Since the new format of this newsletter brings together concerns linked to associations dealing with technology, bullying and democracy, a film released in 2024 (currently available to stream) seems to us to combine all these themes. It is La salle des profs (The Teachers’ Lounge), a German film directed by Ilker Çatak[1].
First of all, for us French people, it is always surprising to see how a German class works. We discover the place given to children’s initiatives, the role of voting in class life and the importance of peer tutoring between pupils. For example, when handing back their papers to the pupils, the maths teacher asks a pupil with a good mark to explain the exercises to a classmate who has not understood them. Indeed, in some classes in Germany, the following inscription appears above the board: “If you don’t understand, don’t disturb the teacher, ask your classmate.” Unimaginable in France!
Yet not all the pupils’ proposals are necessarily good to follow. After the papers from a test are handed back, a teenage girl asks for all the marks to be displayed on the board so that everyone can know “their place in the class”. The teacher replies: “Your place in the class is on your chair.” A debate follows, which she finally settles by justifying her decision. In other words, even on a point as central to teaching as this, debate is not refused, but it is the adult who decides. Similarly, at the end of the film, the pupils are left free to write what they like in their school newspaper, but the head teacher forbids it to be circulated outside.
But why hold a debate if the decision has already been made? So that the pupils, by debating, understand that discussion is possible on all questions, even those that authority claims to have settled. Accepting debate means recognising that the decision applied is circumstantial. Refusing debate means letting people imagine that there is no reason to ask questions, and therefore that the imposed solution is the only conceivable one. Which, alas, is very often the case in French schools.
The film begins when the school is faced with a series of thefts. The implication of the thief, whose guilt cannot officially be established because of the lack of legally valid proof, provokes a serious crisis. The consensus that had until then encouraged seeing each teacher or pupil as just one among others begins to crack. The opposition between “the others” and “us” creeps in everywhere. The teachers’ origins even become a subject of questioning, even of suspicion. The heroine, who is of Polish origin, asks a colleague who is also Polish to speak to her only in German so as not to give the impression that “the Poles have something to hide”. The tensions are only beginning and it quickly becomes clear that empathy is not enough to overcome them. In a democracy, all individuals are respected by the laws and institutions. But if deregulation creeps in, everyone is forced to choose one of the camps present. Methods that the day before might have seemed unimaginable to a community can suddenly be brutally applied on the pretext of “solving the crisis”, without those applying them asking the opinion of their colleagues who find themselves involved in spite of themselves.
This film reminds us that democracies are fragile and that the only way they can survive is through consultation. This is what the heroine tries to do throughout the film with her pupils. But what is the point of teaching them empathy and the rules of the democratic game if the teaching team is ready to give them up?
[1] This text summarises an article published under the title “De la fragilité des démocraties” (“On the fragility of democracies”) in the journal L’école des parents, no. 651, pages 23-25.
