Racist, sexist teacher, euro-centric film
I am amazed at the number of posts focused on the behavior of the students in this film, when the real disciplinary action should have been taken against the teacher. Not only did he consistently debase and publicly humiliate his students throughout the film, he (along with the rest of the faculty) seemed to view this treatment as completely justified. Every time a student raised a hand, he took it as an opportunity to reassert his position of power, to tell them they were simply wrong, had bad ideas, or were speaking incorrectly, instead of taking this engagement as a real opportunity to support each of his students as learners.
The teacher treated very real student concerns about Euro-centrism (his use of the name "Bill" instead of a name more representative of other ethnicities in his class) as an unreasonable and unfounded request. In his completely teacher-centered environment, he seemed to view himself as the only intelligent, thinking, human being in the room. Nearly every comment he made seemed to assert his own self-righteous position as the holder of all knowledge, attempting to share this knowledge with his lowly students. Do these students not have the right to have their own bicultural backgrounds, language, knowledge and experiences as immigrants reaffirmed and celebrated in a French classroom and moreover in French society at large? Or are they simply expected to conform to mainstream, white French ideals, dismissing their own experiences as inferior?
Even more egregiously, he instigated and allowed students to insult each other on the basis of both sex and race, creating an extremely hostile classroom environment. The first incident occurred when a student tripped and inappropriately touched a female student, inciting others to make comments about her breasts. The teacher sat back and watched, effectively condoning this kind of behavior. Later, he encouraged another student to appreciate “cleavage”, and went on to call two girls in his class “skanks”. I can understand why the female students in the class felt uncomfortable. In the final incident, the teacher went so far as to encourage students to engage in a racially charged argument over soccer teams, and on a deeper level, insult each others' cultural identity, all under the guise of learning to “debate”. In such an environment, it is no wonder a physical fight broke out in his classroom.
I do not say all this without a deep understanding for the challenge of teaching in the inner city. I have spent the past 3 years teaching in extremely diverse, inner-city classrooms in the US. I had at one point 6 different native languages spoken in my classroom of socio-economically disadvantaged youth. It is not easy to support and encourage learning in this kind of environment, but there are a few things I know for certain. Every student behavior has a motivation, and if you don’t take the time to figure out what that motivation is, you will never win. This teacher didn’t seem to care about his students, had no empathy for the difficulty they had in trying to integrate into the racist environment of his classroom or French society.
If the worst offense this teacher suffered was being “tutoyered”, then he should avoid at all costs teaching in American inner-city schools. I’ve suffered worse insults from a 9 year old. The power struggles he readily instigated in the classroom simply would not fly here. Based on my own experience with a comparable population, the kids in his classroom were respectful and followed directions. I did not see any student yell “*beep* you” or simply walk off and give the finger, as we say, to the teacher in this film. They all stayed in their seats, and listened when he spoke. This guy had it easy as far as this kind of teaching goes, and he has no one to blame but himself for the lack of success of his students.
That being said, so much of what I saw in this film was heart-breaking to me as teacher. I saw real students, who truly wanted an opportunity to learn, but also wanted to be treated with dignity and respect. Students who wanted to have their own identities reaffirmed, all the way down to their dialect, a perfectly valid though different dialect than that of power in French society. I saw students acutely aware of their own academic weaknesses, and therefore making every effort to avoid embarrassment by acting out, while the teacher seemed to be doing just the opposite by forcing them to recite their work in front of the class and criticize each other
The most disturbing part about this film is that the film-maker and principal actor, so lost in his own racism, sexism, and euro-centrism, actually felt justified in sharing his own “martyrdom” with the world. Yes, I feel sorry for him, but more importantly, I feel sorry for his students. If this film is indeed representative of what is going on in French schools, then the French Ministry of Education needs to take a serious look at educating teachers in cultural sensitivity, appropriate discipline, and respect for students as human beings as well as learners.