Back 2 skool: we don’t need no education!

Charest should resign! Or not, we’ll still go back to school.
Photo by Justin Ling via Flickr

It’s that time of year again, when Bureau en Gros starts with those god-awful commercials about parents gleefully buying school supplies while their kids look on in profound sadness.

But some Quebec students above the age of 16 may not have pencils and notebooks on their minds (do kids even use those things anymore?!). Instead, they may be wondering if they’re even going back to school at all.

Students at seven Montreal-area CEGEPs — including the formerly militant Marie-Victorin — have voted to return to class, leaving CEGEP de St-Laurent and CEGEP du Vieux-Montréal to fend for themselves. LOL, sorry guys!

(It should be noted that only 518 St-Laurent students actually showed up to vote — the CBC reported that 261 voted in favour, 243 voted against and 14 abstained.)

The Globe and Mail reported yesterday that Jaggi Singh — who quizzically kept winning “Loudest Activist” in the Mirror’s Best of Montreal polls long after he piped down (and losing only to “Students” in last year’s BOM) — urged Quebec’s students to continue striking, saying the issue went beyond a party and to the core of a “destructive system.”

Sir Tweets-a-lot’s Twitter feed is rife with disappointment over students deciding to strap on those backpacks and head to gym class (oh, these badminton racquets are impeding my access to a quality education!).

Meanwhile, CTV is predicting university students will vote to continue striking, mainly because the movement started at the university level to begin with.

Regardless of the outcome, though, expect Montreal’s streets to be pockmarked with student-related sinkholes the morning of Aug. 23 — the monthly large-scale demonstration that takes place every 22nd of every month promises to be huge as students return to the city. ■