Education demonstration

Walking to the building where we teach a journalism class Tuesday night, we noticed four police cars parked near the student union building, two more across from our Language Center building, and another four or five lined up along the other side.

On the walking paths near university buildings are spray-painted messages like, "Education is not for sale." But the word "sale" is spelled, "$a£€," with the U.S. dollar, British pound and euro signs.

Students this week are demonstrating in and around university buildings and skipping classes (here and around Germany) as a protest to potential tuition fees. The word is many students fear commercialization of their publicly-funded education, and becoming too much like the U.S. Now, students pay matriculation fees of a couple hundred euros per semester, and nothing for classes (with small fees for Language Center courses here).

What do you think of their point? Which way do you think education should be funded?

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In answer to Alan's question yesterday, I didn't see one person swimming in the Baltic this past weekend. Outside the lifeguard station one day, the temperatures at 1 p.m. were recorded as about 22 degrees C for the air and 12 degrees C for the water. That's about 71 degrees F and 53 degrees F, respectively. We waded to our ankles, and we saw a few damp dogs who probably ran in, but we never saw anyone actively swimming.