Thursday, March 17, 2011

A Classy Movie About Education: No, Not That Superman Film

The Class is one of the best movies I have ever seen about school. No heroic teacher fighting against a stupid principal or evil colleague; no dramatic turning points or tragic deaths or standing ovations. Instead, we see one young but experienced teacher doing his best, day in and day out, with a group of adolescents, urban kids who are all “French” but whose families come from all over the world (including Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean). We see normal assignments and class activities: conjugating verbs, listing vocabulary words from the text, reading The Diary of Anne Frank aloud in class, writing self-portraits. A few of the students are quiet, hard-working teacher- and parent-pleasers; a few are surly and rebellious; others spar with the teacher and their classmates but know when to pull back and avoid the most severe penalties. In the teachers’ lounge, we see quiet conversations about troubled students; we witness a teacher melt down from frustration while everyone quietly listens and watches, empathizing and knowing that could be them (and the teacher recovers and keeps on teaching); we see teachers exchange ideas. We see faculty meetings and disciplinary board meetings and calm but serious conversations with the principal. And this principal, by the way, is neither a bold idealist nor a power-hungry authoritarian. He quietly goes about his job, mediating among his staff and between teachers and students. The film has a documentary feel, yet is artistically made.

Because of all these virtues, the film has many telling moments that could fuel important discussions among teachers, students, and both supporters and critics of modern schools. Those aware of the tremendous language and cultural diversity in our modern schools would find many emblematic scenes: the Chinese boy who does well in school and earns all the teachers’ respect, but whose French is still weak; the students who argue with their teacher about what to them seem overly formal, archaic speech forms—and it is difficult not to sympathize with them even while understanding the teacher’s rather vague explanation about different registers and knowing intuitively when to use which language form. The students argue with the teacher and among themselves about their cultural identity: are they French? Are their loyalties primarily to their home countries? And why do their teachers seem so culturally and linguistically different from them? Will that change in the near future, or will there always be a cultural gap between educators and their students, especially in tough urban (and rural) schools?

We empathize with the teacher, Mr. Marin; we respect his firm authority in the classroom but also his willingness to engage in dialogue with his students, not as an equal but as a fairly open-minded elder. Yet we also see his weaknesses, which may result from his strengths. In his back-and-forth with the students he sometimes slips and crosses the line into unprofessional teasing, sarcasm, even insult. He occasionally hurts, perhaps even humiliates a student, but among other faculty tries to stand up for students with even the most challenging behavior problems.
The final classroom scene will amuse, provoke, and sadden anyone who has ever taught, and anyone who ponders the dilemma of schooling. (SPOILER ALERT) Mr. Marin asks the students what they have learned in school that year. One student says, “Nothing,” and speaks scornfully of the school curriculum. When Mr. Marin challenges her, saying that surely she learned something from her personal reading, she admits she has, and he asks for an example of something she read on her own. “The Republic,” she answers. It was a book her older sister had from college, and she read it. When all the other students have left, however, one quiet young woman approaches Marin’s desk. “I didn’t learn anything,” she says mournfully. “I don’t want to have to go to vocational school.” Nothing Marin says to reassure her convinces her—or him, or us—that she can avoid that fate, or that we can feel good about her sense of abandonment and failure.

Go see this film, and then talk about it with others. And find out what you can do to change things for young people where you live.

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