This paper intends to identify some of the principles that generated the “?students revolt” of 1968, in particular those associated with the transformation of the educational system. It focuses on the characteristics of the disciplinary mobilizations that this transformation triggered, and specifies the shape of the relationship between academic generations, and of their respective relation to the future. The analysis departs from existing works in several ways: in terms of scale, it relates to one discipline only, English, which lacked symbolic visibility but attracted, during the 1960s, a fifth of all students in literary disciplines. It also emphasizes the strong interdependence between student struggles and struggles led by instructors occupying subordinate positions.