Watch and learn (what movies have taught me about learning)

For Souleymane’s parent-teacher conference, both his mother and his brother came to see Monsieur Marin. As an immigrant to Paris from Mali, the mother did not speak French, and so the brother came along to translate. Monsieur Marin described Souleymane’s academic progress but also his severe behavior problems. Souleymane’s mother, like the other parents, wanted to be proud of her son’s education, though she could not directly articulate this to his teacher.

This scene appears in the film “Entre les murs,” or “The Class” in English, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. The movie—which is partially based on the real teaching experiences of screenwriter and lead actor François Bégadeau—is set in a school in a rough neighborhood of Paris with a diverse and largely immigrant student body.

Watching this movie this week brought to mind many of the issues I’ve raised this semester in my column about New York City schools, as well as the current controversy over Mayor Bloomberg’s appointment of Cathleen Black as the new chancellor of education. Some of the most powerful scenes in “Entre les murs,” such as the one with Souleymane’s mother, touched on the role parents play in their children’s education.

Aside from reading about education policy in newspapers and local blogs, one of my other interests is film, so this semester I justified trips to the movies by seeing films that address current issues in education. “Entre les murs,” “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” and “Lod Detour” show how parents in tough neighborhoods in Paris, New York City, and Tel Aviv face many of the same challenges when navigating their children’s school systems.

The students at the school in “Entre les murs” go home to families in which parents may not speak French or have experience in the French educational system. The implication is, that
contrasted with families from the opposite end of the spectrum—where parents are highly educated, economically secure, and able to help children with homework or hire tutors—the disenfranchised students become inadvertently caught in a cycle that is difficult to escape.

Parents’ inability to advocate for their children could stem from language barriers, schools’ failure to make information accessible, or logistics when parents work several jobs, for instance. Studies on the achievement gap in New York City elementary, middle, and high schools suggest that parents could play an enormous role in students’ ability to be successful in school.

To boost student success, schools must integrate parents into the process of their children’s education. Watching the frustrations of the teachers, students, and parents in “Entre les murs” helped me reflect further on how this issue fits into the current controversy over Mayor Bloomberg’s appointment of Cathleen Black to be the next chancellor of New York City schools.

Black is currently chairwoman of Hearst Magazines. Parents, educators, and city figures are arguing over whether being a seasoned manager necessarily makes her qualified to run a school system. The anti-mayoral-control-of-schools faction is also saying that this move by Bloomberg is another way he’s flexing his muscles without involving any checks and balances in his decision-making.

In an effort to appease opponents before Black was confirmed, Bloomberg appointed Shael Polakow-Suransky, the former principal of a Bronx high school and a top official in the New York City Department of Education, to the new position of chief academic officer. Exactly how much control Polakow-Suransky will have remains unclear, since he ultimately reports to Black.

I understand the need for a strong executive to oversee a school system of 1.1 million children and 135,000 employees. From that perspective, the Department of Education is not unlike any other corporation.

Except for a few vital differences.

Namely, the goal of this operation is to provide the best education possible for these 1.1 million children, who represent diverse needs, backgrounds, and experiences. Parents’ ability to advocate for their children in this often complicated school system is invaluable, and further cutting them out of the system through these changes in leadership will do no service to students’ academic progress in the city’s schools.

One of the prevalent themes in all three of the movies I mentioned was that when parents were actually able to speak for their children, they could often help propel them on a better educational path. In “Waiting for Superman,” we saw how parents made it their mission to get their children into more academically rigorous schools. In the other two films, we saw how the faculty’s explicit efforts to bring parents into the schools could make a difference in children’s performance in the classroom.

As the New York City schools undergo dramatic changes, parents must have a voice in the process.

Jessica Hills is a Barnard College junior majoring in political science and French language. She is a former associate news editor. Class Notes runs alternate Thursdays.