Stéphane Corréa signs a fresco in two parts carried by the voice of actor Roschdy Zem, the memories of class of personalities and the testimonies of teachers.
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“There are as many ways to tell the school as of French,” warns Roschdy Zem in the comment. On such a subject, as exciting as they are passionate, it is reassuring to recognize the actor’s voice with a remarkable course: first child born in France in a siblings of five, in Gennevilliers (Hauts-de-Seine), a father Moroccan living in the slum of Nanterre, and a mother for whom the academic success of her four sons and his daughter is decisive; But also a college student to whom the Lycée de Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis) said that “he had no place for [him]”, despite his correct notes, he confided to the world, on January 15, 2016: “It was the violence of the time.”
Director Stéphane Corréa chose 1833 as a starting point, the year when each commune in France has, for the first time, the obligation to open a primary school. In question, an incorrect inventory: “Nowhere else, in Europe, children are also working young”, at 4 years in the fields and 8 years in the workshops.
In the manner of a good course, this story on the nearly two hundred years of the School of France combines relaxation, with the anecdotes of personalities or teachers, and the instruction, by the story and archives. With the fight against inequalities in red thread: in 1910, 1 % of French students in (paid) high schools have the bac; In 2021, the success rate is 93.7 % and the school is a common experience.
The comment insists on some key characters. Like the teacher Louise Michel (1830-1905), who joined the commune of Paris in 1871 – it was the communards who invented the word “secularism”; Jules Ferry (1832-1893), of course, but also Ferdinand Buisson (1841-1932), follower of a joyful school; Later, René Haby (1919-2003), who carries the reform of the colleges wanted by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (1926-2020) in 1975-even if it means omitting the demonstrations that ensued; François Mitterrand (1916-1996), who launched the ZEP (priority education zones), but must give up suppressing the free school, faced with the magnitude of the demonstrations (one million people in Paris) in 1984.
Communicative passion
Many, the forty-five speakers embody the diversity of everyone’s relationship at school as well as possible, since the “wonderful memories” of the physicist Etienne Klein in hell experienced by the actor Franck Gastambide, archetype of the “dunce” (the one who, like crab, does not work straight). Between the two, Daniel Pennac, Nagui, Edwy Plenel, or even Martin Fourcade, Olympic multimedalized in biathlon, who discovered skiing thanks to the green classes and, at the same time, obtained … 2 out of 20 in sport at the baccalaureate!
The feelings differ. Ariane Ascaride actress has heard, “You, where you come from, cannot understand”; Conversely, the school allowed Samuel Joshua, university professor, to get out of his condition: “In math, I was not the poor: I was the first in the class.”
All teachers testify to the passion for their profession, to the point that it becomes communicative and that we would forget certain more delicate themes, such as respect for faculty or secularism. Two years after the death of Samuel Paty, October 16, 2020, professor of history-geography killed for having shown a caricature of Muhammad published by Charlie Hebdo to his students, the last surveys show an increase in damage to secularism in establishments Schools.