The Teachers Lounge * * * ½

 

Please open your textbooks.

I was expecting this to be "edge of your seat" drama: And there are some pretty good confrontational moments, but overall I found it little more than entertaining.  

I also found the circumstances questionable at times. 

Set in a school in Germany, we meet new teacher Carla Nowak.  She has a class of 7th graders.  But the focus isn't so much on her teaching techniques as another issue. 

Money has been stolen from someone's wallet in the teachers lounge.  They believe it to be an Arabic boy in Carla Nowak's class.  His parents are offended and play the racism card and tell the school that if he has an excess amount of money in his pocket it's because they gave it to him.

Later the focus turns to someone else - a trusted staff member.  This time hard evidence is supplied. 

However, the child of the accused is also a student at the school and in the class of Ms.Nowak.  

The child, Oskar is deeply affected by the accusation against his parent. His fellow students and Carla all have to deal with his passionate reaction.

The tension builds nicely with responses from the students, the community and the other teachers.

Whether she is right or wrong in her accusation , the students put Carla on the outside, especially when the school newspaper writes a biased article on it.  

Personally I found the school newspaper and what followed a bit hard to swallow.  Sure, it's a good dramatic device and representative of broader society, but it was asking us to accept an unbelievable level of competence (and confidence) from the students.

It's probably that, and a few other situations, that caused me to regard The Teachers Lounge as simply a  well acted, competent and entertaining ninety minutes, rather than a profound parable.  Not much more than you'd get on many a TV drama.