Hillary Swank’s innocence in the 2007 MTV/Paramount production Freedom Writers may be a relic of the Bush years (the studio’s previous production was the sequel to Jackass): a wide-eyed, white and naïve teacher finds herself faced by the dark jungle of Long Beach, California, where her students’ tribulations and violent environments are beyond her comprehension. She teaches anyway, and one never discovers what Midwest town Erin Gruwell (Swank’s character) hailed from, and it matters little to the narrative’s rising action. What is important is that Gruwell was a scrawny fish far out of her familiar waters, and chooses to swim over sink; she is led to question the district’s distribution of resources, including funds for textbooks and class trips, and is met with a stoic and vicious assistant principal who aims to support the status quo of educator tenure and class choice, played brilliantly by Imelda Staunton. Gruwell’s father is both protective and encouraging, and, by the close of the film, speechlessly impressed by his daughter’s accomplishment. The school itself is itself a complicated challenge to her language arts curriculum, and Gruwell seeks support from an upper-level administrator early in the film—to subvert the dismissive and truly awkward school administration.
This film, about innovation in language arts curriculum and instruction, was made during the reign of No Child Left Behind, but is set in its reality, of 1994—when a set of real events upon which this film was based took place. It was the age of the Rodney King Riots and OJ Simpson trial when Gruwell prescribed her students read and consume with the intention of improving and establishing their own authority and autonomy. Perhaps the film’s highlight comes when inter-city youth, their behavior and ethics, are transformed through gaining perspective on the events of the Holocaust, in a museum. A renewed context for hardship established through historical perspective, Gruwell’s personal and engaging style in the classroom draws from students a new level of engagement—with her, and with each other.
What effect did the actions portrayed in this film have on public, federal education policy? The “tenured” public school teachers in the film—namely, a rival male teacher, who teaches only “honors level” classess—are despicably inflexible and cold to Gruwell; they are shown as irresponsibly making assumptions about their students and their likely behaviors and responses to assignments. Successful collaboration in public education, across distinctions of social class, race, and gender, might describe the aim of Teach for America—a federal program that sought to implant teachers into unfamiliar and nationwide classroom environments. Now in its twenty-first year, that federal program may still not ensure new and aspiring educators in unfamiliar environments aren’t met by stuck-in-their-own-mud assholes.
One might question whether or not schools “teach to the test” to the extent they felt forced to in 2006; the somewhat-relegation of No Child Left Behind guidelines to state systems of education may or may not enable more teachers like Gruwell. Reality is that one of the actors who portrayed one of Gruwell’s students was shot in front of a Denny’s in California, weeks before he had the chance to accompany his grandmother to the film’s premeire. Reality is also that the film’s producers cut Gruwell’s use of Zlata Filipovic’s Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo, but included her classroom use of The Diary of Anne Frank, and documented the real-life falling apart of Gruwell’s marriage. Reality is that Gruwell and her former students are available for speaking engagements; the Freedom Writers Foundation administers a teachers’ institute as well as a full web presence, including resources for students and teachers.
Learn more at http://www.freedomwritersfoundation.org
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