The Class(Entre les Murs)

Teaching must be the most frustrating, stressful, undervalued, disrespected profession that one could enter (with the possible exception of nursing).

I don't mean teaching in good universities, and I don't mean teaching motivated kids in good suburban schools or selective prep schools. I mean teaching average public high school and middle school students who haven't the slightest interest in the subject matter, who are completely absorbed in the social world of their peer group, and who may find their energy totally exhausted simply in dealing with personal and family issues.

A year and a half ago, I commented on the "mockumentary" film Chalk, a study of the frustrations experienced by a first-year history teacher at a high school in Texas. With a shudder, I pictured myself as the newly-minted teacher, standing before a bored class, trying to engage a room of students who were apathetic, silent, nonresponsive -- students who looked as though they had come to school with no more than three hours of sleep.

The French movie The Class (released in Europe as "Entre les Murs"), now showing in theaters, triggers my same feelings of empathetic horror. The film is based on François Bégaudeau's semi-autobiographical novel, which in turn was based on his own personal experiences teaching French literature to students in the 14-15 age group living in one of Paris's immigrant banlieues. Bégaudeau not only wrote the screenplay, but also plays himself as the teacher. The students, all actual students from Bégaudeau's old school, play themselves. The movie was scripted, but much of the dialogue between teacher and students was improvised as it was filmed.

A few of the students appear to be ethnic French, but the majority are African (either North or sub-Saharan), or natives of France's Caribbean territories. There is one Chinese boy who is bright, self-disciplined, and well-behaved -- the pride and joy of the school. There is another boy, apparently North African, who is deeply interested in science and whose parents push for a more rigorous curriculum.

The remaining students pose a daily challenge to their teacher -- disputing his every statement, arguing the relevancy of the formal French that he is trying to teach, distracting the class with irrelevant questions, and accusing the teacher -- and by implication the society he represents -- of disrespecting their lives and cultures. The demands by students for respect and for an equal footing in class with their instructor are constant themes running through the film.

I walked out of the movie disabused of any preconception that European schools still impose strict discipline on their terrorized students -- kids sitting at attention with their hands folded, reciting their lessons by rote. Times have changed, obviously, at least in the state schools. But my reaction, after having seen Chalk earlier and comparing it now with this movie, is that I would far rather confront a class of disorderly students who challenge my every word and waste the class's time with irrelevant argumentation than face a mass of silent zombies.

With an engaged class, even one that keeps veering off topic, some learning is possible. And the French teacher, despite all obstacles, holds his class of immigrant youngsters to a higher academic standard than would be expected in most American middle school English classes. (The students argue, for example, that learning to differentiate between the imperfect indicative and the imperfect subjunctive is a waste of their time, because no one they know ever uses the subjunctive in daily speech. Learn the rules before you decide whether to ignore them, is Bégaudeau's response.)

Learning is happening, however painfully, in Bégaudeau's classroom. The most disruptive male student, an immigrant from Mali who is ultimately expelled, shows effort, initiative and creativity in mounting a photo essay, for which he is praised by his teacher. The most difficult, irritating and sarcastic young woman in the class admits sheepishly at the end of the year that she read her older sister's copy of Plato's Republic at home, simply out of curiosity. I doubt if any of the older Texas students in Chalk would have even heard of Plato.

Both the immigrants at the French school and the Americans in Texas present serious challenges to their teachers and to their school systems, for many of the same reasons. But Bégaudeau's students display an electricity, a sense of rebellion, a willingness to confront and challenge authority that could, with skill -- in some cases -- be channeled constructively. The American students in Chalk, on the other hand, seem beyond reach. As I suggested in my review, the history teacher's achievement during his first year of teaching seemed limited to having merely survived his first year. If his students ever learned anything at all, it must have occurred off-camera.

Both teachers end the school year with a sigh of relief. But M. Bégaudeau clearly intends to be back again in the fall, facing a new class. Chalk leaves us in doubt whether the teaching career of his demoralized American counterpart will extend beyond the one year.