School Blues

Daniel Pennac

Rating:

The English edition of Pennac’s 320 page book will be out in September. I appraise it in June from a 32 page extract. It’s good.

Daniel Pennac is a celebrity in France.   He was a dunce (French cancrei) at school where, at last, a teacher brought him to life assigning him the task of writing a novel.  .  He began writing children’s books while teaching literature, and has combined this with adult writing, of which School Blues is an example.  

Pennac is moved by three angers. He is angry with wilfully lethargic, self-damaging students. Beefy Maximilien stops him in the street and asks menacingly for a light. Then, recognising Pennac as the writer of a book on which he has to write an essay, he begs for helpful words to present to his teacher. Pennac walks away, telling Maximilien that his earlier uncouth behaviour has consequences.

But Maximilien is a victim of public opinion, which dismisses him as hopeless because he comes from a banlieue district. Pennac will not accept that this son of African immigrants is incapable of intellectual regeneration. Pennac knows; he was a dunce once.

And finally, Pennac attacks commercial controllers of young people’s perceptions which, he finds, are so distorted that students know clothes only by their brands, not their generic names. Teachers’ mission is not, he insists, to turn students into docile pushers of shopping trolleys up and down the aisles of retail life. Teachers exist to give students their brains back. Good literature liberates.

Reviewer: Richard Wilkins, Former General Secretary, Association of Christian Teachers, Watford, Herts

Review posted on: 30 June 2010

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