What Cinema Says about Urban School Failure

As we have explored throughout this section of the course, the urban high school genre of films is one that is riddled with preconceived notions of education and the students who partake in it. As each of the films we viewed in the section, Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers, and Walkout, are based on true stories, it is indicative of the larger implication of filmmaking that two still manage to fall into many tropes that are attached to dominant narratives and white savior films, as a whole. In Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers, the school administrators are inflexible and the curriculum is largely inaccessible and yet, the reason for urban school failure is largely implied to be on the shoulders of the students, through a general lack of motivation and a preoccupation with gang lifestyles, respectively. The solution presented in these films is to simply put yourself on the right path. However, in Walkout, the only film in this section that was a counter narrative and, likewise, rebuked white savior narratives in favor of showcasing systemic inequality and major flaws in the structure of the American education system as the reason for failure, paints the solution to urban high school failure as an overhaul of the flaws in education systems.

When discussing this reasoning behind urban high school failure, Bulman writes, “The failure or success of these students is reducible to their values and their individual effort, rather than taking into consideration the deep social structural processes also at work, is a pedagogical fallacy” (Bulman 47). Much of the failure among urban high school students is directly related to their individual merit, as evidenced by the juxtaposition against other students in the school. In both Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers, the white savior of a teacher is assigned to one of the more remedial classes as a way of priming her to “work her way up” so she can teach one of the “good” classes. By showcasing the school has having staunch splits between students who are unsuccessful because of a lack of effort and students who are prospering in the school, these films perpetuate the narrative that urban high school failure is on the shoulder of students because clearly, if other students are succeeding, then there cannot be any structural problems with the education system, as referenced by Bulman.

In terms of the solutions to the causes of urban high school failure pointed out by Bulman in these films, he writes, “The platitudes eventually come to the surface in these urban school films: Work hard. Choose wisely. No excuses. These platitudes prevent Hollywood from representing what it takes to promote real educational achievement in urban high schools” (Bulman 46). These solutions of making the right choices and working hard are perpetuated by the white saviors of LouAnne Johnson and Erin Gruwell. Through tough love and unconventional teaching methods, these teachers eventually have breakthroughs with their students and set them on the proper path. They were rescued by a figure in the education system, despite the rigorous administrative standards set for them. Yet, the solution to the failure is never to rail against the systemic shortcomings. Instead, these students forget about their pasts and need no further assistance beyond a teacher who “understands” them. Regarding Bulman’s notion that no excuses are allowed in the solution of urban high school failure, Erin Gruwell’s actions embody this. Fed up with her class, she confronts local gang violence with them head on, proclaiming that they cannot use their troubled upbringings as excuses for their academic failure because everyone has problems in their lives. Undoubtedly, every student does have problems, but it would be wrong to equate something potentially minor to the epidemic of gang violence as Gruwell does. This is just one example of the brazen disregard that these two dominant narratives have for any reasoning for urban high school failure beyond one’s own lack of motivation.

Likewise, race plays a major role in the development of the causes and solutions of urban high school failure in these movies. In both films, the students of color are portrayed as the ones who frequently disregard their educations and treat the schools and teachers with a lack of respect. In Freedom Writers, gang violence is portrayed as something that is universal to students of color, a point which is made further by the use of the one white student in Gruwell’s class who is used for comedic relief, but is clearly shown to be one who is clueless about the lives of his classmates, beyond the distrust he harbors for them. Both this movie and Dangerous Minds showcase the students of color as rowdy and unmotivated with the administration being portrayed as white figures who have given up on these kids. Until, of course, the one white savior teacher steps in and teaches the students of color how to achieve success in their academics. Because of the perpetual use of the white savior trope, this success comes across as one that not only stems from a dominant narrative, but as one that contributes to the prevailing notions in these films that the white way to success is the right way to success.

The significance of the narratives crafted around race as it relates to urban high school failure (when it is treated as an individual problem rather than a systemic one) is clear. Because of their statuses as dominant narratives, Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers are likelier to reach the consciousnesses of more people than a counter narrative that tells more a complete story would be able to. This is directly related to the TED Talk we watched in class where the speaker said, “Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person” (Adichie). Because of the limited scopes of both Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers, the cultural consciousness accepts students of color as disrespectful and unmotivated and this becomes the definitive, single story of these racially diverse teenagers. Because a single story does not tell a complete picture of the problem, many who view these films will see the problems as fairly easy to solve because the dominant narrative is more accessible to them as white people. The white people who could use a shakeup from the single stories they understand instead receive pats on the back for doing things the “right way” and being the only people who can save minorities from their supposedly toxic cultures.

Conversely, Walkout shows a difference between academically successful students who are privileged and their inverse, as well. The key difference is that some students who are not necessarily as privileged (in terms of both race and social class) in Walkout still find avenues through which they can achieve varying degrees of success. For students who lack both privilege and success, the narrative of the film does not blame them, but rather it makes great efforts to show that the reasoning behind this is not only a structural system of inequality in the schools, but is also due to lack of motivation to achieve further academic success beyond high school, which is made evident when Sal Castro argues, with the administrators at the school at which he teaches, in favor of providing a knowledge of the opportunity to collegiate educations to his Mexican students. Going a step further, Walkout actively rebukes the solution to urban high school films that is presented by Bulman. The students are not necessarily choosing the rational thing to do in terms of protesting to improve their schools. Instead, they are choosing to do the right thing because they have to exhibit their own agency in the protests if they ever want the system to change. Sal Castro does not encourage his students to choose wisely and work harder because he already knows they are doing the right thing and they are already putting a great deal of effort forward. Instead, he encourages them to stay organized, to plan better, and to get their message across to the right people in the right order of succession.

Additionally, Castro is not an outsider like Johnson and Gruwell are as white savior figures. Instead, he feels more like someone who actively works among the students to guide them, rather than save them because he is a much stronger figure for them as someone they can empathize with and vice versa. His status as a teacher is useful for the students as they organize their protests to fix the systemic inequality that damages their schools because of his insider knowledge and wise pieces of advice. But he is always a figure of encouragement and he never takes credit. By being Hispanic instead of white, Castro seems like he is fighting for equality and systemic change alongside the students, rather than trying to simply rescue them as two white women tried to do.

The significance of the counter narrative in Walkout cannot be overstated. Since it is based on the true story of the East L.A. walkouts, there is significance in the fact that the protests boosted Chicano enrollment in colleges across the nation, but the film is significant because it keeps this story alive, encouraging new generations of young people to protest against the systemic inequality they face in their schools, rather than either accepting it or waiting for someone to save them, as they might have if the only movies they ever saw about urban high school failure were Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers. Walkout connects directly to the article, “Transforming Public Education” when the author writes, “Contrary to popular notions, parents and other participants in these groups do not simply protest…from the outside. Many are intensely embedded in work to create deep and lasting change in schools” (Warren 10). Walkout is significant because it is a story about lasting change in schools and it actively encourages the new generations to partake in that ongoing process, no matter which group of people faces intense bouts of oppression at the moment.

In all three of these films, there are clear problems with the way urban high schools operate. Each of the movies exhibits an administration that does not care about students (who are largely comprised of different races) they have already chalked up to failures. But while Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers exhibit the solution to this problem as white teachers who rescue the students, Walkout shows a group of students who, at great risk to their lives and futures, save themselves and save future generations of oppressed students along the way.

Works Cited

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” TED Talks. TEDGlobal 2009, 3

Dec. 2017, Oxford.

Bulman, Robert C. Hollywood Goes to High School. Second ed., New York City, NY, Worth

Publishers, 2015.

LaGravenese, Richard, director. Freedom Writers. Paramount Pictures, 2007.

Olmos, Edward James, director. Walkout. HBO Films, 2006.

Smith, John N., director. Dangerous Minds. Buena Vista Pictures, 1995.

Warren, Mark R. “Transforming Public Education: The Need for an Educational Justice

Movement.” New England Journal of Public Policy, vol. 26, no. 1, 22 Sept. 2014.

Image Source: IMDB