Hmm ok, so some background is required on this one. Since the socialist government is in office, the minister for education has been passing some really polemic measures. It started years ago with “replacement classes”, a fine idea in essence but horribly implemented which caused lots of protests back then by teachers and students alike (this was in the 2005/2006 and 2006/2007 school years) but has since calmed down due to the “no flexibility” policy imposed by the higher authorities. Then last year, a new “teacher evaluation” was passed, to start to be used this year. And finally at the beginning of this school year (late september/early october) we all found out a new policy is in place for those who miss classes.
Here’s the deal: Before this, you could miss classes, and as long as you justified them accordingly (because you had gone to the doctor, or broke a leg and spent a month hospital or whatever), those didn’t count towards your number of allowed misses (3 times the number of weekly classes of X discipline, every 3 months. So for example, if I had 3 math classes a week, I could miss 9 classes over a 3 month period and not justify any of them before I failed they year due to misses). This was, as far as I view it, fair and had been in place for several years. It raised one problem, students with over 18 years of age or whose parents did not care could just justify every miss every time and they’d be OK with it (though they’d still probably fail the discipline(s) because you pretty much need to attend to classes to learn anything).
But on comes the ministry, and says “Oh no, this is wrong” and now, even justified missed count towards your allowed number. Another difference though, is that you do not automatically miss the year after going over the maximum number of faults. Instead, you do a test to check if you’re up-to-date with the discipline or if you need some extra support. By what I’ve heard, these tests do not count to your final evaluation, they’re just diagnosis. Eventually, the teacher might have to say you’re not fit to pass the year, because you have no grasp of the subject at hand whatsoever (and that might even hurt his evaluation, but that’s not what I’m talking about here). But if all goes well, the student who broke a leg and is worried about not failing the discipline will stay up-to-date with what’s being taught and the slacking one will be punished. All good in theory. Now, I’m not saying this is the best (or worst) system out there, not expressing my opinion on this point.

So you will ask, “and what the hell does that have to do with a student strike?”. Well, the students ain’t happy. They never seem to be anyway. And so I present you with a new social protest form: “the student strike”. What does it consist of? Mass faults! Yes ladies and gentlemen, my dear colleagues have a mass fault appeal scheduled for the 3rd of December. That’s country-wise. But even more amazing, yesterday morning a bunch of way-too-old, way-too-bad-looking so called “students” (they don’t seem to really study much) planted themselves at the door of our school first attempting not to let anyone in, and when that failed, trying to convince people not to go in. And since that wasn’t working too well either, they had nothing better to do than getting an electric guitar, an amplifier plugged on a school’s socket and started rocking out right there (while also apparently consuming some weed, for the sake of the whole irreverent feel).
And so, out of the 20 we are, from my class only 2 people went to the 3 classes that afternoon. Mind you, we have a Portuguese test this Friday and this was the last Portuguese class before it.
So you see, my school is (in the words of one of my colleagues this morning on MSN) “missing classes for a day, for the sake of a fair cause, a cause that’s ours”.
As conclusion, an alert viewer will notice all these problems, out bursts of “protest” and “manifestations” are only coming up on public state schools. The private schools, where you pay your face and a left leg, are fine. Students getting high grades, all calm, all quiet. And mind you, these are students that will compete with the public school ones once we all get the university application phase, and the will most likely be more prepared than we are. The public school degrades, and some others benefit from that. This in a country that is ran by a so-called socialist government. Three cheers for Portugal!