This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

By the time Cléo made it to Greek class, she had gone completely pale. It was a Wednesday in June during France’s second consecutive heat wave this year, and the 16-year-old was struggling to cope with the rising temperatures.

She pushed through, thinking she was just tired. But the following day at her sweltering high school on the eastern edge of Paris, nausea and a desperate thirst gripped her. The school nurse, recognizing the signs of heat exhaustion, told her to go home.

This week, as she recalled the experience and worried about more heat waves to come, Cléo and her friends stood by a pile of green garbage cans, blocking their school’s entrance. For the past four weeks, scenes like this have multiplied at thousands of schools across France, where students are protesting to demand better learning conditions and more investment in public education.

These student protests have become one of the most significant social movements in the country’s recent history. They’ve been met with a heavy-handed police crackdown. Roughly 8,000 arrests have been made in three weeks, 85 percent of them minors. Fearing repercussions, Cléo and other underage students who talked to Inside Climate News asked to be quoted using only their first names.

The students’ demands are far-ranging: more teachers, smaller class sizes, a shortened school day, and an overhaul of the post-secondary college application system. But the heart of the revolt is indignation over crumbling school infrastructure—a problem laid bare by climate-change-fueled heat waves.

This year was France’s hottest on record, and the country counted 8,000 excess deaths........

© Mother Jones