HW - 49

In total honesty, i didn't contribute much to the production of the film. I really wanted to be a director, but as esther did help write it, it was much better that she did it. I saw myself in the corner of the film for a couple parts of it. I didn't have that many lines, nor did i interact with any character that did. I just didn't fit for any of the roles that were written. I would have liked to be more "in it," but there wasn't much i could do. I would say definitely next time, but i doubt there will be a next time, but if there is i would like to participate more i guess.

The tone of the film was mostly self destruction, for the most part. It drifts in and out of anger, regret, and a drunken rage. If you look at the movie as though will isn't a student but a teacher, you can see him trying to relate to the students when he puts them down. You see a level of power that he is trying to attain and needs the students to see him as equal, then he steps above them so he can have his power. The message he the film is trying to send is that humans are humans no matter what their job is and just because they have power over people doesn't give them more power over themselves. By loosing power over themselves but being in a position of power, they tend to fall apart even more, such as the teacher did in our film. He had a tragedy at home and lost a part of himself. He resorted to drinking and because of that he lost even more of himself and it started to show in how he treated his students.

I thought our film really had a violent and dark undertone when compared to the "savior" films. There is no savior. It doesn't follow normal movie standards where it has a conflict and a resolution. The closest it gets to a resolution is when the teacher makes fun of the three different groups of students and therefore is equal with them for when they were demeaning him before. In the savior films the teachers needed to reach the students and make them feel special and therefore want to participate in school and succeed. In this film the teacher doesn't like the students and doesn't care if they succeed or not. He has to deal with his own demons.

So the common conception is that education is the path to salvation. By going to school and participating and doing well then you can go to a good college and good job ect. I can't say i disagree with that because that is how i have been living my life and it is too late to change my course now. The way it works out is to socially mingle us while conforming us to each other's styles and the format of being pushed through a system. The reason this is viewed as a form of salvation is because it helps you get better jobs, which means more money and that in turn means happiness and salvation. To be able to understand the world around you is just to look at it the way the people around you tell you too. To be able to say you have a revolutionary view isn't always the truth. Unique is a much better way to be able to look at the world because we form our opinions from the people and books around us. We need to be able to take them and then mix them with our own and other people's perspectives to be able to see this world. To see things without a bias is really a form of salvation. To not be inclined to one side or another but to understand both sides perfectly and argue them both is to have reached nirvana, that is at least what i think. School does help you get there because it helps you establish other people's POV's and see things as they would, but the vice is that it can over take your own. It is meant to. Who need individualism when we can brainwash the masses? Making one mold is a lot easier then making millions.

HW 48 - Treatment for Savior/Teacher Movie

The teacher wakes up, he has a slightly scruffy beard and he lives alone. He wakes up with a hacking cough and immediately lights a cigarette. He sits on the edge of his bed and smokes while the the cloud like vapors build up around him. His apartment is a disaster, there are magazines everywhere, as well as old pizza boxes and beer bottles. He has dirty clothes everywhere. He gets up and showers, finds clothes that seem clean, grabs his bag and a banana and walks out the door.

He takes the train to work. Its 7 in the morning and the commute is starting. There are men in business suits everywhere as just people going to work. They all seem to be awake and clean and have a purpose. He felt left out yet again. He gets out of the train and has a cigarette on the way to work. He puts it out and walks into his building.

Its 7:30 so the school is still pretty empty, he has an hour to set up before the kids get there. He goes and sits at his desk and looks at the notes he wrote last night, they wont be of help, the writing is eligible and there are some weird stains on them. He needs to cut down on his drinking but he wont. He is verbally disheveled when his students arrive. He has been teaching for 10 years and because of that he knows all the excuses to not do something. But for some reason he can never convince himself to ever change and step up and forget about her.

He sits down at his desk and waits for his class. He dreams about his wife and how much he really missed her.

Since she died his life has been on a real downturn. He drinks and still tries to teach. The students know how smart he is and how good of a teacher he is, but very few of them know what really happened to him. They just know that he isn't the same person who he used to be. His eyes have lost their twinkle and his face has lost a smile. Its like a big part of him died with her. Everyday he wishes he had her back but he never will.

His students walk in and he jumps up. They all go to their seats silently and get out the work. Not one student talks and they all do their work silently and the teacher stands and watches. He doesn't want to say anything and doesn't need to either. He helps the students if they need it but otherwise he doesn't talk. He stands at the front of the room and watches the students. Everyday he does this and everyday he sinks more into a depression. The students begin to notice when he stops talking in general and everything slowly falls apart.

They try to help him, but there is nothing they can do. He is a lost cause but he is still their teacher and he can't afford to retire just yet. Slowly the students come to him one on one after school and begin to talk to him. They talk about school, the students home lives and things like that. He beings to see what they are getting at and tells them what they want to hear, but is still unable to move on. He keeps teaching, but every day he is haunted with his wife's death. He finds a new love in teaching and is slowly able to move on and become the person who he used to be.

Extra Credit Opportunity - "The Class"

I heard about the movie The Class about 5 months while watching movie trailers online. I then ordered it on Netflix and watched it. What really shocked me about this movie was how no one came out ahead of where they started. It was a school for the kids who didn't have many other choices.

What i didn't understand is why the kids didn't try to help themselves. They all just brought each other down. The reason for the failure among the students is that the teacher was doing his best to teach the students but unlike the movies we saw there wasn't just one protagonist. Most of the students were protagonists and the teacher couldn't win over all of them.

The best example is with the student Souleymane. He was a smart kid but he was also trying to fit in and be cool. He refused to do the work and when he did do it, it was above where everyone thought it would be. None of the teachers liked him because he didn't try and brought the other students around him down too. That is why the teachers wanted to kick him out. All but the "lead teacher" or "savior."

Everyone has given up on these kids already and if these teachers give up on them too then they wont ever rise above the situations that they are in. The school and the teachers want to do what is best for them which is keep the class in line and kick out anyone who refuses to obey. They don't care all that much if they do the work or not. They just want to be able to show that the teachers were at least trying.

There isn't much that can be changed. The students don't care and the teachers don't care. There isn't much that can be improved. Even if the teachers cared, they couldn't make their entire class care. They are all the protagonists and because of that not much can get done.

When compared to SOF, there isn't really much of a resemblance. Our school is hands on and there is a small form of effort from every student. Students who don't care are usually asked to leave. It doesn't need to get physical like in The Class. Although we are lucky that our school isn't like it is in the movie. There is still a lot that can be done to improve our own situation.

HW 47 - Class film preparation 1

1. Have the whole movie shot through different students cellphones to make it more through the student's point of view.

2. Have the opening scene where the teacher quits and a student tries to take over the class and is somewhat successful.

3. Have really motivated students but unmotivated teacher and the students try to save the teacher.

4. School deteriorates instead of improving.

5. Try the whole dangerous minds thing except in a college setting, so they are trying to get them jobs, not into high school,

6. Shoot the entire movie outdoors but still have desks and a formal looking set up with the teacher desk to show level of commitment but lack of funding

7. Have a Feed like scenario and make Violet the teacher and she is trying to get them to refuse the system so they can lead more successful individual lives that is free of any form of government control. It has to be set in the future or a third world country so that they actually have something to rise up against, not like the american government.

HW 46 - Research and Writing

For my book i read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It was about a firefighter named Guy Montag, only firefighters in that time aren't responsible for putting out fires, but starting them. They are responsible for the burning of books. Books are against the law and might spark some form of revolution. They made it a point to throw people who were found in possession of books to be thrown in jail and their house to be burned. This was all fine with Montag until he met a young girl who wasn't under the spell of television and opened his eyes to the world around him. It was when she met her untimely end that he really began to question everything around him. The story is about how we are so quick to absorb what is right in front of us but refuse to look past it, especially when we are being spoon fed the "truth."

This connects to my thesis because although it doesn't directly deal with success rates or anything like that, it gets into the mind set of someone who had an education under the government and someone who didn't and offers extraordinary contrasting points that will be extremely useful when i write my essay. I can use how the government mindset is so easily upset when it comes into conflict with the free thinking mind.

I wanted to be able to look at education and see how the schools in urban areas compare to suburban schools and how that can effect success rates. I thought that race would play a big part as well as income. I figured inner city schools wouldn't fare as well as rich long island schools. The reason that the book helps with this is because it addresses the types of education and without looking at race or income it attacks this man's life and how easily his perfect balance can be thrown off when he comes into conflict because he doesn't really understand life because he was never really taught, he was more along the lines of forced memorization. These tactics can leave you unprepared for life which is exactly what happened to Montag. He didn't know how to respond to change so he shut down and did what he was told. Even in scenes where he should have made his own decisions he had someone else make them. He was never truly alone throughout the book, it was always someone Else's thoughts or words that were guiding him, he was a puppet. I want to be able to base what i write off of something like that. I want to be able to understand the school systems like i understand Montag.

HW 45 - More Big Thoughts on Schools

Theodore R. Sizer as we know was the founder of the coalition of essential schools of which we are members along with over 600 other school across the country and internationally. He believed that if students were allowed to more freely use their mind then they could develop more intellectually. He thought that by giving us minor structure that we would be able to grow beyond what we could have if we had stuck to the structure. He thought that we were like a plant, if you keep putting us in bigger pots we can grow more because if we were a big plant in a little pot then we can only grow as much as the pot will let us. He wanted to leave room for change and because he believed that with change came growth. E.D. Hirsch, on the other hand believed that by learning facts about American and other countries that we will be more prone to success because we know what is necessary and that is what will help us more when we apply for colleges of jobs. In the books he published he stated that every grade level should have certain lesson plans that should be followed more explicitly and then after that the rate of success will be much greater.

I believe that freedom is necessary for change and that you can't progress without change. The problem with that is that progress and change are things that need to be kept in check. You cannot allow a plant to grow freely and expect it to stay within certain boundaries. The idea of untethered change can be scary to many because it is unpredictable and has the ability to get dangerous. If total and complete freedom is offered to today's youth then what control does the powers at be have over us? How can they possibly control us and make us do what they want. What i would do if i had to run a school, as predictable as it may be, i would mix the ideas of Sizer and Hirsch. I think that freedom is necessary to grow and learn but there needs to be some sort of root that can be built off of. It would great if people could hold an intelligent conversation and interject their own ideas, but they need to be able to understand what is being talked about. The Bill of Rights is something that should be taught in schools. We need to know the history of the planet. I think that if there could be a mix of Political sciences, World History, and Social studies in public schools, then there would be a great increase in the people produced by that education system.

E.D. Hirsch said: "Such is the case for the fundamental, inescapable importance of substantial, broad background knowledge for reading comprehension (and for performing well on reading comprehension tests). But agreement on this begs the next question: Knowledge of what? What knowledge should the schools be responsible for teaching to all kids? I believe that part of the answer is quite straightforward, and I hope uncontroversial—and to teach it ought to take about 40-60 percent of curricular time. " (Building Knowledge-http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring06/hirsch.htm). He wants the students of tomorrows youth be able to hold a conversation. It isn't necessarily a bad thing. He bases his knowledge off of comprehension tests which isn't right so i think that his ideas might be skewed from the beginning but he does have some valid points especially with the fact that we need more background knowledge. Ted Sizer said : "Few of the young soldiers who served under him had completed high school, but when treated democratically, as members of a cohesive group, they learned new skills readily, he found.“Whatever troops you got had to deliver,” Professor Sizer told Phi Delta Kappan magazine in 1996. “If one person didn’t do it, he put everybody’s life at stake. That made a deep impression. There was no tracking in the Army, just the beliefs that somehow these young men had to be trained and had to be reliable and that all soldiers can learn.”(Obituary Works-http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/education/23sizer.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all). Again just like Hirsch, Sizer recounts ideas from personal experiences and plans that to work accordingly with all people. Both of these people didn't ever investigate the other side, because if they did then it wouldn't be a problem right now because they would see how they could use each other to cover the flaws in their own ideas. But that is because they didn't take advice from each other, at least thats what i think.

HW 44 - Big Expectations for School

In my professional opinion i think that President Obama's speech on school is really the best out of all the articles. He doesn't say that school is there to transform you into something that you aren't. It simply says that if you try your hardest then you will be in a better position to help yourself in the future. Although it is the most generic and designed to embrace the path of least resistance, he still does an excellent job of getting his message across. He doesn't say that if they try to be something that they aren't then they will be better, but if they try their hardest then they will have more opportunities then if they just drop out. On average the people with the college degrees have a higher salary (http://www.all4ed.org/files/u1/TaxesGraph.gif). Albeit that race does place a significant role in these topics, that is not what i am discussing now. What Obama was basically saying is that if you try your hardest and stay in school then the chances for success are much higher.

My beliefs in the school system are quite simple. I believe that school should be mandatory but for those who are going to go and just make it harder for the people who went there to learn then what is the point. Things don't always happen like they do in movies. There isn't going to be a new white teacher in every bad school in America who goes there to miraculously change the lives of the students by reaching them through various trust exercises. Some of the students will just be dragged through school and just barely graduate if they don't drop out and then find a job that they can do. That's what i think at least.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/02/column-we-need-two-school-systems-.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/opinion/23herbert.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/opinion/03friedman.html?em

Those three articles seem to understand what i am talking about. The first address the fact that people are different and that there should be schools to address the different peoples needs so that they can be more effective to this country and be more successful in life. The second article states that schools are more successful when they are more stern with their students and mold them to follow their rules and do what they say. They make the children submissive and because of that they are more successful and therefore more able to adapt to our society. Terrible but true. The third article is about how we are beginning to have to outsource more and more because although we may be leaders in most aspects of the world. We are beginning to let the rest of the world catch up with us and in complete honesty. They are just plain cheaper then us. They can produce the same labor and basic needs for a fraction of the price and be the same quality. These three articles are all really important because as cheesy as it may be, they all connect back to the original Obama speech. They all basically say that we need to step up. We have become lazy! I am no exception, i have had all week to write this and i am doing it the night before it is due. I don't know who is to blame the school, my home, my friends, my teachers. Maybe it might just be my fault. At least i am willing to accept it.