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Teacher screens 'Saw' for 6th-grade class, gets suspended

As the school year comes to a close, many teachers are giving students a break from all of those final exams with the occasional class video, or movie. But the R-rated film "Saw" might not be the best idea -- particularly for a teacher of 6th graders.Still, that's what happened in in a suburb just outside Paris on Monday, according to Europe 1 (as translated by Gawker) when math teacher Jean-Bapti
Cary Elwes in \"Saw.\"
Cary Elwes in \"Saw.\"Today

As the school year comes to a close, many teachers are giving students a break from all of those final exams with the occasional class video, or movie. But the R-rated film "Saw" might not be the best idea -- particularly for a teacher of 6th graders.

Still, that's what happened in in a suburb just outside Paris on Monday, according to Europe 1 (as translated by Gawker) when math teacher Jean-Baptiste Clément reportedly told his 11-year-old students, "This will be your first horror film."

"Saw" is indeed a 2004 horror film from director James Wan that spawned six sequels, and is considered to be of a new, lower-budget, independent horror film genre often called "torture porn." It focuses on a sadistic killer who directs his victims to to play "games" in which they are forced to kill one another.

One student's father told The Local that his child came home "visibly in some discomfort."

Clément was disciplined Tuesday and given a one-day suspension, a representative for the Federation of Students' Parents Councils said, adding that there may be legal measures to pursue in the incident.

But, as the Local noted, this wasn't the first time in recent memory that a French teacher got in trouble for creative teaching styles -- in May a teacher used a swastika to teach geometry, and another one was investigated in February for asking her students to write their own suicide notes. And The Hollywood Reporter noted that a 6th-grade Georgia teacher was recently investigated for showing R-rated films like "The Campaign" and "Ted" to his students.

Maybe this is just a little too much vive la différence.