ALTHOUGH it wasn’t favored to win, and it didn’t, “The Class” was film critics’ “should win” pick for best foreign-language film. Because this deeply engaging movie addresses the subject of teaching underserved public school students, it points to the obvious larger question of why education itself so often should win, but doesn’t.
In the compromised version of the economic stimulus package, it was reported by the Los Angeles Times, education spending was “one of the main sticking points” in securing the necessary votes. While protecting funds for other needs such as healthcare, housing, transportation, green energy, infrastructure, the auto industry, and even banking, why cut education? Why are teaching and learning so routinely deemed expendable when everyone agrees they shouldn’t be?
In a bracingly effective way, “The Class” confronts this riddle with the vivid example of a middle school French teacher in an immigrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris. François Bégaudeau is this teacher as well as the author of “Entre les Murs,” the acclaimed novel/memoir on which the film is closely based. Onscreen, he and his actual students make the hectic “ordinaire tragi-comique” of the book three-dimensional. And under the sly direction of Laurent Cantet, their fragmented classroom interactions yield a film celebrated as “seamless” by actor Sean Penn, who headed the jury awarding it the Cannes Festival’s Palme d’Or for best picture.
Alexandra Marshall, a guest columnist, is the author of “The Court of Common Pleas” and four other novels.
I have not read any story indicating that educational spending was a sticking point in the passage of the stimulus package. That is not to say that the report was wrong, as far as it goes. But, is Marshall’s conclusion therefrom that teaching and learning was considered expendable correct?
Now, if I had read such a news story, I would have wanted to know the issues raised and resolved by the parties in the negotiations and the rationales put forth. My experience with news reports (and this should be a common experience for us all), is that, at best, the report is incomplete, and would certainly not address the critical nuances of negotiations.
Being a negotiation among politicians, it would be laughable to assume this negotiation was an intelligent discourse on education. But, I can imagine considered arguments within such negotiations that could not reasonably be interpreted as viewing educational funding as expendable.
Some stimulus bill principles that might have been at work: stimulus was primarily for brick and mortar, not classroom support; classroom funding a policy best left to states; classroom funding not stimulative; stimulus money for retraining, and going back to school would be better use of money, as some of those experienced people would retrain to become teachers; money going to states in the package would support states’ funding of education indirectly; money for classroom should await policy changes from President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan; President Obama’s 2010 budget was going to emphasize educational funding; money for classrooms should await deeper consideration within Congress in conjunction with the Administration.
Not that these arguments were actually made, but they do make some sense, and certainly cannot be interpreted as concluding teaching and learning was deemed expendable.
Now, does Marshall know and can she support her conclusions with substantiated facts, and reasonably argue that the rationales involved reflected educational funding as expendable?