Labor activists, teachers, parents and university students turned out by the thousands on Tuesday to join high school students in demonstrations that swept across France, adding an intergenerational range of voices to demands that government fix ailing schools.
The largest crowds massed in Paris, where thousands of students and their supporters marched about two miles from République to Nation, two of the city’s main squares, protesting school understaffing, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings, among other complaints.
“Hitting the young amounts to insulting the future,” one sign read, while another said, “I don’t want to be another brick in the wall.”
In spite of a heavy police presence, the mood at the Paris protest was cheerful. The government estimated that 56,000 people took part, among 256,000 demonstrating nationwide; a major labor union cited a national figure more than twice as large.
Catherine Jegou, 61, a middle schoolteacher and member of a union of school workers, said she had come to support the high school students, whose demands echoed those of teachers. “For years we have demanded that the public school system have more means,” she said.
She also criticized the government for policies she said support private schools more than public institutions.
Roger Lallier, 78, a retired engineer who was wearing the vest of a major workers’ union, said he came all the way from Bourgogne, nearly 200 miles from Paris, to support the students. “I was part of May 68,” he said, referring to nationwide protests initiated by students in 1968 that nearly toppled the government and transformed French society.
“It’s misery in France,” Mr. Lallier said, lamenting the state of high schools, adding, “we’ve fallen far lower than where we were at a few years ago.” He said that he hopes the presidential election next year will bring a “real left-wing government” to power, offering what he called real change.
Luce Avanzata, 20, who has been enrolled in a cinema studies program for the past two years, said she came to the protest to help broaden the movement that high school students had launched weeks ago. She applauded the high schoolers for succeeding where older students had not and for “managing to make themselves heard.”
“For me it’s the moment to change things,” Ms. Avanzata said.
Parents and union members said they had joined school blockades to ensure the protests remained peaceful and protect young people from confrontations with police. Some of the demonstrations have turned violent, some schools have been set on fire, and the police have made thousands of arrests, while facing accusations of heavy-handed law enforcement.
“There’s a whole process of learning how to protest,” said Claire Langmann, 53, a mother of a protesting student who joined the blockade in front of Hélène Boucher High School in northern Paris on Tuesday morning. “I believe society can change through collective effort, so I really want to see this succeed,” she added.
Scuffles later broke out in front of the school between protesters and riot police, who broke up the blockade.
Georges Poncelet, a 25-year-old psychology student, said she came out to support the high school movement, but also to demand more funding for higher education. With the government planning to freeze social benefits for college students, she warned that students who had to work part time would struggle even more.
“I came to assert the place of students in society, a place that is extremely marginalized, in a society that claims to be thinking about the future,” she said.
Ms. Poncelet said she felt grateful for the younger students and was moved to see them protest, especially because she lives in Seine-St.-Denis, a working-class suburb north of Paris where several high schools have organized blockades at schools. Ms. Poncelet held signs saying, “Gen Z: no money, no housing, no therapist, no fear” and “budget for tear gas, never for health care.”
On Monday Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of France Unbowed, the leading far-left political party, had called on adults willing to take part in the protest to wear white armbands.
Dominique Godin, 73, a retired pianist, wore one as he protested in Paris on Tuesday. He said he was there to show his support for high school students and to protect them.
Mr. Godin, who has an 18-year-old daughter, recalled, “I was once in high school, in university. To see there are similar situations 50 years later is impossible to bear.”
Young people, he said, “are realizing that they’re going to have to manage their own future, since the older generations aren’t doing it.”
Ephrat Livni contributed reporting.
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