“To Be and to Have”(Etre et Avoir)
by Jan Aaron

One of the most touching and interesting movies about education ever made, Nicholas Philibert’s terrific documentary To Be and to Have chronicles one year in the life of Georges Lopez who teaches kids in the Auvergne region of France. Now 55, he is preparing to retire after teaching for 35 years—20 in this single room school, the likes of which also are being phased out in France.

Here, he instructs 13 children from ages 4 to 10, each in their own corner. Lopez divides his time between each group, changing his style to meet the students’ needs. He speaks softly, rarely telling his students to do something. Instead, he questions them to help them discover their feelings and ideas. When he voices displeasure at misbehavior, it is in a way the kids understand and relate to.

From the hilarious bit of two 4-year-olds trying to master a photocopier to a 10 year-old skillfully guiding a tractor through family fields, the movie provides fresh insight into rural education in France. The school is cozy and modern with a wood-burning fireplace and computers. Colorful drawings, making and flipping crepes, even sledding down woody slopes are part of the curriculum. At home, a youngster struggles in the kitchen with multiplication tables and it’s fun to see his entire family drawn into his situation.

At the movie’s start, the weather is harsh as the school van chugs its way to school where they’re stern but caring teacher waits. By film’s end, everyone has gone to visit the modern middle school the 10 year-olds will attend next year, and enjoyed a picnic under leafy trees.

Lopez, son of a Spanish immigrant farmhand and a French mother, says he always wanted to be a schoolteacher even as a young kid. At the movie’s end the children say good-bye one by one. Watching him choke up as the kids go off for the summer is one of many moving moments in this film. The movie is a positive pat on the back for dedicated teachers everywhere who help students become adults.#

105 minutes, in French with English subtitles; call 777-Film for venues

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