The Class

Finally... just about the only film I've seen that gets the feel of a classroom right. Oh, hang on, there was also that movie Etre et Avoir... (guess the French must have a real ability for doing education justice) but that was a documentary, whereas this isn't. Or, not quite. It's based on the book Entre Les Murs (Between The Walls), written by French teacher (as in, Frenchman who also teaches French) Francois Begaudeau, which relates a year of his life teaching in an inner-city school. I think the situations in the film are semi-scripted, and semi-improvised, with the pupils coming up as the real stars of the show.

I confess I was dead chuffed with myself for declaring, at the end of the movie, that the actor playing the teacher must actually have been a teacher at some point, because I doubted anyone without a teaching background could cope so well with the whole improv set-up. Turns out I was spot on, as M. Begaudeau plays "himself" in the film - though with the character's name changed, presumably to emphasise that this is fiction, not fact. Nice one, Francois!

It's quite a film, and we teachers will quickly see that this guy - and these kids - are for real. It's fun spotting all the differences between the French system and ours... boy, those Frenchies do like their committees, don't they? Mind you, at one point the main business item on the agenda is the staff coffee machine, and we've all been there. The film couldn't be further from all your Michelle Pfeiffer/Richard Dreyfuss inspirational twaddle, though it does show the upside of teaching as well as the downside, and Francois is portrayed as a complex, flawed but well-meaning character.

I believe the book and film caused quite a storm in la belle France and actually, you know what: the more I write, the more I think this is a contender for the film of the year for me, given how easy it would have been to do this really, really badly. Go see it! If you're not a teacher, it'll show you a slice of modern-day classroom reality; and if you're a teacher, it'll remind you of the importance of not calling any of your students... um... let's just say, a bad name.

So, a gold star for the movie. I may even give it a Praise Certificate. Oh, wait a minute, I've forgotten - I don't do that.

Commes les mathematiques?
Well, as usual we have a movie that at least partly nods towards the language teacher as one who deals with inspiration, self-expression and all that guff, whilst the maths teachers are only mentioned casually - at one memorable point, in a list just after "racists". Jeez, gee's a break, Francois pal, non?

However there is one brilliant bit, just towards the end of the film, when Francois is asking his class (in his role as form tutor, or whatever they call it in France) what they have learned this year. One lad talks about having learned Le Theorem du Pythagoras, so F challenges him to explain it. What follows can be summed up more or less (after much umming and ahhing) as: "well, if you have a triangle, and the square of the two sides added together is the same as the square of the hypotenuse, then... then the triangle is a rectangle."

I'd give him the mark, wouldn't you?