A story of punishment from Aix-en-Provence:
At 4:30 p.m. I was parked on the sidewalk, as usual. I watched the parents milling around the school gate, kissing cheeks and dragging on cigarettes. I would have left my car and joined them, but I knew from experience that crowd didn’t want to chitchat with anyone they hadn’t known since kindergarden. The bell rang and a few minutes later the wire gate swung open. Madame Aubin stood at the gate, saying goodbye to each child as they passed her, touching most of them affectionately on the arm or shoulder. She looked like she had already dressed for that night’s hot date. With a father’s laser focus, I zeroed in on Sophie’s face among the crowd, as if everyone else was in black and white and she was in Technicolor. She caught my eye and broke into a radiant smile.
Sophie got into the backseat with Devon. Without saying hello Sophie said, “I’ve got a new story for you today, dad. Obviously, it’s about Ahmed.”
Each day after school, Sophie had a story about her classmate Ahmed. He was a troubled, 11-year-old bully, thirsting for attention. The son of Algerian immigrants, he had several strikes against him: he bordered on obesity, caused classroom havoc to divert attention from his dimwittedness, and came from a culture not embraced by mainstream France. With hooded eyes, a thick shock of hair in a demi-Mohawk, shirttails untuckable, Ahmed shuffled around the schoolyard looking for younger children to abuse. He looked like a kid who would intentionally step on a crack to break his mother’s back.
“So we were in class and Titi was bored and looking for some entertainment,” said Sophie. Titi (Timothée) was Ahmed’s undersized toady. I eased the car down Chemin du Four, and by coincidence I could see Ahmed’s mohawk bobbing above the heads of his flunkies walking to the bus stop.
“So Titi whispered, ‘Hey Ahmed, I’m dying. Do something, OK?’ Ahmed got ready by taking big gulps of air, and waited for Madame to pause her lesson.”
I knew what was coming next, as this was not the first time I heard of Ahmed’s prodigious skills. Calculating the time of maximum disruption, he sometimes unleashed a deep and malodorous, Olympian burp to bring the class to hysterics.
“So he let out this enormous burp, but it was really weird because normally Madame would scream at him. But she didn’t this time.”
I knew that the established procedure, from the French teachers’ handbook, was: (1) scream at the child, (2) belittle the child to the maximum extent possible, and (3) banish the child to another classroom. This was a quotidian punishment for Ahmed, upon whom such embarrassment had a diminishing effect.
“Dad, can we stop at Banette?” I made a right turn from the left lane onto Fontenaille and parked the front half of the car on the sidewalk, the back half remaining in the street. I gave Sophie two euros, and the children were soon back in the car with a pain au chocolate and a ficelle.
“Where was I?” Sophie asked. “Oh, yeah, Madame was acting weird. She just looked at Ahmed in a really cold way and everyone was quiet. She didn’t move a muscle on her face and walked slowly to Ahmed’s desk. She got close to him, really close, so her nose was about an inch away from his nose. That was gross because he kind of smells. Then in a quiet voice, kind of whispering, she said, ‘Hey, look, the door’s open.’ Then she paused a bit, and then shouted, ‘GET OUT!!!’ Then Madame chose me to take Ahmed from the room.”
It was Sophie’s job to find another class, explain to the teacher that Ahmed was being punished, and request he be allowed to sit at the back of the classroom, staring at the wall for the day.
“It sounds like you should have taken Ahmed straight to the psychologist,” I said. I wheeled the Peugeot into traffic and headed home. “You know what a psychologist is, don’t you?”
“I think so. But tell me.”
“It’s someone who helps people with their emotional and mental health,” I said.
“Do I need a psychologist?” asked Devon.
“I don’t know. Why do you ask, Dev?”
“Well, you just said Ahmed should go see a psychologist and some of the kids have to see a psychologist during school.”
“That’s okay, maybe they’re having some trouble in class.”
“Yeah, the teachers keep screaming at them,” said Devon.
“Do you know how to say ‘psychologist’ in French?” I asked.
“I forget.”
“It’s pronounced ‘puh-seek-o-log.’ That makes me laugh every time.”
“You’re a ‘puh-seeko,’ ” said Devon.
“Oh, nice one.” I turned onto Repentence to make the long climb on the narrow, curved road, knowing I would lose the inevitable game of chicken with a city bus.
“Anyway,” said Sophie, “can we get back to my story? So I first tried Madame Lamont’s class, which I knew was a mistake when I saw Madame Lamont’s crazy look.
‘Not you again!’ she screamed at Ahmed. ‘You’ve destroyed your own class, and now you expect to join my class again and annoy us too? Don’t you dare come in here!’ All the kids in Madame Lamont’s class jumped from their seats to get a better look at what was happening.”
“We did too,” said Devon. “In our class we could hear her screaming from way down the hall, so everyone got up and tried to look out the door.”
Previous Ahmed stories had taught me that while leaving your seat was usually forbidden, an unwritten school rule allowed every student the equal opportunity to see someone else get in trouble. No one should be deprived a ring side seat. The ‘equality’ portion of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’
“I had to walk Ahmed back to our class,” said Sophie.
“Were you holding hands?” I asked, passing the “you are now leaving Aix” sign.
“Ewwwww, dad. Stop it. So Madame asked me to try Madame Tremblay. Madame Tremblay knows Ahmed really well. It was like she already had her speech ready. Before I could say anything, Madame Tremblay poked her finger in Ahmed’s chest and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘I see you in the schoolyard walking, so cool with your friends. Right now you have the time to smarten up but when you’re a grownup, you don’t. So if you don’t smarten up now, you’re not going to get married, you’re not going to have kids, and you’re going to end up living on the street. I won’t waste my time on you.’
I told this to Madame and Madame made me go see the substitute teacher, Madame Leclaire, who asked me who this boy was and why did he want to sit in her class.
I said, ‘This is Ahmed, and he is always being punished. He has already been rejected by three other teachers today.’ So of course Madame Leclaire said no and we had to come back to our class and see Madame. Madame did this really big sigh and told me to go see Madame Barizeau. Madame Barizeau had to accept Ahmed because she was the last available teacher. I went back to our classroom really happy.”
“Happy and Ahmed-less,” I said. While Sophie roamed the halls for 30 minutes trying to secure refugee status for Ahmed, her class sat patiently, doing nothing. It was widely accepted that all educational activities would stop while a misbehaving student was re-assigned to another teacher, regardless of the time elapsed; it wouldn’t be fair to the student chaperone, the good kid, to miss out on any instruction. I slowed the car, took a deep breath, and raced up the four switchbacks leading to La Pistache. I wanted to see how fast I could do it this time.