Why Do We Have To Watch This Shit? The Class

The Class (2008, directed by Laurent Cantet) is the best film to date about the current problems facing the world of education. Unfortunately, it has extremely sparse competition.

François Bégaudeau taught high school and middle school classes in Paris. He wrote a semi-autobiographical book, Entre les Murs, about his experiences, which was the base text for this film. He also worked on the screenplay and acted the role of François Marin, a young, 4th year, French teacher in a Parisian junior high. The movie is about 1 year in his classroom and school.

This is a film that's impenetrable to harsh critiques. It's about real people and their problems. Therefore, if you attack the film, you're attacking people's actual lives and then you're an asshole. There are lots of movies like this. With that out of the way, there's so much to talk about.

The Class is pretty realistic. All teachers come with different philosophies and strategies. Mr. Marin is straightfoward, leans too heavily on his own shaky rhetoric, and has a fondness for answering questions with questions. Each of these styles has a tendency of obstructing the other two. He is frustrated but ordinary, and his precise motivations are left unclear. His faults can be chalked up to his being jaded at this, his 4th year, at a school where teachers come and go as often as the students.

He is flat-out not the best teacher. This is the best part of the movie. Nearly every teacher in every movie about school like this, is the paradigm of pragmatism, idealism, wisdom and courage. Mr. Marin is kind of an asshole. Even Half-Nelson, a movie that also challenges its stereotypes, has a hero for a main character, albeit a crack-addicted one - pipe or no, Ryan Gosling is a little too lovable. This is one of multiple areas that's made more dynamic and flawed than is customary of the 'school movie'. In a genre to which filmmakers have done no discernible justice, teachers are part of the problem.

Beauracracy is also part of the problem. A discussion of disciplining students using a point system, - an attempt to usher responsibility from administrators to a seemingly impartial and completely arbitrary system - is case in point. For emphasis, it's followed up by an argument over whether a more efficient coffee making system should be implemented. For each problem, there are at least three solutions. For each solution, there are at least three problems.

As is often the case, the young, inarticulate, and impatient students might have the best grasp of things. They do a lot of "why do we have to learn this shit?" questioning. It's a valid question and Mr. Marin knows it. The problem is, Mr. Marin never bothered to convince himself of an answer. So he circumlocutes the question like so many of my teachers always did. To be fair, the students don't quite know what they're asking either so it's dull at both ends. But the dialogue gets to the bigger problems with education. It is very unclear in the U.S., and France as well, what role schools are supposed to play in society. Are they meant to educate, empower, socialize, or just prepare for the workforce? Should there be more structure, more discipline, more order, or less? What's the value of the broad liberal arts education? Should the primary focus be on work-ready mathematics and science? Should we just assume that universities do education better and make our primary goal college admission? Can teachers ever act like parents? If so, when? And moreover, why do we have to learn this shit?

When a girl in class who was hardly, if ever, seen in the movie, tells Mr. Marin at the end of the year, "I don't want to go to a vocational school." We're not only hearing the voice of the forgotten, but also a desperate plea for a system not to completely abandon its ideals.

The Class is far from perfect. It's difficult to watch, boring at times, but it's an important movie in an area that has needed important movies for a long time. And that's more valuable than lamenting its shortcomings.



Netflix rating: 5 stars
RIYL: Human Resources, Half Nelson, Elephant