"Les Profs"; portrait of a failing nation

As part of our English exchange student's cultural education (well it has been pouring with rain for the month since his arrival) we took him to the cinema to see 'Les Profs' a film of a cartoon which bears the same name, which promised to wise him up to the realities of French education.

The producers had the 'witty' idea of combining atrocious cartoon-book violence with realism;  that is real actors, only mildly exaggerating the real situation in French Lycée.   The acting of the students was particularly convincing;    the mass obedience, lip biting in the face of abuse; lip curling of ineffectual rebellion, severe trauma in the face of extreme physical and mental violence - it was like watching child abuse whilst struggling to emit a lame laugh.

The film also extolled the anti -virtues of:

Racism (eg:  jokes about cous-cous and pulling at a student's afro hair and shouting 'take off that wig')
Sexism (eg:  a teacher whose sole attribute was to dress pornographically and cause all red blooded males to drop their jaws and fall backwards off their chairs)
Violence, physical, mental, group, all unchallenged and pointless
Defeatism
Dishonesty
Sadism
Theft
Substance abuse in school (legal and illegal)
Helplessness in the face of utterly immoral absolute power (School Inspector, Authorities)

There were no actual virtues and no heros and everyone was dragged down together.  Things only turned around when one of the defeatist anti heros decides not to walk out (the promise of love with a ravishing German teacher persuaded him to stay) and instead climbs onto the roof clutching a Napolean hat, where he leaves the audience guessing;  is he going to  throw himself off, or rally the troups, pourquoi pas?  He decides to rally the troups (I think) by declaring 'Nous sommes tous nuls...Ensemble!'  (We are all stupid, useless failures utterly lacking talent of any kind...together).

The school then rallied, for reasons which aren't entirely clear to me as an Englishwoman, and achieved success (measured statistically) by raising their exam pass rate from 3 to 50 percent.  Any other aspects of what one might call 'education' were studiously ignored, and the possibility of an 'alternative' pedagogy rendered risible.

The joyous climax - the absutely 'nul' (stupid useless failure etc) student who had failed his Bac for 3 years running was thrown out of the school by the Powers on High (school informed by letter) which meant the school achieved a 50 percent pass rate, whereas with him still on the books it would have been 49 (this is all about figures not fairness).

Then the 'bad' teachers refused to accept transfer to the Cote d'Azure which they had been offered as a reward for raising the pass rate from 3 to 50 percent, and said that 50 percent could be improved on and they would stay on at the school to finish their duty.    Then teachers and pupils did a wild rap dance in the playground, filmed from above, The End

Surely the audience would be left flat I thought.  Not at all, the cinema was full to capacity, people were sitting in the aisles (where were the usherettes, the health and safety standards,  the social responsibility of the audience to shove up and give them a seat?) 8 showings a day, and the audience gave a standing ovation.  The French must be really desperate for education therapy.