Here we have a fascinating film about teachers, students, schools, learning, and the truth.
When I started this project about teachers or teaching on the silver screen, I never wanted to cast judgments on a film for being closer to reality than another. That would be boring. I am mostly reacting to whatever elements of the film make me think about my experiences as a teacher and how the teacher appears as a full human being in the film. The shortsightedness of focusing on how closely the onscreen events adhere to my experiences would be most evident in a film such as Das Lehrerzimmer because of its German setting. Of course teaching in a different country would give rise to practices that I might not be familiar with. What a tedious analysis it would be if I just ran down the differences or departures from what I expected based on U.S. schooling. Hell, that wouldn’t even be analysis but cataloging. Boring either way.
Thankfully for both of us, this film addresses issues beyond education through the use of a school setting. The publisher’s description on the back of the box would have you think the film is about an idealistic, young teacher trying to find the culprit of a recent theft in her classroom. That’s only the beginning of the plot. There is a much bigger meditation here on what it means to reason from incomplete information. We’re first exposed to that idea in the daily warm-up that Frau Nowak (played by Leonie Benesch) gives to her students. She’s asking them to prove that 0.333… + 0.333… + 0.333… is equal to 1. One student points out that the solution is something like 0.999… and thus it never becomes 1. Another student disagrees by offering that 0.333… is equal to ⅓, so three of that number is equal to 1.
The question Frau Nowak asks her class after these competing perspectives clash on the chalkboard is key: Is this a proof or an assumption? The class doesn’t have the time to fully respond to that question. They seem confused by their teacher’s choice of terms, if not the math itself. I’ll note that I was confused about the age of the students at this point because this question seemed quite advanced for the apparent age of the students; we learn later that they are 11 or 12. This feeling of searching confusion continues through the rest of the film as the characters continue to contest what counts as evidence and the ethics of collecting it in the first place.
See, it’s not just the initial theft in Carla Nowak’s classroom that is at issue. After the administration botches an investigation into the theft of one student’s cash, Carla gets the idea that maybe it’s one of her colleagues who has sticky fingers. There’s a communal pay-what-you-can jar near the coffee machine in the teachers’ lounge and she sees another teacher shaking some coins out of it. She suspects foul play, so she sets up her wallet to be plainly visible on the back of her chair when she steps out of the lounge. She has also set her work laptop’s camera to record its field of vision, including the chair. Although the camera records the distinctive sleeve of an arm that reaches into her purse, Carla did not obtain the consent of anyone to record in the lounge.
The fallout from this (also) botched investigation contaminates relationships among the staff, especially when the nonconsensual nature of the recording becomes apparent. Carla had initially seemed to be a sympathetic victim, but now she seems to have entrapped another professional with her misguided scheme. Even though her evidence is clear about the thief’s identity, her method of obtaining it was unethical. This situation puts everyone in a difficult position, not the least of which is the child of the apparent thief who is also a student in Carla’s class. It’s not clear how to adequately resolve this issue as it escalates throughout the film.
We eventually learn that not only is Carla in her first year in the school, but also she is from Poland. Her lack of experience and outsider status causes other teachers to reprimand her for not involving the faculty union in the first place. She was too ambitious with her investigation and too trusting of her own students, they think. This aspect of Carla’s character is compelling as well. How schools absorb new teachers (regardless of their age or experience) is a fraught process. Everyone comes with their own hang-ups and ideas about what school is and how to do it. An organization like a union or faculty committee can try to mold a semblance of coherence around a process that can be challenging to navigate, but it is hard to have adults agree on a common vision for something as complex as schooling.
As with investigating a classroom theft, there is not always a simple approach to take. The delicate nature of interrogating children about their peers’ behavior can lead adults to lean into the power imbalance inherent in teaching. Sometimes adults might find it easier to create scapegoats or trust gut instincts when a more careful approach is needed. How to wrangle the truth in such situations is difficult and exposes the assumptions we all have about how the world should work from our vantage point. With Das Lehrerzimmer, İlker Çatak has done an excellent job of depicting the less-than-ideal circumstances we find ourselves in when negotiating proofs and assumptions in service of trying to reach the truth.
YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY THESE REVIEWS:
No comments:
Post a Comment