Starting them young...

With the day of strikes upon us, a snapshot of how things are done across the channel; at today’s protests against the proposed pension reforms in France, the CGT union launched its new initiative for children, ‘Ma premiere manif’’ (‘My First Demo’).

According to 'Le Dauphiné libéré':

Children are invited to visit the union’s official vehicle to collect a pack containing a certificate of participation, along with games and a colouring book to ‘help children and parents enjoy their day’.

Meanwhile, in the UK, teaching unions, having urged their members not to help schools or parents with planning by giving advance notice of their intention to strike, are now encouraging children to make banners and put together food boxes to sustain their striking teachers on their (long) march, a concept so far beyond irony that we surely need a new word for it. 

Although some of the damage dates from the activities of left-wing teachers half a century ago, the death knell of modern teaching sounded in the early nineties, when two Cs at A level were enough to get you into teacher training and the NUT set about building the militant super-union behind today’s mass walkout. Fuelled by the anti-elitist attitude that saw better-qualified subject specialists hounded out of many state schools, a culture has grown up in which pupils appear to be, for some at least, a means to an end, rather than their raison d’être.

Now it looks as if, along with their efforts to destroy the education system from within, the unions are soliciting a public show of support from those who will be most harmed by their irresponsible and cynical actions. There must be a technical term for this sort of thing, but I have a horrible feeling it is likely to be in Russian, or possibly Chinese.