Entre les murs

Entre les murs by François Bégaudeau is the French collège in a multicultural setting through the eyes of the teacher and related in a first person, stream of consciousness style.     Punctuated with disgruntled Dico's request to change form tutor (prof principal) and the vagaries of the staffroom photocopier the book, I hesitate to call it a novel, takes us through the school year with brevet blanc, conseil de classe, ramadan, African football cup, options choices for moving onto either bac général or bac pro all coming up for discussion.   I guess the real subject underlying the whole book is the battered and bruised French language which the teacher who teaches French is trying to get across to a disparate bunch of learners some of whom like Ming recently arrived from China are very intelligent but not going to make it soon enough.    The narrator's efforts to maintain distance from the kids themselves is valiantly upheld with his blanket refusal to be tutoyed although his own language to them sometimes appears to invite it.  Would he get a satisfactory in an English inspection-I don't think so.

I think selected parts of the book would be very useful to study particularly regarding options choices and maybe use of language.   It's an interesting way maybe also of looking at the difference between the spoken and the written language with the attitude towards verlan being covered well.    The accompanying film shows the whole situation with similar veracity.

I guess those people studying Kiffe Kiffe demain (see French A level resources at www.kiffekiffedemain.co.uk ) and even Les petits enfants du siècle (www.alevelfrench.com/home) at A2 and also during the éducation topic at AS would get a lot out of selected extracts of the the book.   Has anyone tried it?