Dear Cherwell,
Paris is as black and white as the monochrome outfits that are displayed in every boutique window of the Marais- It’s a place of stark social extremes. I’ve brushed past homeless people viciously fighting over a crack pipe and I’ve accidently elbowed the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) in the face in a fancy, French-ass restaurant. I’ve seen people scouring bins for food and I’ve seen people spend over 40 euros on a pack of 10 Pierre Hermé macaroons. Of course, this is symptomatic of any big city. However, where Paris seems to differ slightly is in its hostile relationship with its outer suburbs, the banlieues.
As a British Council English Language Assistant, I knew that the school to which I would be allocated in September 2013 would be decided by some kind of Union Jack-patterned sorting hat, in other words, completely at random. Thus, as much as I hoped for a ‘good school’, the prospect of teaching in the banlieue was always on the cards (or, in my case, a reality.)
I remember the first day I made my 1 hour 30 minute commute from my apartment in Montmartre to Grigny, on the RER ( the high-speed, suburban network ) and noticing that the further out from central Paris I went, the lower the number of white, French passengers still seated in the carriages. I remember observing one of the year 7 classes that day and being amazed at the fact that: many pupils couldn’t point out Paris on a map of France, few of them had visited central Paris and that none of them considered themselves as ‘Parisian’.
As I told fellow Paris year abroader students of my first impressions of my school/ life in the banlieues, responses often made reference to the films La Haine or The Class. Though I found a new level of appreciation of the former film, I doubted that, unlike the protagonist of the latter, I had the patience or the time (12 hours a week) to make a ‘breakthrough’ with a school of, what my supervisor referred to as ‘problem children’ . As expected, there have been problems: I’ve had to break up numerous physical fights, leave school early one day because a former pupil entered the building and decided to set upon the first teacher he could find, have an emergency staff meeting about a knife-wielding pupil…However, the pupils aren’t the ‘problem’, those that live in the banlieues are not the ‘problem’, immigrants aren’t the ‘problem’; it’s the prejudices which serve only to widen the social and financial gap between the rich of central Paris and the poorer communities who live in the suburbs. My pupils can be challenging but they are funny, intelligent and respectful towards those that don’t underestimate or marginalise them and teaching them is my favourite aspect of my year abroad in Paris thus far.
Sending you love from across The Channel,
Rose (a happy product of the British Council sorting hat)
