[Movie Analysis] The Failures and the Pedagogy of Freedom Writers (Made 2022 Spring Semester)

Due to the nature of the requirements of this essay, at least one source is not cited as it was provided by the teacher and as a result did not need to be cited.

The Failures and the Pedagogy of Freedom Writers

Elliot Maxwell Sibert-Sweeney

Ball State University

SS 150: Social Studies Teaching

Dorshele Stewart

April 19, 2022

“A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves and pursue education beyond high school.” (IMDb, 2007)

Feel good stories, and moreover, feel good movies, are a complicated subject. On one hand, they provide entertainment that can help one feel happy in a dire time and can shed light on incredible people and actions, but on the other hand, they all stem from an inherent injustice or inequality present in the world and often see normal people being forced to do extraordinary and difficult things just to get a result that others can get without trying. These stories also tend to reinforce stereotypes, albeit often accidentally. After all, stereotypes exist, they happen, the problem is that there is an assumed prevalence and normalcy to them that is often dangerous. Freedom Writers (Paramount, 2007) is a feel good story, and it’s one that struggles to keep you happy as it glosses over truly horrible and sad situations, some of which might just make some people decide not to become teachers, whilst skimming through the story it’s trying to tell. At the end of the day though, I do believe this movie does a good job of providing a heartwarming and happy experience whilst also tackling real issues and showing the importance of pedagogy, even if it uses many dangerous stereotypes and cliches while doing so.

Freedom Writers (Paramount, 2007) is set after “voluntary integration,” in L.A. in a once prosperous school that finds itself having fallen to chaos and inter-gang warfare. Mrs. Gruwell, a new and relatively privileged teacher, comes to teach there and finds herself in charge of students who don’t want to be in school and who cause nothing but problems. Fighting against bigoted higher-ups, Mrs. Gruwell finds a way to reach through to these at-risk youths and is able to get their grades up and see them all the way through highschool, having given them an education nobody else was willing to even try to. It’s not hard to see some of the problems this movie has right off the bat, after all, the heroic savior teacher who swoops in and saves the poor, overlooked, students who never could have managed without their so-benevolent help, is one of the older and more infuriating tropes in hollywood and underfunded public schools being filled with gangbangers and iniquity is even older and even more damaging. Some of the problems with this movie are more difficult to spot off the bat and require an actual viewing to recognize, such as the lack of information about the other classes these students are in and the fact that Mrs. Gruwell has to fight against bigoted higher-ups, work multiple jobs, and lose her husband all just so a single class can succeed; the latter of which being extremely dangerous, as this could lead to potential teachers deciding that it’s not worth it to pursue teaching if it is all consuming. This movie tries to put on a happy face, and it by and large succeeds, but it definitely lets horror emanate through the cracks in its facade. Still, I have something of an adoration for this movie, as I believe it has some very important lessons for teachers-to-be.

An article on teaching history by Andrew Ujifusa explains how the CEO of Baltimore City schools, Sonja Santelises (2020) “... said the city curriculum’s emphasis on…” an educational approach that lets “... students… see themselves in history puts their own lives and people they know at the center of what can feel detached and distant. The consequences for this approach, if done right, can be profound…” (para. 15) and I think that there is something very important to take away from that. The idea that getting students to want to learn history begins with them connecting it to themselves, seeing it in themselves, seeing themselves in it. It might seem strange to focus on that since this movie is about an english class, but this movie sees Mrs. Gruwell connecting with her students through, primarily, The Diary of Anne Frank, Ann Frank being a person that they can see themselves in, connect to. This is further enforced by Mrs. Gruwell having her students write in journals, their own personal diaries, connecting them further to Anne. This connects them to history intrinsically in a class that has nothing to do with history at all, and if something like this can function in a class like Mrs. Gruwell’s, an english class of uninterested, angry, under-educated, at-risk youths already being consumed by gangs and cruelty, then it can work in any class. This is the thing that Freedom Writers (Paramount, 2007) gets right.

This movie is about a savior teacher, yes, but it’s a savior teacher who saves her students through brilliant application of pedagogy and an unrelenting desire to see her students succeed. It falls into so many trappings of teacher savior stories, but the pedagogy is strong, it’s accurate, it’s beautiful. The movie by and large ignores the students’ roles, seeing them be impacted by the teacher but never showing them having a chance without her, but I’ll be damned if what they show on Mrs. Gruwell’s end isn’t incredible.

InTASC Standards were created by the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC), which itself was created by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to “... articulate what effective teaching and learning looks like in a transformed public education system – one that empowers every learner to take ownership of their learning, that emphasizes the learning of content and application of knowledge and skill to real world problems, that values the differences each learner brings to the learning experience, and that leverages rapidly changing learning environments by recognizing the possibilities they bring to maximize learning and engage learners,” (Council, 2011, p. 3) in 2011, almost 20 years after Freedom Writers (Paramount, 2007) is set and 4 years after the movie was made and yet these standards, which have come to be the basis of modern American teaching stratagems, are on show throughout this movie. There are 10 InTASC Standards and I could easily argue that all of them are present within this movie, but I want to focus on Standard #5: Application Of Content. Standard #5 is special because it, to me, connects Freedom Writers (Paramount, 2007), the InTASC Standards, and the article “Sure, We Teach History. But Do We Know Why It’s Important?” by Andrew Ujifusa the most strongly.

InTASC Standard #5 (Council, 2011) reads “The teacher understands how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage learners in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and global issues,” (p. 14) which directly reflects findings cited by Ujifusa (2020) which found that, in a survey, 78% of teachers “... believed the primary purpose of teaching history is ‘to prepare students to be active and informed citizens…’” (para. 5) This belief is also reflected within Freedom Writers (Paramount, 2007) as Mrs. Gruwell finds herself teaching her students who the Nazis were and how her student’s behavior reflected theirs in a startling way, laying the groundwork for her to start bringing her students together as something of a family, aware of the struggles eachother are going through, wanting a better future for eachother. I think that this is beautiful, and I think that the fact that I can draw this thread from a survey that was considered recent in 2020 to a set of guidelines created in 2011 to a movie made in 2007, to a single classroom in L.A. in 1994 is something incredible and unique.

Freedom Writers (Paramount, 2007) has many struggles, and in many ways it can even be harmful to the society it seems to want to help, but for every overly sappy moment, every stereotype, and every cliche, there is real pedagogy at work. Real pedagogy that is mocked for daring to compare at-risk youth to Anne Frank, for daring to try to find unique ways to get through to students at odds with the usual system. Freedom Writers (Paramount, 2007) is a story about pedagogy, no matter what else it tries to be, and that, for me, is what makes it so special, and I think Andrew Ujifusa and the CCSSO would agree.

Citations

Council of Chief State School Officers. (2011, April). Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Model Core Teaching Standards: A Resource for State Dialogue. Washington, DC: Author.

Ujifusa, A. (2021, September 15). Sure, we teach history. But do we know why it's important? Education Week. Retrieved April 19, 2022, from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/sure-we-teach-history-but-do-we-know-why-its-important/2020/01?r=852588766&cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1&M=59017505&U=1499761&UUID=73e0df0b56d19e5a48e82ad64effddef

Paramount home entertainment. (2007). Freedom writers. Pluto TV. Roma. Retrieved April 13, 2022, from https://pluto.tv/en/on-demand/movies/freedom-writers-2006-1-1

IMDb.com. (2007, January 5). Freedom Writers. IMDb. Retrieved April 19, 2022, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463998/