The profession of the teacher in the eyes of the Cinema

In the current society the cinema is observed like a way of amusement, like an escape route to our daily problems. And it is like at some kind of level. There are films that are made to be consumed instantaneously. There is nothing wrong or bad with this kind of cinema. After all, everybody needs to disconnect sometime. The important thing is that the observer or viewer knows perfectly what is the product that he or she is consuming. Nevertheless, the reason of this post is not talk or write about this kind of cinema, but to speak about the cinema that provokes in the spectator the personal reflection and enrichment. Whereupon, the cinema can be an educative and cultural resource from where the spectator can extract knowledge and lessons to apply in his or her daily life. The target of this post is to speak about the profession of the teacher or educator (it is not compulsory that the educator is a formal one) in the cinema. In other words, how some filmmakers have interpreted the labor or the role of the teacher and all the realms related with the educator. The film that I am gonna use in this post to analyze how the cinema observes and comprehends the role of the teacher is Les Choristes. 

  Les Choristes:

France, 1949. Not a truly good place to live. Only 4 years have passed since the end of the Second World War and France is still recovering from the conflict, meanwhile its scars are quite visible. This is the context where the film takes place.

The main role of the film is the music composer Clément Mathieu, who is going through a professional crisis and to survive, he does not have more option to accept the job position of watchman of a reformatory named “Bottom of the pond”. The arrival of Mathieu is something else for the students, who are accustomed to the violent and force motivated methods to impose discipline. Mathieu starts to treats the students like normal people and not some short of criminal inmates, introducing just with that little fact a new whole dynamic of relationships between the teachers and the students.

For the first time, the boarding students do not look at themselves like a social problem that must to be imprisoned inside the reformatory, but they start to stare themselves like normal kids with dreams and hopes, with capacities and abilities. In other words, they start to think that they can have a future beyond the reformatory where they live and study. 

The teacher, Mr. Mathieu uses the choir like the tool that permits him to connect to the students, to make them fell like a human beings. For their side, the students know a new form of discipline that exists not to make them life hard and difficult but to put some order in their lives easier and to motivate them. Moreover, this change of mentality also affects to Mathieu, who at the beginning of the film saw himself like a loser and now, he starts to be interested and motivated to help his students.

What we have in the film is two perspectives of the education. On the one hand, we have the “old school” method where the violence and the repression are the main actors. On the other hand, we have the comprehension and the dialogue like a way of carrying out the education process. Hence, the concept of education that the film shows is much wider than the one which comprehends the education just like the method to teach some subjects. This concept of education is based in the encounter of two people, of two freedoms, the teacher and the student. The former wants that the later learns not just some knowledge in the academic sense of the word, but some knowledge in the wide sense of the word in order to give the student the chance to create his own path. In this conception of education, the teacher is a guide who helps the student to use his or her freedom and decision capacity to construct his or her path.

   

 Some scenes of the movie that are important.

Scene number 1: In of the first scenes of the movies is showed the name of the reformatory “Bottom of the pond”, which does not help to create a good and positive education atmosphere. Also the facilities do not contribute to create a wonderful and facilitator environment to foster the education of the students. It is important to remark that a nice, stimulating, and wonderful environment facilitates the education process, both for the students and the teachers.

Scene number 2: The attitude of the Principal is terrible for the students. He does not have any confidence in the students, which is proved in one scene where he punished unjustly a student and after knowing his mistake, he did not only recognize his error, but he added that the students are condemned anyway and there is no solution for them. In this case, the Principal shows a big lack of motivation to carry out correctly his task and also a huge lack of faith in his students. With those characteristics, it is impossible that the students can achieve the best of themselves.

Scene number 3- The Principal's disciplinary method is called action-reaction. If one student does some wrong action, the reactions must be fast and stronger than the action. The punishment does not seek the reparation of the bad actions, but its penalization (or the penalization of it). In addition there is never a reinforcement when a student makes a positive action.

Scene number 4- The Mathieu's chorus. It is with the chorus that Mathieu is able to connect with the students, that until that moment where really unmotivated. Mathieu is able to convert the chorus in place where each of his students feels like comfortable and one more of the group. The chorus is the common project, it is the place where they learn, they have fun and they fell appreciated and comprehended.

Scene 5- When Mathieu started to work in the reformatory considers himself like a loser. Nevertheless, after his educative and professional experience, he does not have that perspective of him anymore. Instead of that, he looks himself like a good teacher and music composer who wants to help problematic and unmotivated students. Basically, he realizes that the labor of a teacher is nor just teach some units, but it is something else, something that goes beyond.