Random, I tell you!

8 Comments 20 January 2005

Today some teachers are on strike. I don’t mean that particular districts or villages are up in arms over poor salaries or waning benefits. No, I mean individual teachers.

So, today, Julia can’t attend school because her teacher is on strike for a day. In the message home, it read that on Jeudi (Thursday) she wouldn’t be at school because of something called a greve. In my rudimentary French (where I didn’t learn useful things that could have helped me with the kids’ homework this week like French geometric terms or French pirate terms), I thought greve meant grief. I surmised that she must’ve had a funeral that day. Thankfully, our friends James and Brandy were here and James, who is fluent, told me a greve is a strike. So, Madame Boinnot is on strike.

There will be no substitute, either. Sophie has encountered this very odd (and random) thing about French schools. They don’t have substitutes very often, at least not at her school. If a teacher is gone, she is gone, and the kids are left to wander the schoolyard until their next class. Go figure!

Here’s the really random part. Aidan goes to the same school as Julia and his teacher is NOT on strike. So, he was supposed to go to school. I kept him home because he has this horrific cough, so the point was moot, but it still strikes me as odd that some kids could go to school and others couldn’t. Apparently, tomorrow things will be back to “normal,” whatever that means.

Perhaps we should all have a greve now and again. Just for a day. Maybe an airline pilot could just take the day off–without a substitute. Or a doctor. Or whoever has a grievance. Maybe I should just resign from making dinner as a protest of one.

I’m sure there are similar perplexing dichotomies in the United States. We can be just as random. I’m just not enough removed to discover them. Care to enlighten me?

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Jeanne Damoff

I go on strike frequently, but no one notices. Bold rebellion doesn’t pack much punch when you work at home and no one else is around.FYI: Nine out of ten doctors recommend Spider Man poptarts for horrific cough. Jeanne Amelie, le T.
Jeanne Damoff

I go on strike frequently, but no one notices. Bold rebellion doesn’t pack much punch when you work at home and no one else is around.

FYI: Nine out of ten doctors recommend Spider Man poptarts for horrific cough.

Jeanne Amelie, le T.
shannon

Hi Mary,I don’t have any school-related stories, but I do remember a coworker of my husband’s who once skipped work to protest a management decision. He started his personal strike by going to the mill and signing in at the beginning of his regular shift. He then went flying for the rest of the day, came back to the mill, signed out at shift’s end–and got fired. Ah, the power of protest! shannon woodward @ wind scraps
shannon

Hi Mary,

I don’t have any school-related stories, but I do remember a coworker of my husband’s who once skipped work to protest a management decision. He started his personal strike by going to the mill and signing in at the beginning of his regular shift. He then went flying for the rest of the day, came back to the mill, signed out at shift’s end–and got fired. Ah, the power of protest!

shannon woodward @ wind scraps
relevantgirl

Katy,That is such an interesting story of randomness! Thank you for sharing!
relevantgirl

Katy,

That is such an interesting story of randomness! Thank you for sharing!
Katy

This isn’t current, but it’s all I’ve got…Back when I was in high school (Catholic), my public school friends had it made. The large school made it a policy to let kids take days off for their particular religious holidays. So on certain days, all the Jewish kids would be gone, on Holy Days of Obligation, the Catholic kids would become suddently faithful, etc.That would have been confusing enough as far as large blocks of kids being absent all the time, except for the kids took it a step further and turned ecumentical. They became “all things to all school officials,” so to speak. The Jews got wise to all the Christian “days off,” and claimed religious fervor on every single day they could, and the Christians did, too.Too bad Kansas City didn’t have any Muslims or other religions in those days. A couple more faiths thrown in, and the kids wouldn’t have been required to show up at all! Kids may not have been religiously observant, but they could do the math!
Katy

This isn’t current, but it’s all I’ve got…Back when I was in high school (Catholic), my public school friends had it made. The large school made it a policy to let kids take days off for their particular religious holidays. So on certain days, all the Jewish kids would be gone, on Holy Days of Obligation, the Catholic kids would become suddently faithful, etc.

That would have been confusing enough as far as large blocks of kids being absent all the time, except for the kids took it a step further and turned ecumentical. They became “all things to all school officials,” so to speak. The Jews got wise to all the Christian “days off,” and claimed religious fervor on every single day they could, and the Christians did, too.

Too bad Kansas City didn’t have any Muslims or other religions in those days. A couple more faiths thrown in, and the kids wouldn’t have been required to show up at all! Kids may not have been religiously observant, but they could do the math!