde reports.
The blockades have disrupted school life beyond the protests themselves. 20 Minutes has reported on how headteachers are reorganizing class timetables around the shutdowns. In Le Mans, Ouest-France reports that students planned a blockade, a demonstration and a "cordon sanitaire" for Tuesday, October 6, with one participant telling the paper, "We just want to be united."
Media access has become an issue of its own. TV Magazine reports that a headteacher refused to answer a CNews journalist, telling the reporter, "You are not doing young people any good."
The material available does not detail the government's specific measures, the scale of the blockades nationwide, or the cause of the Lens student's injury, and none of those points are asserted here.
What to watch next: whether the mobilization grows or eases after the October 6 actions in Le Mans, and how officials respond.
