On Our Work in the Lycées – from the JCR's 2008 Congress Second Discussion Bulletin
[NB – a lycée is the rough equivalent of an FE college – students attend from the age of 15-16, and stay on for 3 years, occasionally more depending on the course]

A youth organisation must be present in all three sectors where the youth is found: lycées, universities and the world of work. Each of these has its own specific qualities. The importance of lycée work is evident, on several counts.

"THE FUTURE OF THE ORGANISATION"
Lycée students won to the JCR (or to the future party) will stay for longer; they are in a way the "future" of the organisation. To win militants for the long-term, to create activists capable of taking on local tasks and the tasks of the whole organisation is fundamental for our future. For revolutionaries, intervening in lycées should be central to our activity, whether one is a lycée student or not.

A SECTOR IN FERMENT
The experiences of youth struggle in recent years have shown the decisive role of lycée students. The movement against the Fillon Law in 2005, against the CPE in 2006, the mobilisation in solidarity with the sans-papiers in the Parisian region in the Winter of 2007, some blockades and demos in May after the election of Sarkozy, the movement against the LRU in the Autumn of 2007 and again this year with the movement against the suppression of teaching posts, the lycées are the most mobilised sector.

In all these movements, lycée students have built up experience. They have drawn lessons. The anti-CPE movement wouldn't have been what it was were it not for the experience of the blockades of the Fillon movement. The understanding of the necessity of links with the workers wouldn't have existed without the experience of the CPE.

AN OPEN TERRAIN
No current has a hold on the lycée sector. Nothing comparable to UNEF exists there. The national lycée student "unions", led by divers currents of the PS (i.e. FIDL and UNL) could, certainly, influence lycée students thanks to their overexposure in the media, and through their links with the institutions and the student and trade unions. A demo called by one of the two, because it would be relayed by the press, could, in a period of general social agitation, be a success. But it isn't thanks to their activist work that these organisations exercise influence, or only very sporadically or superficially. This is in part due to the nature of the milieu – you stay in a lycée for three years (or a little more if you retake a year or do a post-baccalaureate course), there is not the same freedom of expression, or as much free time as at university, and parental pressure is stronger ("Pass your exams first!"). Even a numerous and well-implanted activist network rarely lasts for longer than one school year.

This is why we must try to build ourselves in lycées whilst placing emphasis on the integration of lycée comrades into the rest of the organisation. This is all the more feasible as a real audience for our ideas exists, and as the other organisations are in difficulties. The JC [youth wing of the PCF] continues to organise students in various towns, notably in towns where the municipal council is controlled by the PCF. But it makes no effort at education or integration, nor at elaborating a strategy for the lycées. We are the best placed to occupy the vacant terrain. We must do it, on pain of depriving hundreds, surely thousands, of lycée students who are ready for action, of the opportunity to organise.

ON OUR ACTIVITY
We must have a regular activity at lycées: leafleting, bulletins, public meetings etc.

In lycées where there is not an existing activist group, this activity allows lycée students to be educated and informed on different issues: reforms, new laws, but also sexism, racism etc.

In such lycées, it is important to have public meetings as soon as we have one or more contacts so that the latter can meet up and make contact with others who want to get active. Thus a group can bit by bit be put in place to militate on the inside.

In cases where an activist group already exists, it is necessary to follow it up.

This following-up must always enable steps forward to be made. This following-up consists of various tasks, the most important of which doubtless being to have conversations with people.

The other tasks must respond to the needs and requests of the group.

As for the New Party, committees have been put in place in different areas. However, they have little base in the lycées. The youth has an important role in the New Party, therefore logically it is necessary to put in place New Party Committees in the lycées.

These committees will permit different mobilised people to meet up and have debates (on capitalism, feminism, etc.) for which there is no time in other contexts.

This work will, amongst other things, permit us to put the different lycées where we have a presence in contact with each other so that they might co-ordinate action.

In periods of movement, this will prevent the unions from assuming leadership of the mobilisation and making all the decisions.

This work must be done at the highest level, in as many lycées as possible, meaning that each JCR branch should do at least one lycée. This work should be everyone's preoccupation, everyone is capable of participating in this work, thanks to our experience, and to the perspective (be it exterior to lycées or not) that we can bring to bear on a multitude of things.

The logic is simple: the more numerous we are to do this, the less our action will be limited; it is in this way that we can convince people around us of our ideas.

STRUCTURING AN ACTIVIST GROUP AT THE LEVEL OF A LYCÉE, OF A BRANCH OR OF A SECTION: THE ROLE OF THE LYCÉE COMMISSION

In a period of calm, a lycée commission allows us to propose a forum for discussion which is more accessible to lycée students. In effect, it is more difficult for a lycée student to speak up in a meeting after an HE student comrade who quotes Lenin in his intervention, than it is for another HE student who militates with him on a daily basis. In modern society lycée students occupy a very particular position. Even more than the rest of the youth, their rights are trampled notably in educational establishments where democracy is respected even less than at university. In the family, their word is not considered equal to that of their parents. In society more broadly, they don't have a number of important rights, such as the vote, legal autonomy from their parents, etc.

The commission allows both comrades and sympathisers to bust this lock. It is also a forum for discussion which serves to convince sympathisers to get organised. It permits lycée students to get educated, in theory as well as in practice, by giving them the chance to take responsibility for preparing a lead off for a discussion, for the production, formatting and printing of a bulletin. This not only fits them to be more efficient in mobilisations, to better understand society, but also to take part in organisation, which is the most basic precondition of democracy and respect. The commission permits other comrades to keep a link with the lycée student milieu, which facilitates their intervening in its direction.

In a period of movement, the commission would permit numerous lycées to exchange points of view, and so to develop a common vision and thereby to elaborate the best possible line to push. Given that the system's contradictions are easier to see in a period of mobilisation, the commission permits lycée students to understand these contradictions when they are living them (CRS and the state, FIDL and bureaucracy, etc.)

In this sense, the balance-sheet of the Parisian region is rather positive as we have seen lycée students take control of the commission. It is organised and set in motion by lycée students. This has also resulted in a considerable increase in the number of lycée students in the commission.

As well as the lycée commission, other meetings can be held. Everywhere we can, we must organise open para-union meetings. In all the lycees where there is more than one comrades, we must organise regular meetings at the branch level with comrades and sympathisers. Where other political tendencies are present in a lycée, it is necessary to organise supplementary meetings to co-ordinate actions with these tendencies. How can we convince anyone that global revolution is possible if we cannot even organise motivated students in a lycée? These meetings have permitted us to structure a regular and efficient activity like at Joliot in Nanterre (5 comrades, a teaching assistant and a teacher in the LCR), at lycée Rodin (one comrade and a New Party Committee of 10) and lycee Monet (three comrades and a big periphery).