The Point Of This Movie

dawn at bay, i recommend you contact the director and writer of the movie and see what they have to respond to you when you tell them 'It isn't trying to say something specific'. EVERY writer and director is trying to say something specific no matter how random, strange, different or hard to understand their point may be. my brother directs films and trust me, they know exactly what message they want to make when making a serious movie like this.

i would interpret the specific thing that they were trying to show with this movie was the huge, almost insurmountable, challenges which teachers face today in a multi-cultural classroom environment with modern children who are finding it increasingly hard to stay focused on lessons with mobile phones, ipods, xboxes, nintendo ds, tv, radio, internet chat, facebook, etc all bombarding them in their own time.

in addition i think it's about how this generation who are being given everything (even more so than the last generation) are becoming increasingly difficult to please and motivate because in a sense they already have nearly every thing they want. 8 year olds with mobiles in my school is one good example! parents with whole rooms full of unused toys is another! these spoiled kids are becoming teenagers and young adults now and the problems are a natural consequence. my grandad who was a really respected principal use to say 'once the hello's, please and thank you's disappear the rest will surely follow' - im a teacher for 6 years now and am convinced he was right

This has nothing to do with the multicultural society. Well, the situation of this movie is in a multicultural society, but that isn't the point.

The point is that because of bad politics (I know it is easy to blame it on politics, but in the end, it all leads to that), classes are filled with people with different values (or none at all), not because they belong to a different ethnic group, but because they grow up in poverty, massive (unintegrated?) families and - especially - in ghetto's. This is especially noticeable if compared to other regions in the country, where poor people integrate seamlessly, because they are in a class of people who don't have these issues at home.

This movie shows us that the current educational system (and, perhaps even more important, the teacher's values and zero tolerance policies) is not working any more. The traditional pupil-teacher relationship is put to doubt, the whole idea of a teacher doing whatever he wants, vanishes.

It is obvious that for this "kind" of pupils a more personal, friendly approach is crucial, especially when they're in the first years of school.

Honestly, you can't say Souleyman (not sure about the spelling) deserved to get expelled. You can't say his class reached a higher level after he left. You can't say Souleyman will eventually turn out just fine and end his high school career. And the only reason this happened is because the teachers (and the principal) were forced to exclude him, simply because of these "traditional values" of a system that is not adapted to the current youth.

This is certainly not a case that can be limited to the banlieues in Paris or children of immigrants.