Teaching and learning

Many years ago, in an earlier professional incarnation, I was a teacher.  In all, I spent about 15 years as a classroom teacher.  I was primarily a teacher of French, but I also taught English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), English in a US secondary school - where it sometimes seemed as if I were teaching a foreign language - and history.  For one interesting, if unexpected, two-year period in Tangier, Morocco, I even taught third grade.  I loved teaching.  My experience comprised both public and private systems, elementary to university and even non-university adult education.  In my opinion, fully buttressed by historical example, a society that does not encourage and value good teachers and public education is a society that will fail sooner rather than later.

One of many good things that Napoleon Bonaparte established for France was to revolutionize its education system.  However laudworthy, Napoleon's motives came with an agenda.  He believed, for example, that the breakdown in public social order and the resulting chaos and instability during France's revolutionary days was, at least in part, caused by insufficient education.  As he explained, "Of all social engines, the school is probably the most efficacious, for it exercises three kinds of influence on the young lives it enfolds and directs: one through the master, another through con-discipleship, and the last through rules and regulations."  He also believed public schools should form intelligent yet obedient citizens and assist the middle class, in particular, to become successful, making members of the class less likely to revolt in the future.  Acting on these pragmatic and common sense beliefs, he established the bases for France's commendable system of contemporary public education.

I am also a firm believer in public education.  While I recognize that some private schools are also excellent, or at least prestigious, so long as the public schools are well-maintained, well-staffed and allowed to do their most basic job of imparting and nurturing knowledge about the world, the society in which they exist can remain healthy.  If that is not the situation, then a society will ultimately fail, no matter how many elite private institutions may seem to flourish there.  It's as simple and as profound as that.

I could write volumes about the public education system in my own country today, which I believe is ailing for many reasons.  I will perhaps do so in future posts.  But today, my topic instead is a French actor, Gérard Klein, whose long-time role as l'instituteur Victor Novak has personified for many the role of a dedicated teacher, all the while focusing on contemporary problems in French society.  Klein's series, "l'Instit," debuted in February 1993 and ran until June 2004.  Episodes are frequently shown as re-runs on French and Swiss TV channels, as recently as yesterday.

His character, Victor Novak, became an elementary school educator later in life, after first being trained and acting as a magistrate for children's matters.  He does not have his own class in a single school, but rather is assigned to replace elementary educators throughout France, and even in some former colonial French possessions where France still provides staff for schools, who are temporarily absent for whatever reason.  And yes, he does travel to those locations on a motorcycle, to the delight of his young charges.  Each episode is therefore filmed in a different geographical region, is approximately the length of a feature film, and has at least one contemporary social issue or problem that is fully discussed in that context.  That the issue or problem may not always be resolved is more a reflection of reality than a failing of the series.  In brief, the series itself is a wonderful teaching vehicle, both for the French language and for French culture with a small "c."   Most of all, the episodes demonstrate the basic similarities and common concerns among all human beings, French or not.

Novak has his own personal tragedy in that, in his travels from school to school, he is always hoping to have news of his wife, who fled from him years ago, taking their only daughter with her.  While one understands this to be merely a story device, one wonders what on earth could have precipitated his wife's departure, since Novak is, to all appearances, a pretty darn decent guy!

Klein himself is also a pretty darn decent guy.  After announcing his departure from "l'Instit," Klein narrated another educational series called "Va savoir" (Go learn).   Children travelled with him in a yellow bus to learn about various trades and crafts in rural France.  Since then, he has narrated another series called "Gérard Klein autour du monde" (Gerard Klein Around the World), where he shows viewers unusual or little-known places of the world, together with individuals who are working in social or environmental projects there.

In addition to these, he and his wife, Francoise Vallon, have a website known as "Humain sans frontières" (Human Without Borders) on which their 52 minute features of different places in the world ... and the humans who live there ... can be seen. 

If I were still teaching French, I would literally beg, borrow or steal to have these resources for my French classes.