- Also Known As:
- Unknown
- Year:
- 2007
- Countries:
- Predominant Genre:
- Historical
- Director:
- Outstanding Performances:
- Premiss:
- A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.
- Themes:
- Alienation | Christianity | Coming-of-age | Compassion | Corporate Power | Courage | Destiny | Emotional repression | Empathy | Family | Free Speech | Friendship | Identity | Justice | Loneliness | Loyalty | Materialism | Narcissism | Personal | Personal change | Political | Redemption | Self-belief | Solipsism | Stereotyping | White culture | White guilt | White supremacy
- Similar to:
- Review Format:
- DVD
Learning Respect
Summary: The teacher learns.
Largely avoiding the White supremacism of claiming to be a White savior (compare with Avatar), Hilary SWANK essays a superb performance as a teacher willing to go beyond the call of duty for a bunch of inner-city children. As she does so, she realizes her own dreams while those around her can only watch helpless as they are thereby reminded of their own failings as people.
The children here are neglected by a White educational system that expects non-White children to fail, academically; so creating a deliberately under-resourced system producing the very failure expected. However, the White teacher here understands implicitly that all political theories are inherently self-fulfilling, since self-respect produces more positive results; while self-hatred is more likely to produce the reverse.
Whites are shown as the bad guys in demanding respect without ever earning it; while never giving it to others – whether earned or not. Here, the effort required to do well is shown as a cost to the teacher as well to the student. It adversely affects her marriage to a man who refuses to understand what she is trying to achieve; against the backdrop of the cultural inertia of a White society unwilling to renounce its institutional racism for the benefit of all - even Whites. Like first-class passengers on a sinking ship, Whites still wish to retain the benefits of being first class passengers to the bitter end - even though they will also drown. Here the factory-farm nature of Western schooling is revealed, as a form of social containment for the problems created by that very culture.
White supremacist teachers are shown particularly effectively as those who believe that anyone who is not White is automatically incapable of independent thought. Yet the teachers, themselves, choose not to realize that the way they think is even more collectivist than they claim it is for non-Whites. The problem for Whites is teaching those who are not White - and never can be - especially the common White practice of not listening to the needs and aspirations of non-Whites. This attempts to internalize the sectarianism common in White cultures to those who are its intended victims - who then can, it is hoped, become self-victimizing. Here, like the best conversation, the best teaching is mostly listening.
The only real problem with this movie is that it is more concerned with political issues than with personal. Paradoxically, this makes the film more emotionally-realistic than politically-believable, since most of the characters do not come alive as people we can warm to – we merely respond to the profundity of the ideas expressed. Everyone has to betray their parents’ and peer group’s ideals in order to grow-up into independent people – an act of courage few have the guts to make, since it can often be life threatening, as here. That even the most positively-parented people need to move-on from their parents is made clear as the teacher finds her true avocation in forming a new kind of family from those she teaches.
Not as good as something like To Sir, with Love, but certainly in the same ballpark.
