School Days

In the story, we can see the main problems of education in an earlier period. Among these is the problem of arranging the class according to social markers, and it unfortunately still exists nowadays. As we can see in the narrative, there were three best students in the class and they were sitting on the front row. They weren’t smart, but they had rich parents who taught them to ignore their Creole origin and display the Parisian behavior and vocabulary, and accent that fascinates the Teacher. Other students kept a watch on themselves. The mocking and pulling a leg became common phenomena. They started laughing whenever someone makes a mistake, so opening ones mouth became a risky business: “Speech became a heroic feat”. Also the Teacher satirized those who didn’t know the right answer and humiliated them, as a result, children had a low self-esteem and didn’t want to learn something more, they were afraid to make a mistake.