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And, by the way, thatвЂ™s not changing the system. G, you get two other jobs, neglect your personal life, isolate yourself from your fellow teachers, and rely on your white privilege to insure you wonвЂ™t be fired. It scares me that people will leave this film thinking, вЂњSee? You can change the system.вЂќ Rather, itвЂ™s the highly individualistic nature of these stereotypes. The problem with Freedom Writers isnвЂ™t so much the kind of cookie-cutter stereotyping that we see in HollywoodвЂ™s white-teacher-as-savior genre. Writers, and it often precludes the kind of grappling with racism that-just once-I would like to see on screen. But the theme of white legitimization of the experiences of youth of color is one that runs throughout Freedom G attempting to con- nect the oppression of her own people to the oppression experienced by her students. There is something deeply worth- while about Ms. She doesnвЂ™t come from where her students come from, and she apparently hadnвЂ™t learned much about their lives before she began teaching. The movieвЂ™s turning point, in which Gruwell realizes the extent of violence in her studentsвЂ™ lives, is significant only because she didnвЂ™t realize it before. The Holocaust should be studied in its own right-but so should the current lived experiences of youth of color in the U.S. Even where the Holocaust is a vehicle for the students telling their own stories, that connection to a white experience is key. We teach hip hop lessons so that students can learn Shakespeare. Students of color are brought into the classroom, they can rarely be a focus, a stand- alone issue. slavery, the violence of colonization and border creation, the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia-the students study the Holocaust.

Rather than studying their own histories-U.S. Later, the studentsвЂ™ study of the Holocaust success- fully connects, in part because of Ms. The frustrated youths roll their eyes at their teacherвЂ™s ignorance of hip hop, and the lesson is a failure. G uses a 2Pac song to introduce вЂњstandardвЂќ poetic devices. вЂConnectingвЂ™ with StudentsД®arly in the film, Ms. They become involved, they read The Diary of Anne Frank and relate it to their lives, and they organize to stay with their teacher for the next academic year and beyond. The students, meanwhile, begin to вЂњconnectвЂќ with Ms. G, thereвЂ™s the realization of the violence that haunts her studentsвЂ™ lives. Slowly, each student raises his or her hand (except for the same white kid). She then asks how many students have been shot at. (Why it only reminds her of anti-Semitic caricatures and not of other racist caricatures of African- Americans, I canвЂ™t tell you.) At the end of her speech, she asks the students how many of them have heard of the Holocaust. G angrily asserts that the picture reminds her of caricatures of Jews in the years leading to the Holocaust. G,вЂќ snatches the paper from the desk of the black student depicted in the drawing. The story truly begins when, during class, a Latino student draws a racist caricature of a black student and passes it around. Starring Hilary Swank as Gruwell, the film opens with footage of the violence following the 1992 Rodney King verdict in Los Angeles-setting the scene for the tension at the Long Beach school system here Gruwell teaches, which had recently been forcibly inte- grated. (Gruwell left classroom teaching after about five years and now heads a foundation promoting her вЂњFreedom WritersвЂќ approach.)

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Released in January, the movie is based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary and chronicles the educational triumph of Erin Gruwell, an idealistic young white teacher who inspired the hearts and minds of her remedial Asian, black, and Latino students in her freshman English class. I want a teacher movie where there arenвЂ™t card- board heroes and villains (except Bush and the NCLB gang) but there is a genuine analysis of how race and class play out in schools.ДЇor now, however, we have Freedom Writers. Is it the young white teachers saving kids of color? Is it the guilt I feel as a teacher who may not have succeeded as well as these superheroes? Is it the notion that teachers should be mother, father, college counselor, and best friend to our students, despite the incredible personal toll that takes? Or is it the moviesвЂ™ individualized solutions to structural problems? I find it hard to put a finger on what bothers me about HollywoodвЂ™s teacher movies. FILM White Teacher to the Rescue A review of Freedom Paramount Pictures

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