How (Not) to Teach French: Psittacisme and Culture de Proximité in Three Cinematic Representations of School

Humanities teachers challenge the utilitarian, economic arguments with which administrators justify reducing offerings in our fields. If our profession is to survive, however, we have to convince an even more important constituency: our students. “Psittacisme” designates false learning, the regurgitation of unassimilated culture; “culture de proximité,” by contrast, designates cultural knowledge with which students readily identify. In order to increase student support for our disciplines, we must avoid the former and exploit the latter. Three recent films—L’esquive; Entre les murs; La journée de la jupe—illustrate the need to recognize pre-existing student culture when teaching French language and literature.