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Comunicar Journal 35: Film Languages in the European Collective Memory (Vol. 18 - 2010)
Education in European cinema and society’s exclusion of the young
Enrique Martínez-Salanova-Sánchez
This article analyses the portrayal of education in European cinema from the perspective of systems of education and the behaviour of teachers and pupils in the classroom. Since its very beginnings, cinema has played a significant role in forming the collective European memory, and has cast a critical eye over pedagogy and didactics, especially with regard to young outcasts. The article reviews a number of films whose subject is education, the classroom and the role of parents and teachers in educating children. Education and children is a recurring theme in European cinema, which examines its subject from a critical viewpoint that is sometimes satirical and occasionally savage. The exclusion, marginalization, neglect and manipulation of children and adolescents, and the abuse and merciless severity of certain educational systems are all part of the collective European memory thanks to the condemnation of some of the best films ever made in the continent. They ask pointed questions about educational systems, the behaviour of teachers and inadequate didactics, as well as tackling the conflicts in a multiethnic society.
Keywords
Cinema, memory, history, Europe, school, education, marginalization, didactics