Les deux 'skanks'

[deleted]

I dunno NYCub...for all we know, someone off-screen could have told her about the book and she's just repeating what she heard.

I just saw this last weekend, and finally came here just to see if "skankgate" was being discussed.

Ok, I am a teacher. I understand how tough it is to keep from losing your cool when some kid is aiming all their energy at you. I'm not gonna lie and say I have a perfect record at keeping my own cool. However:

1. I'm not a huge French student, but I think I picked up the word they were throwing around that was being translated "skank" and I'm pretty sure I've heard it used to mean something much harsher.Only in foreign film, but there you go.

2. If the teacher didn't use that word that way himself-- whatever. The girls made it clear that it constituted a red flag for them. And when is even tepid name-calling really productive in a serious discussion?

3. He made that one girl apologise about a dozen times for -- what? raising her voice a little. Apologise again. No, use the words I want you to use. No, now say the script i supplied sincerely. Yeesh.

Especially in light of number three-- and I totally have been in the position of getting into stupid, pointless power-plays with kids like that one,so it's not like I'm claiming I'm superteacher-- the very flipping least the guy could have done was apologize to the girls for using name-calling to make his point. (the point being not that they were skanks, but they had not heard, and thus misrepresented, the teacher's statements.) If he wanted to be an even better example of how a real man mans up, he should have also apologized to the class for his contribution to the class disturbance, and to Soulemagne for offending him with his language. I mean, do we teach just to get on top of the class, or can we also show kids how grownups handle these kinds of disagreements?

At the very least he should have excused himself from the voting process and repeated his objections about over-penalizing kids in the meeting.

Truly, I was on the guy's side, throughout the film. Even after he screwed up. But he did screw up-- we teachers do that.

"what was their role in that meeting and why didn't the teachers insist that they behave? It seems to me that the girls would have had more of a role in the point system discussion than on one of student evaluations. It was an unbelievable situation for me."

I once was the rep for my class in the 70s when the "teachers conference of judgement" came. (Sorry I don't know an english expression for that)

I am German and lived in Germany until a few years ago. School judgements are given twice a year, in January or February and before the summer starts, in June or July. The teachers are discussing their judgements on each student, and usuall there is not much to discuss about average students.

Each class has a representative to whitness, it is only a formality. Usually there is never any case of corruption or so, at least I have never heard of any such case. So I don't really know why this was invented and when. I went to school from 1969 to 1980, and it always was like that, I have actually never thought about it until I read this question some minutes ago.

So, the fact that the girls were there was a just formality, and I was appalled that they could not behave. When I was elected that one time, I was proud and felt important. I would have never misbehaved like that. And I was a wild kid as well.

I was really wild, but a very good student at the same time, so I was respected by the teachers, and my "follies" were tolerated. But still, when at that conference, I would have never dreamed to behave in any way like that. I was also 14 or 15, and weird, but still, I was aware how serious this whole thing was.

But then, I was not from the underclass in an urban school. Maybe that is the point. And of course times were different. And maybe french schools are slightly different.

Amen.

And I think she'll make a kick-ass cop one day. :D

(If I'm not mistaken, the film was scripted as a blend of fiction and documentary, so for instance, the "self- portraits" were unscripted contributions by the students, the names of most of the students were kept the same as thier own, and perhaps some incidents were based on past incidents in the class.)

Yeah, that's about what I suspected. First word that came to my mind was "w h o r e"

My French dictionary has a one-word translation of pétasse: "slut." Collins Robert French Unabridged Dictionary 712 (8th ed. 2006).

In context, he meant it more as "bitchy."

"Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows." - Superstition (1898)

Man. I don't know if you're a teacher, but you'd make a good one.

Absolutely, they didn't really encourage the class reps to join in.

Also, it's very typical of school kids to totally misrepresent what is said by a teacher or adult. If the girls had listened properly, they would have realised that tyhe teacher was using the phrase "academically limited" in an attempt to defend Soulaymane (sic).

My DVD version of this film has the word "slut" not "skank".