I am well aware that strikes have been a popular topic of discussion here on Etang. Well, I happened to arrive at a period of particularly forceful political unrest, and things have only gotten better/worse in the three weeks that I’ve been here. The strikes have expanded, from union and transport strikes, to strikes by port workers and university and high school students, all theoretically up in arms about the proposed hike in the national retirement age.
It seems dubious to me that 16-year-olds would skip school for any reason besides not having to take a math test, but if the ones being interviewed on the evening news are any indication, many of the student strikers are incredibly well-informed and genuinely perturbed about a change in the retirement age. I would have thought that retirement would be the farthest issue from the minds of teenagers. Then, today in class, I got…well…schooled. (more…)
Étang 