EDUCATION – This winter between Christmas chocolates and the month of White, appeared a kind of unidentified object, improbable. The fabulous authors of the YouTube series “SEGPA” had decided to give us a new work, and they seem to be expecting a long and vibrant tribute. A tribute to the height of the consideration they would surely show towards the students of SEGPA.
So I don’t know about you, but I’m not super motivated for applause.
However, the pitch of the film has everything to please. A band of young people who have failed in their old college, decked out with parents as unworthy as they are violent, join a new establishment, in return for substantial compensation for the said establishment. And to avoid a new exit from the road, our happy college students are getting it into their heads to pass their college certificate, a success that is supposed to make the new management forget their status as morons as well as their clearly advantaged comrades both intellectually, than financial. Fantastic you say to me… With a moral as simplistic as “when we want we can”, it smells like a masterpiece.
But inevitably there is a bone, what am I saying a femur, a skeleton, downright the treasure of the catacombs.
“These students who very quickly feel that when some of their classmates are unique, they are different; and that the comparison is only rarely to their advantage.
Everything is in the title “SEGPA”. The famous section for students with serious and lasting difficulties. These birds, who as soon as they met the school understood that it was not going to be easy. Those who, day after day, discovered that to be congratulated, it was not enough to repeat for hours the poetry to be learned, because unlike their neighbor at the desk, their memory is more like a piece of Swiss Emmental cheese. These students, who instead of discovering the pleasure of reading great stories, exhaust themselves trying to understand who the characters of the story are, because this damn author wanted to avoid repetitions and confuses them as surely as a representative in encyclopedias tricks the famous housewife of more than 50 years.
Those for whom the geometric vocabulary is sometimes as difficult to understand as Celtiberian North Castile when we did burgundy in LV2.
In short, these students who very quickly feel that when some of their classmates are unique, they are different; and that the comparison is only rarely to their advantage.
SEGPA is 4 years to restore confidence
So because we believe in the skills of these damaged students, in their ability to go further, we try to convince parents that the orientation of their child in SEGPA will allow them to regain their breath, to regain an esteem for itself, to obtain encouraging results. But these parents are sometimes also open to the idea of a concert hall in full confinement, because the SEGPA they have heard about it and frankly the idea of registering their offspring there has as much effect on them as a toothache on New Year’s Eve.
– My son is not stupid.
– I’m not going to let my daughter associate with these wildlings.
– I prefer to give him a chance, at worst he will repeat his sixth.
So those who arrive one day in SEGPA are hurt, because it’s been a while since they realized that they weren’t doing the same work as their friends, that their files were different, shorter… They suffer because they were mocked, sometimes insulted. Some didn’t always have the words to defend themselves, so they used their fists. Others have withdrawn, erased so as not to make them laugh anymore, because, oddly enough, making them laugh does not make them laugh. Still others have hidden their difficulties behind jokes, laughter, self-mockery, because that is sometimes the solution to not crying.
And here is the reality. Only 4 years to restore confidence, to plump up, to build a professional project, to choose a chosen orientation. Four years is short but it can also be long. During these 4 years we see students put down their suitcases, rid of the unfair competition of good students, become aware that their differences are also strengths, that not knowing the rules of agreement of the past participle, yes it is annoying, but being able to make a weld worthy of a pro in training is damn nice.
To say to yourself that Pythagoras is frankly painful, but to realize that the insect hotel built in the workshop is still much more stable with partitions at right angles.
Four years to dare to say, I didn’t understand, I need help, to admit the difficulties, and not just the fatality of the answer that no one understands.
The reality is the insults of others
But the reality is also the insults of others, those who call them weaklings, cassos, like a mantra to sometimes forget that the SEGPA was also offered to them. Those that they may find one day in vocational high school. When our birds will have had the years of college, the internships to choose their orientation, the others will perhaps undergo it.
Because yes, our students continue their studies, have a blast in vocational high school or in apprenticeship, put meaning into their careers. And they come back to brag about it more. They are not ashamed of anything, these birds!
“No, SEGPA students are not morons, SEGPA students have not repeated 25 times their 6th grade, SEGPA students are not the offspring of violent, inconsistent parents. No, SEGPA students are not just lazy people who refuse to work to succeed.
So when some present them on the black screen of our sleepless nights, as Claude said, in a retarded thirty-year-old version, ready for all the antics to make people laugh, at all ends to give the illusion of being a mindless moron, and that it would be enough to cram to obtain this famous patent of the colleges, one could smile about it. Smile as we were able to do in front of the famous machine that distributed slaps to high school students in an overpriced bin box. But these under-gifted came from all walks of life, and competed in intelligence to avoid satisfying the teachers. Except that this time we don’t want to. Truly not.
Because here we press where we shouldn’t, we give them a name, we call them the SEGPA.
So no, the students of SEGPA are not morons, the students of SEGPA have not repeated their 6th grade 25 times, the students of SEGPA are not the offspring of violent, inconsistent parents. No, SEGPA students are not just lazy people who refuse to work to succeed.
SEGPA students are deserving, SEGPA students have self-esteem, SEGPA students need a benevolent look to trust each other, SEGPA students are sensitive to injustice, because this injustice live with forever. This injustice of having to live with difficulties that they did not choose when others were born with facilities, again not chosen.
After the movie, the stigma
So in your promotional tour, guys, you plan to explain to the 5th SEGPA why the 5th B call them cassos, Mongolians when they meet?
You have a great speech to reassure Paul, when Emma has explained to him that no, she definitely can’t continue to go out with him because it’s really too much of a shame to be with a SEGPA?
You have found the arguments to convince Enzo’s parents that SEGPA is his chance to finally find a place in the school system, and to continue to progress instead of going to 6th grade and continuing to flow quietly a little more every day?
Because I really don’t know.
So you’ll excuse me, but instead of going to the movies, I’m going to go back to watching my two ninth-grade girls, who decided to do without me today for their history homework on the Popular Front. I will observe this cooperation, and look carefully at the one who reads easily, whispers the text and the questions in her friend’s ear, the one who understands easily, the friend who will give her the clues, that she , guessed. I will observe their pens waving together, their smiles of satisfaction, their complicit looks.
So yes I could sanction the common duty which should have been personal. But no I won’t. Because take away any doubt, wouldn’t that be cooperation between peers? Knowing and respecting the difficulties of others? Mutual aid to succeed? Guys, the day you want to write SEGPA 2 think about it. Because they, the students of SEGPA, live it every day, but tomorrow in addition, thanks to you they will live the stigmatization, the laughter at their expense, the insults…
So really, no, I’m not going to the cinema today.
You can find Alice on her Facebook page.
See also on The HuffPost: This Professor Made His Students Love Physics With His Crazy Experiments
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