INTERNATIONAL STUDENT PROTEST: THE SHAKEN IVY

Abstract

For some time now, but especially during the last decade, massive student protest has been trying to tell us something. It doesn't matter whether we listen to the harangue in 1966 at the Capuchin Monastery of Barcelona, or the shouts along Bismarkstrasse in 1967 or read the Morningside Heights flyers in 1968. All these demonstrations at one point proclaim a revolt against technological society with its inequitable distribution of affluence, the problem of war, racial prejudice, poverty and the alienation of man. Mixed with the slogans of rebellion and anarchy, we also hear of universities run like medieval fiefdoms whose technology, resources and social structure are completely inadequate for the demands of modern society. Throughout the world it is the young who are shouting and the aged who have trouble hearing. At Rome, Paris and Berlin - sites of just some of the most dramatic street confrontations between students and authorities - it is not unusual for students to attend lectures so crowded that they cannot sit down, to endure years of boredom and finally to graduate into a world that has no use for their talents thus, only confirming their worse fears. It is no wonder that the prime demand being made in every university around the world is the student's right to say what and how he will be taught. The implications of such demands are of course that something is seriously out of order in our traditional university structure. What is wrong and why the university has ceased to perform smoothly is the subject of this paper. It draws upon specific instances of student protest in the United States and Europe to emphasize the student point of view of school and society.