Commercials for Hilary Swank's somewhat lightly promoted new film (put out in the lull of January) did not seem promising: oh, another young/inexperienced teacher goes against closed minds and teaches inner city youths the value of education! Based on a true story too. Yeah, that sounds promisingly clichéd. And, the role did not seem one Swank favors. [A small matter, for instance, a scene where her feminity is highlighted was notable for its absence in her best films.] Still, reviews seemed respectable. I had money left on my gift card. So, I gave it a chance.
Mixed bag, but good as a whole. A pretty good review is put forth by the National Review (Not my usual reading, but I do agree with much of the review.) A few excerpts gives one a flavor:
Based on the true of story of novice teacher, Erin Gruwell, and her struggles to educate a group of racially self-segregating freshmen in a recently integrated, gang -infested school, Freedom Writers' inspiring and instructive story about the prospects for education in such adverse conditions is marred by its tendency toward hero-worshipping sentimental schlock. ....
The students, played by a cast of little-known actors who give the most credible performances in the film, also learn the power of stories, of having a vocabulary to understand the lives of others and in light of which to begin to articulate their own lives. ...
[T]he students learn that blind loyalty to one's own can be the source of the gravest injustice. Instead, integrity and honor involve what [Miep] Gies [of Anne Frank fame] calls the ordinary person's fidelity to the truth, a truth that may require defying one's group.
[The movie also suggests why such group loyalty is developed, partially because at times there seems to be no logical alternative. This conclusion grows out of clear realities. An idealistic teacher only goes so far in this department. We get enough tastes of truth like this to make the movie worthwhile.]
There is a reason why these inspirational movies are made and enjoyed. There is somehing uplifting and hopeful about enthusiastic teachers bringing the power and possibility of education to children who many think are not able to be educated. This denial of what should be their birthright, surely necessary for the true development of citizens, is a tragedy. And, the value of this film in part is that we do get a flavor of the students. It is not all about the young white (second generation, whose father is clearly somewhat well off) liberal.
And, their actual words/diaries assist us here. The movie is based partially on diaries that they wrote for class, a form of which was formed into a book. An update by Erin Gruwell, Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Freedom Writers, is forthcoming. Yes, they did meet Miep Gies. The Amazon review of Gruwell's update (the movie takes place in the 1990s, after the Rodney King riots) tells us the students actually made a trip to Europe as well.
A Washington Post review from April, 2000 also points to other aspects found in the movie, including a rather stereotypical view of her colleagues (in real life EG was twenty-three when she started; it is not surprising long suffering colleagues would find her desire to change the rules both naive and dubious at best):
Gruwell's own entries precede each section. They are surprisingly frank, especially regarding her interaction with her colleagues, whom she rarely portrays in a flattering light. Gruwell recalls reaching a turning point when her angry denunciation of the Holocaust prompts a student to timidly ask, "What's the Holocaust?"
Determined to make "tolerance the core of [her] curriculum," Gruwell devises a reading schedule that includes Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo. "Since many of my students are fifteen, and Zlata is fifteen and Anne Frank was fifteen when she died, I think the parallels between age, alienation, and teenage angst will really hit home for them," she writes.
Gruwell's instincts prove right as her students engage in a diary-writing campaign that ultimately leads to this absorbing and inspirational book. ... The best passages, though, display all the qualities one would hope to discover in such a project: candor, conflict, vulnerability, thoughtfulness and wit.
[I don't know the full accuracy of the teacher working two jobs to stretch her salary (27K) and help provide additional resources to the students. But, it sounds at least partially realistic.* Or, the marital problems caused by differences in expectations. The latter subplot was well played and added a touch of realism. The movie has a pretty long running time, and some concern for character interactions is generally adds to the film, including her relations with her '60s activist father, an underused Scott Glenn.]
Some comments from Amazon readers of the book are a bit dubious, a sentiment probably furthered by somewhat necessary eliding of some of the hard work of teaching students with low test scores -- a lot of work on fundamentals before those nicer journal entries takes shape.** As the Post review noted: "Many of the entries show a distracting sameness in language and syntax, perhaps because of overzealous copy-editing." One community college teacher, who did give the book three stars, addressed the point as well:
I tend to avoid substandard English or "dialect" in the readings I give my students. Any appeal of "realness" is always outweighed by the degree to which it can be hard to read and to which it reinforces incorrect writing. Nevertheless, there is something odd about such well-written prose presented as coming from students who were allegedly academic disasters. So, who edited all this?
My hat's off to any teacher whose students succeed so well; yet there is something naggingly revisionist about the way this book reads -- as if both teacher and students are (consciously or unconsciously) hammering their collective experience into the mold of the typical Hollywood hero-teacher movie that this book has inevitably become.
Not having read the book, I cannot judge this caveat, but it has a taste of truth. The movie in fact references how EG had the students type out their journals for publication (on donated computers), which implies some sort of editing -- it is not like the journals were just submitted to a typist. Such a somewhat edited view of reality probably is a good metaphor for the film itself. One that has enough general clichés to confirm my doubts, but enough good material to make it well worth watching.
Cheers to all the teachers out there that make such things as possible as they truly are as well as the students who they help educate.
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* It is quite realistic for a teacher to have to work another job to supplement his/her salary; I know of one such teacher, who has a side job plus takes extra teaching work to pay the bills. Still, how many teachers have the funds to buy extra books and take a class out to a nice restaurant (shades of Dangerous Minds)?
** Diary editing for publication has precedent relevant to the film: Anne Frank herself started to edit hers when she heard a member of the Dutch government in exile say on the radio that he hoped to collect eyewitness accounts (like diaries) of those suffering under the Germans. Her father also edited it somewhat, a later more complete edition underlining the point. Thus, the "definite edition" of her diary is not a simple copy of what she originally wrote on such and such a day. [Based on introductory remarks from said edition.]