I was going to write a couple of weeks ago about how cool my students are for giving at least two hoots about politics, for knowing who Che Guevara is (other than that funny looking silhouette on Hallensteins’ t-shirts), and for going on strike to oppose the proposed education law amendment. And well, yes, I still think they’re great for those reasons.

But then yesterday they all wandered out of class as I was coming in, claiming they were striking due to the lack of heating in the building. “Berry berry cold. We go estrike,” they told me as I looked at them with a bemused expression of disbelief. Granted, it was damn cold – the school’s central heating was due to be switched on on the first of November, but it is broken, apparently. But the idea that most of the senior school can just get up and wander on out because they decide the air temperature is too low seems absurd.

Seven diligent students (all girls, I might add) stayed behind to learn some English, but the rest of them got marked absent and the teachers did little more than shrug their shoulders. It happens a couple of times a year, I’m told, that the students decide that it’s too cold to work. And then of course they stand shivering in the street because they know they’ll have some awkward questions to answer if they arrive home so early.

Some were busted though, judging by the number of angry calls the school received this morning from parents demanding to know why their kids were allowed to wander out. (Yes, the school is fenced in with cast iron, but there’s only so much you can do to keep in a mob of 400 students).

It came full circle when the parents were informed that this new Education law – opposed by teachers as well as students – will allow students to wander out of class whenever they so desire, as they did yesterday. So now we have a large number of angry parents promising to formally lodge their dissatisfaction with the powers that be. Not such a bad result after all.

Other posts by Katie Llanos-Small