#educationinternstrike — Public Fediverse posts

So anyway, here's a rant about the current #EducationInternStrike.

Disclaimer: I'm not studying education, i'm not an intern, i'm not on strike. I'm writing in ze englische because there's been really little media coverage here (in quebec), and even less in english.

So, a lot of education students (those aiming to teach at middle and high school) are currently on strike: they're not doing their internships, they're not going to school. Why? Because the situation is, literally, unbearable.

As part of their formation, they need to do some full-time internships. In addition to the internships, they also need to fill reports, answer questions and well, doing schoolwork. The problem? These internships are unpaid. This means that an education student need to do an internship full-time, do schoolwork part-time, work on her/his own part-time to pay rent and food... and that's not accounting the students who are also parents and must take care of their own children. It is simply too much work.

To make matter worse, there is currently a massive teachers' shortage, so these internships are subpar at best. A lot of their internship is therefore unsupervised. When it is supervised, more often then not another student intern is doing the supervision! And it's been going on for so long that the education system relies massively on all this unpaid work.

And this is not considering the sexist angle of the thing: Most internships in male-dominated domains (ex.: engineering) are paid, and a good salary too. Most internships in female-dominated domains (ex.: middle and high school teaching) are not.

So what's the consequence? A lot of the students give up before graduating. And when they do graduate, they are already burned out. And end up leaving the profession within five years. That phenomenon has dragged on for year and has created a nasty vicious circle, as more and more older teachers leave, there's fewer and fewer replacements.

To make matters worse, when you're not paid, you're not protected. You're not part of the teachers' union, you're not even protected by workers' law. You break your leg on the job? Well, though luck, there's no workers' comp for you because you're not a worker. Interns report a staggering amount of sexual assault, along with general abuse and threats made by coworkers and classes' students. And there's nothing they can do beside go to the cops, who are all to happy to wipe their asses with their complaints (as is custom when a woman mention sexual assault).

There's been lots of actions by interns in previous years (stretching back almost a decade, AFAIK). The quebec state reacted after the last intern strike by going divide and conquer. They gave a few grants to some internships. Note that it's only a grant, not pay. They are still not considered as workers, even when they teach full time a full class without supervision. Aaaaand the state sortof backpedaled and finally won't give all the money promised. Here's my surprised face.

So, the education interns are trying a new tactic. Instead of targeting the state, they're targeting universities. They're basically saying: either you pay us (which they won't, they can't afford it), or you make sure our working conditions are well, teaching conditions. Conditions where they can learn and graduate, and not conditions where they prop up a broken system.

The UQAM, the public university in #tiotiake #mtl, reacted by threatening to punish the 750 students who went on strike. The other student associations reacted by calling a solidarity strike. So a big part of the UQAM is currently on strike. And a lot of students outside Montreal also did a strike, are on strike, or are planning a strike.

Will it leads to something bigger? I dunno, but it's definitely worth a watch. I know a lot of nursing interns are currently watching...

One intern organization: https://www.facebook.com/collectif.spts

An article in french: https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/770333/des-etudiants-manifestent-pour-la-remuneration-des-stages

Another article in french: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1924376/salaire-stages-etudes-uqar-cegep-rimouski-manifestation