Thousands of students, some hurling eggs and others breaking windows, marched nationwide Friday in the largest protests in two weeks of strikes over violence and overcrowding in French high schools. Premier Michel Rocard promised to create thousands of new jobs to improve crumbling, crime-ridden high schools. But a student leader said Rocard had failed to address basic demands for more teachers and security guards. ``What we are asking for is to have toilets where we can go without being hassled by five guys,'' said one Paris student, a 16-year-old girl. Most of Friday's protests unfolded peacefully. But in Mulhouse, near the Swiss border, about 200 students threw eggs and paint at Albert Schweitzer High School and threatened a teacher with a knife. Police made two arrests. In Dijon, students broke four windows at a school. As he received a delegation of student leaders, Rocard issued a statement pledging to create 6,000 new slots for teacher assistants and 3,000 monitors. He also promised 1,000 new maintenance posts. In addition to their concerns about violence and overcrowding, the protesting students have complained about rundown schools. Rocard said he had instructed Education Minister Lionel Jospin to organize committees of student and teachers to ensure that conditions improve. However, one student leader shot back, ``Basically, we haven't won anything.'' ``We'll stay in the street. We'll keep up the pressure after vacation,'' the student said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He spoke on the eve of a weeklong break for the nation's students. Despite the strikes, some students have been attending classes, while others have boycotted them. Jospin said Wednesday that 100 security guards would be added to schools most troubled by a wave of violence that touched off the strikes two weeks ago. But student leaders in Paris derided the step as insufficient and organized a march Friday on the the city's Left Bank. Police estimated the crowd at 10,000; students said 30,000 took part. Sympathy strikes sprang up Friday in smaller cities. In Lyon, about 6,000 students shouted, ``Jospin, you're finished, the students are in the streets!'' Police reported 7,000 demonstrators in Toulouse; 6,000 in Lille; 5,000 in Valenciennes; 4,000 each in Amiens, Saint Etienne and Limoges; 3,000 each in Strasbourg, Metz and Bourg-en-Bresse; 2,000 each in Dole and Forbach; and 1,500 each in Avignon, Saint Avold and Montpellier. Regional authorities near Montpellier, in southern France, said four demonstrators fell off a staircase Friday and were injured. Two were hospitalized. The marches began last week with a few hundred students in low-income Paris suburbs. The violence that sent them into the streets included the rape of a girl in a bathroom, assaults on several teachers, and cases of extortion. The hardest-hit schools are those built in the 1960s near high-rise projects hastily erected to house immigrant workers and poor French families.
