The year 2011 will be remembered almost like 1968; student revolts on campuses across continents in 1968 brought in the recognition that educational institutions were not fulfilling the aspirations of the youth. Protests of students on campuses then focused on many aspects of their lives—from freedoms to education. In contrast, youth protest movements in 2011 have gathered in city centres and town-halls; the focus of protest is yearning for a better life for them, and a better world for all. The students in Chile have been demanding that post-secondary education be treated as a public good, and hence subsidized by the state. The movement of students began in April after a state university was ‘privatised’. Last year (and this year too), students in UK have been protesting against a three-fold rise in educational fees at post-secondary level. Students led the protest in Senegal against the regime’s authoritarian tendencies; so it was the youth of Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain…And, now the youth in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland are demanding livelihood with dignity.

The youth ‘unrest’  is a phenomenon worldwide today; it has multiple manifestations and sites of protests. The central question to understand this phenomenon is the nature and meaning of this ‘unrest’. Youth today spend nearly 20 years of their formative years in some educational institution---nursery, primary, secondary, tertiary. The design of all these educational institutions, the curricula, the pedagogy, and the assessment of outcomes are all controlled by ‘experts’-with-age. All educational institutions are thus in the hands of the ‘non-youth’, meant to ‘educate’ the youth. It is this contradiction in the perspectives and lens of youth and non-youth that creates the conditions for conflicts and dissatisfactions.