The Student Movement of the Long Sixties in Western Europe. The Vanguard Role of Catholic Students and Universities
Résumé
There have been many books and articles written about the student movements which were part of the wave of social movements associated with the label "1968". In fact, one of the novel features of "1968" in the context of social movement studies is precisely the ubiquity of students as prominent agents for progressive social change. In earlier decades, university students had generally played a rather conservative role, if they did engage in social and political action in significant numbers. The tremendous increase in university student enrollments from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, often entailing a tripling (or more) of student numbers in less than a dozen years, changed the sociological background of the average university student almost beyond recognition.