Director Thomas Lilti Discusses ‘A Serious Job’ and the Challenges Faced by Teachers

CINEMA – Teachers, lazy people? For Thomas Lilti, this is false, but “ this image is still far too anchored in our French society “. The former French doctor and director (Hippocrates, First year) wants to pay tribute to them with his new feature film, A serious job released September 13.

Funny, sensitive and entertaining, A serious job is a dive into the teaching world. He tells us about the school year of a group of resilient and supportive teachers in a college in the Paris region. Among them: Benjamin (Vincent Lacoste), a young substitute math teacher finds himself thrown in at the deep end.

Lack of educational resources, time, but also support… The filmmaker targets current issues in teaching, a profession that he considers ” devalued “, both by public authorities and parents and students themselves.

Far from the operating theaters to which Thomas Lilti has accustomed us, this fifth feature film could not have found a better context to land on our screens: a disconcerting start to the school year, shaken in particular by various political controversies. Le HuffPost talked about it with him.

Le HuffPost : Emmanuel Macron had made the ambitious promise to find “ a teacher in front of each class » from this start of the school year. Only three out of ten French people, according to our survey, trusted him to achieve this. Is right ?

Thomas Lilti: We can clearly see that no. It’s a fail. There were more than 3,000 positions still unfilled during the month of July. And at the start of the school year, one in two middle or high schools is missing a teacher. In addition, the question was also to know which teacher Emmanuel Macron was talking to us about. Would they have been sufficiently trained?

One of the first files of Gabriel Attal, recently appointed Minister of Education, was to look into the wearing of the abaya and its ban. Was this really a priority?

To answer this, let’s go into the field. Does it really take up space? Is there really any provocation? I don’t know. What I know is that 67 students who showed up with an abaya at the start of the school year refused to take it off. However, 12 million students returned to school this year. I don’t mind being made to believe that this is a societal problem, but in terms of figures it seems insignificant to me compared to the other problems that school education encounters, starting with bullying at school.

On the issue of school harassment, Gabriel Attal recently asked establishments to take sanctions more quickly. How do the teachers you met during your documentation work experience this recurring subject from the inside?

We can clearly see that society is affected by deep-seated problems of violence, racism, secularism… School is often a reflection of this and what we tell teachers is to resolve them when they are confronted with them. That’s not their role. It is intolerable and deeply unfair to hold teachers, who are on the front line, responsible for inadequacies in this area.

So yes, we cannot hold the current government responsible for all the problems in National Education, other governments have preceded it. However, we can only recognize that a gap has opened up between him and the teachers. They have total distrust of its members.

Where is she from ?

There are promises that have no reality on the ground (as with the abaya, editor’s note) and those that have not been kept. Before the “teacher in front of each class” attack, there was the promise of a 10% increase in Emmanuel Macron’s salaries (during his presidential campaign, editor’s note). It was not true. Only some of the teachers were able to benefit from it, not all.

According to a document from the Ministry of National Education consulted by several media, the average increase in teachers’ remuneration would therefore be reduced to 5.5%…

There is a feeling of injustice. In France, teachers are very poorly paid (they earn 34,000 euros gross per year, compared to 42,000 euros for the OECD average, editor’s note). According to several studies, between classroom lessons and their preparation, teachers work around forty hours per week. Let’s remember: an hour of lessons has nothing to do with a traditional hour of work in the office. It’s very difficult. And yet, we spend our time saying how teachers should do their job. It’s very painful for them.

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