I could not believe it. In the first course in the secondary school, one day the teacher of French was on his knees imploring a student not to jump out of a window. After some weeks I realised that it was the usual method to blackmail the teacher in order to increase the exam marks. Why study French if one can pass the course with high marks just by simulating suicide? The teacher had little idea of French, in fact he had (really) a kind of mental disorder, or was a bit mentally deficient (seriously), and had obtained his job through some strong family influences (the typical Spanish nepotism). And the French classes soon became a merry-go-round, every time more and more violent.
The problem was that defining that kind of situation as “normal” the whole school context became superfluous. At the end of that year not only did the French course seem something extravagant, but the Maths course seemed a set of ridiculous hieroglyphs, Literature did seem like the bored job of a notary, Physical education seemed like the crazy invention of some nazi doctor, and Philosophy seemed like a dirty collection of irrational jokes. At this point most of the students were convinced that French did not exist at all, and the rest of the courses were only inventions designed to create trouble for us. The next year maybe half of the students went out of the educational system. Perhaps it was a strategy designed to clean the school of most of the working class students. What would the French ambassador had said? Well, someone developed a new hypothesis: Was it a strategy to discredit French and increase the prestige of English? Who would say that English globalisation is naive?
