During the Fall 2009 semester we read and discussed discussed of Francois Begaudeau’s controversial memoir The Class.  We started by asking members of the reading group to share the ways in which Begaudeau’s memoir of a middle school classroom reflected their own personal experiences teaching at Kingsborough.  Many participants articulated teaching struggles that mirrored Begaudeau’s, while others expressed serious reservations at the narrator’s pedagogical strategies and treatment of students.  Group members also drew from the memoir concerns that a large proportion of academic assignments fail to incorporate students’ lived experiences and backgrounds.  We worried that these types of tasks unwittingly perpetuate students’ sense of isolation and alienation from the larger academic community.  These ideas opened up a larger conversation about those academic policies and “macro-structures” limiting students’ capacities to succeed academically and establish meaningful connections with their teachers and fellow students.

Ultimately, group members considered why Begaudeau chose to write this memoir and what we might learn from it.  We acknowledged the discrepancy between Begaudeau’s disregard for students in the classroom and subsequent acknowledgment of their intelligence and resiliency within his writings.  In an attempt to resolve this apparent contradiction, one group member proposed that Begaudeau intended this memoir not as a “confession” or “literal truth,” but rather, as a vehicle for conveying the larger, often oppressive educational culture that pervades both France and the United States.  Overall, group members responded enthusiastically and with great insights into the reading.  During our final meeting of the semester we invited students to view excerpts from the film version of the memoir and were both intrigued and inspired by their responses.  We look forward to future student-faculty meetings and discussions in the future. Below is our end of semester report and the questions that we used to facilitate discussion during our final meeting of the semester.

List of Links:

Discussion questions (2)

End of semester report fall 2009 (2)