Extra Credit

The incident involving Souleymane was disappointing and it seemed to be very unfair the way he was being treated. I would hold the teacher responsible for what was done, but it was also other students who were involved in the event. Mr. Marin, Esmeralda and Louise were the three characters that caused Souleyman to get expelled. Because Esmeralda and Louise were the class representatives, it was partly their fault for making the poor decision of letting some students in the class know about what the teachers had said about them. Later on in class, Mr Marin seems to make the situation a huge deal, when he could have gave Souleyman some time to relax and talk the situation over with him after class when no one else was around. I guess these 14-15 year olds are partly responsible for their own choices, but Mr. Marin is part of making these choices as well, so it’s not only on the shoulders of these young kids.

This also causes Mr. Marin to be held responsible for trying to “solve” the problems for his class. He was the one who made the decision to call the hearing regarding Souleyman. Yet when the event was taking place in class, he was trying to stop Souleyman from having a temper tantrum; he was doing what a teacher is supposed to do. I would say that this is more of a systematic issue since this event was caused by the way the school is run. Because of the class reps sitting in on the meeting the teachers had, it caused the information to leak through the students which caused Souleyman to get mad. It was the choices of the individuals and the system itself that caused the outcome at the end. I feel that it isn’t appropriate to have students sitting in on teacher meetings when they are discussing confidential information regarding their students/classmates.

A question that I had in mind when watching the scene where Esmeralda and Louise were sitting in on the meeting was who choose these two girls to be the class representatives? Because throughout this whole scene these two girls were laughing and seemed to be enjoying the situation. There was no real point of them being there because they weren’t including their opinions or taking the event seriously. If these two students had not sat in on this meeting, Souleyman wouldn’t have been expelled and this situation wouldn’t have happened because nobody would have known what was being discussed at the time. Obviously after watching this, it can be seen that the class representative system doesn’t work out for these students because all it did was cause many problems for others. It caused Mr. Marin to call the two class reps “skanks” which caused him to be in a bad position as well in the hearing, it also caused a student to be expelled. The idea of having class reps does not seem to work in Mr. Marin’s class at all.

By viewing the decision of the class representatives, it can be seen that they weren’t trained well enough to be playing such a huge role. They do not at all show that they are serious about having this job. They are not mature enough, and this is partly the systems fault of having such students take part in such a role. This shows that they have poor discipline because of their actions. Throughout the whole film there are many students that don’t seem to follow what the teacher wants them to do. There is no higher authority, they are all at the same level. If the teacher wants a student to do something, they start to complain and don’t follow any of the instructions given. For example, at one scene a student named Khoumba is called on to read a part from a reading (Anne Frank?) and she refuses to do so. She starts to say that she doesn’t want to read because the teacher could have called on anyone else. This shows that there is no respect at all for the teacher. They are all attaining the same level and there is no higher figure; they do not want to be told what to do by anyone else. All these students should be given more discipline so they can be aware of what type of role they are supposed to play in class. They need to know that they are in a school environment, where they are told what to do, not the other way around.