The film Entre Les Murs, directed Laurent Cantet presents a highly flawed teacher and student relationship. As per the title of this blog post, the docu-drama opens with a teacher pointing to a list of student’s name, saying: “nice, not nice, and not nice at all.” Entre Les Murs follows the journey of Francois Marin, a French teacher at a Parisian school, who seemingly struggles for the duration of the school year to manage his overly dramatic classroom. As a matter of fact, it would seem that M. Marin feeds into the drama of his students, rather than remain professional. The first problem emerges when M. Marin confronts his student, Khoumba. After refusing to read an excerpt from The Journal of Anne Frank, M. Marin get upset as his student. After voicing to her teacher that she feels singled out, and attacked, M. Marin makes her write an essay about respectful conduct towards a teacher. As the school year progresses, so does M. Marin’s inability to keep his classroom in order. This idea is quite apparent if we consider the altercation that arise between Souleyman and Carl. While the class is very lively and noisy, only a couple voices stand out, and M. Marin seems to pay a particular attention to these students. The most powerful moment of the docu-drama comes at the end, when M. Marin is asking everyone what they learned throughout the year. Each and turn, the students tell the class something they retained from the a specific course. In her dialogue, Esmeralda explained that she read Plato’s The Republic, Khoumba explained the slave trade, and even Carl told the class of a chemistry experiment. At the end, as all the students are joyfully leave the classroom for summer vacation, a student, one who was never heard from or seen for the duration of the film, approaches M. Marin’s desk and says: “ I didn’t learn anything.” In disbelief, M. Marin tries to explain to the girl that she must of learned something, and she goes on to say that unlike the other students, she has not learned anything. In my opinion, this goes to show that M. Marin did not get to know his students because he was overly preoccupied with the classroom drama, as aforementioned. As I noted early, only a few loud voices stood out, while others just faded away in the background.
In my opinion, it can be argued that while this film present a negative image of M. Marin, it acts as a cautionary tale, and the potential shortcomings of a school that operates according to a top-down approach.
3 Comments
Brooke - I completely that M. Marin did not get to know all of his students because of the chaos of the classroom. I'm not sure if you've heard of it before, but there is a theory about motivating people called the "10-80-10 Theory". This explains that the top 10% of a group are over achievers and will be able to do anything that you ask of them. The bottom 10% are usually the trouble makers and will refuse to do work. The middle 80% make up the rest of the population and will remain relatively neutral and compliant to requests.
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linda radford
10/15/2015 04:00:26 pm
Brooke, I think you have hit the nail on the head when you write that "this is a cautionary tale of the potential shortcomings of a school that operates from a top down approach." Thank you for your insight here!
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Mena
10/15/2015 06:34:12 pm
Brooke, great points raised! Especially when you noted the student that approached him at the end who claimed she did't learn anything. She was not highlighted at all during the movie, which goes to show that in the middle of this chaos, some students end up unnoticed and left behind.
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