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Around Town

Standing up again

By Will Tizard
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 9th, 2007 issue

Prague’s not Paris (not to worry — no food or customer service discussions follow from this pithy observation). That is, it takes more than a new law that weakens protections for part-time student employees to cause mass strikes and demonstrations in this town.

In fact, the last time Wenceslas Square saw a protest of angry young people making noise on a scale such as we witnessed Friday may well have been Nov. 17, 1989. In those days, people in their 20s didn’t say things like “I have no politics — I just want a management career and a new Audi.” They wanted something more basic: a government that gave a damn and the right to criticize and change it.
But it just might be that the newest generation of students has discovered anew the rewards of getting out, organizing and expressing demands. They’re also more focused, if the demonstrations of May 4 are any indication.
Passersby and tourists wandering through the center of town were fairly stunned to see the numbers and energy that filled Prague’s historic gathering point for dissent last week.
Some 10,000 students from all over Prague and Central Bohemia took the Prague streets at 10 a.m. that day to raise an enormous ruckus, backing up traffic for half the day as they slowly worked their way to the Vltava River and across to the Malá Strana district to end up at the Education Ministry. The cause for all this commotion? A new standardized high-school graduation test that has been talked about for over a decade finally appears ready for adoption.
The trouble is, Czech high schools are not standardized. Many are trade or vocational schools, others are art or music conservatories, while still others are liberal arts–based and intended to prepare students for university. To force all these young people to take the same test in order to determine the future of their studies is nonsense, the students say.
“The system we have now works so why change it?” asked demonstrator Honza Hrdina from the Gymnasium Na Zatlance. “We study four years and then find out that the A-level exam consists of something completely different.”
Classmate Bára Štíbrová said no one can keep up with the new rules and, like most who turned out to demonstrate, said the new exam hasn’t been planned properly. “Nobody knows what will happen when we fail this exam,” she added.
The gathering didn’t draw much attention as it started that morning.
At first, a few teens clustered around the statue of St. Wenceslas, some banging drums and others hastily finishing banners and placards. One, taped together from two pieces of poster board on a bench by two girls, read “We are not test rabbits.”
Others got equally creative. One apparently intended for multiple uses at future demonstrations simply read “We’re against it.” Another read “The A-level is no fun.”
Another, taking the debate to a whole new level, urged “Stop testing on students.” It’s not quite whether this particular protester meant all tests should be banned — and just how he proposed the education should then measure progress — but there was no doubt his sign struck a nerve.
Students weren’t the only ones out on the streets, either: Teacher Alena Duhajská from Brandýs nad Labem said, “The A-level exams are not ready.” Worse still, she added, “The ministry just keeps changing the requirements during their studies.”
Demonstrator Jiří Šulc, a student at the Karlín Economic and Business School, agreed. “It took so long to introduce the new A-levels, and it’s still full of bullshit.”
A group of tourists in a sightseeing van surrounded by the sign-waving kids began pumping the air with fists, signaling solidarity with whatever the hell it was that the protesters wanted. A few seemed to think they had been lucky enough to stumble into another Velvet Revolution of sorts.
Just maybe, they had.

Will Tizard can be reached at wtizard@praguepost.com


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