Culture Contradiction
The children who studied in the school were of Creole origin: they have their own language, customs and traditions, their own values. But soon they come to study and found out that their culture is barbarian and they are not allowed to talk their mother tongue anymore. Only French is allowed for communication, because the French language is presumably for noble and educated people. Children didn’t understand what was wrong with their language and it was extremely hard for them to learn French, but they had to obey. And with time the Creole language degraded to “contraband”, it grew callous from its freight of insults, dirty words, hatreds and violence. Creole wasn’t used anymore to say nice things. It became the language of bad guys, it lost its primary role.
Problems of Education
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.
Self-Identifying
The little boy was looking for something he really liked, and he didn’t like to sit home while there was a real life outside. He knew that there was a place where he could find what he was looking for and this mysterious place for him was called “school”. When mother brought him to the nursery school, he liked it, he tried to do all his best to be praised, and indifference was the only punishment for him. But when he got to the real school he understood that there were smarter children who were better than him and in order to achieve a success he had to find what he liked and then do it better than others. And he had found his calling, it was the Teacher who showed him the magical and mystical world of books. The little boy tried to create his own stories, looking on the illustrations in books, and then little by little he learnt letters, words, and phrases. It became his passion, the little boy has grown up and now he is a talented writer who does his favorite job – creates magnificent stories.
