'We're fed up': Paris students rise up in a movement that shows no sign of slowing

If the French government was hoping to drive its protesting high schoolers back into their classrooms with a whiff of tear gas, it hasn’t worked. Hundreds of thousands of students and their supporters took part in nationwide demonstrations, barricading school entrances and marching through France's major cities. The interior ministry estimated that a quarter of a million people took part on Tuesday; organisers maintain it was almost twice that. High schoolers have been blocking access to hundreds of schools across the country since mid-September, protesting what they say is a lack of teaching staff, harsh timetables and run-down buildings ill-equipped to deal with the worsening heatwaves that now stifle the country each summer. Why the violence surrounding surprise movement To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: French high school and university students attend a demonstration as part of a nationwide day of protests and blockades, voicing anger over overcrowded ...