“If you are not in favour, you are opposed :†Franck Pavloff’s Brown Morning and democratic awareness in the heterogeneous classroom
Submitted by:
Osnat Bar-On
Abstract:
“If you are not in favour, you are opposed :” Franck Pavloff’s Brown Morning and democratic awareness in the heterogeneous classroom
Franck Pavloff’s Brown Morning facilitates the development of critical thinking and democratic awareness in the heterogeneous classroom. The allegorical nature of the work encourages students to engage with the nuances of a complex literary text while identifying potential parallels between the fictional situation and their own lives and society. The study of Brown Morning fosters the cognitive thinking skills of formulating thought-provoking questions and answering them inductively through the close analysis of textual evidence. Students practice debating social issues though parables and learn to understand how literature uses animalization and coded criticism to comment on real-life situations.
Pavloff wrote Brown Morning in France in 2001, during the period leading to the presidential campaign between Jacques Chirac and the right-wing Jean Marie Le-Pen. Narrated in a minimalistic, non-judgemental tone, this brief dystopian novel presents a mesmerizing allegorical description of how citizens allow a totalitarian regime to take over their lives. By describing the treatment of cats and dogs, Brown Morning depicts the gradual ascendance of a horrific regime. In Israel, Brown Morning is a part of the literature curriculum in junior high schools within an interdisciplinary learning circle formed around the themes of the individual under totalitarianism, individualism versus conformism, and democratic versus non-democratic regimes. In citizenship classes Brown Morning is taught in order to help students recognize non-democratic phenomena. Brown Morning is well suited for the heterogeneous classroom because its allegorical nature encourages readers to reflect on their own experiences in light of events that take place outside of a specific place or time. The students’ attention to the text deepens their awareness of their own psychology and socio-political reality, thus facilitating fruitful discussions in which every student potentially has a voice in the interpretative community.
The apparent simplicity of the plot of Brown Morning is effective in engaging the attention of the students: two friends in an unspecified country are suddenly informed that it is no longer permissible to own any dogs, and later any cats, that are not brown. The friends receive the decrees and the disappearance of non-brown animals with only minor discomfort. The daily newspaper is subsequently closed because of its interest in other colors, and books are removed from library shelves. The friends adjust to the new reality, oblivious to its threats and focusing instead on their livelihood and other daily concerns. Pavloff’s characters, ordinary people potentially representing every human being, undergo psychological adjustment, rationalization, self-delusion and repression—but finally, but too late, experience moral awakening. Through their study of Pavloff’s text, students develop the awareness that “brownness” remains a threat for every society and that they must avoid the moral indifference of the literary characters.