The Class NYT Article

Anissa mentioned this (at least I think this is the one) article in The New York Times by Manohla Dargis in class when we watched The Class.  The article has a pretty good take on the problems with François's teaching style.

...Mr. Bégaudeau is playing a fictionalized version of himself developed through weekly workshops, improvisations and a shoot that lasted a full academic year. Like Mr. Cantet’s shooting style in this movie, he initially comes across as free-flowing, even loose, a guy whose jocular teasing suggests that he wants to be seen more as a friend than as an authority figure, one of us rather than one of them.

He isn’t, which proves this classroom’s most difficult, painful lesson.

 François gives the impression of being the cool teacher but at the end of the day he still has to take control of his class at certain points, revealing himself to be more like the other teachers than the students think he is.


The article also tells us what exactly this movie is -a hyper-realistic drama (Dargis compares it to the HBO series The Wire).

...Mr. Cantet, who shares the screenwriting credit with Mr. Bégaudeau and Robin Campillo, tends to keep his ideas more strategically nestled in the unassuming guise of a documentary-inflected realism that plays a lot like life because that’s precisely where it comes from.

It is an overall favorable review and links to audio of an interview with the director Laurent Cantent.


Here is the trailer in French with English subtitles.  Do you think it captures the essence of the movie?

Discussing The Class

François does not seem to follow an ordinary curriculum.  He teaches French to an ethnically diverse class with several uncooperative students in an inner city middle school in Paris.  The lessons shown in the movie are not lectures but are instead a group conversation where students are encouraged to talk about elements of their personal life that most teachers would not find relevant to school.  


Rather than provide students with formal vocabulary lists François pulls words right out of conversations he has with them, goes over the definitions and then encourages students to use them when appropriate.  In these scenes class appears chaotic, but there is definitely learning going on.  François is introducing words as students are using them.  Because the new words come up in conversation students see how the word is used in context and have already provided the definition of the word themselves by expressing its meaning when they were speaking; the teacher is simply filling in a word that explains what they are talking about.  He then follows up on the words he has been teaching them in later conversations (asking the class to give him a word to use that is appropriate for the situation at hand).


His unconventional method has its drawbacks.  François skirts dangerously close to being seen as a friend to the students and not a teacher.  While the other teachers cultivate a culture of teacher dominance (like forcing students to stand when an adult enters the room) François participates in the classroom culture almost as a big brother.  Students may fight the role other teachers expect them to fulfill, but at least they know what that role is.  François's expectations are not clear.  In an early scene students are chatting with him in his class without having to raise their hands, and asking François about his sexuality.  At one point a student's pen leaks on his hand.  One student stands up to offer him a handkerchief to wipe it off but Francois makes him return to his desk and ask for permission to stand up.  His expectations are especially confusing in a scene when Francois is asking his student Khoumba why they were not on as friendly terms as they were the year before and immediately after the conversation makes her hand him a book in a way that he considers respectful.  From watching the movie I could not figure out what would be expected of me if I were a student in his class.


The teachers at the school with a more traditional vision of classroom culture complain about students behavior much more than François.  They are quicker to apply severe discipline to students who are not interested in participating in the culture that venerates the teacher, and likely encounter these sorts of clashes more often than François due to their strictness.  In these situations students are not just standing up to these adults, they are standing up for their own culture.  The humanities teachers seem to focus on a nationalistic curriculum, exposing them to literature from the French enlightenment tradition.  The teachers' long-term goals for the students reflects a desire to make them into good French citizens.  This poses a challenge for educating students whose roots are not in France but Africa, the Caribbean and China.  Alternately François allows the students to express themselves, tries to teach vocabulary that is relevant to their conversations and focuses less on discipline and more on understanding them.  While this does help cut across cultural barriers it inhibits his ability to control the class.