Student Rebellion in Paris These rock-throwing students in the Latin Quarter of Paris, pictured on the cover of one of France’s major newsmagazines, are trying to force education reforms and even topple de Gaulle’s government. In May 1968, in a famous example of the protest movements that swept the world in the late 1960s, Parisian rioters clashed repeatedly with France’s tough riot police in bloody street fighting. De Gaulle remained in power, but a reform of French education did follow.