Erin Gruwell began her teaching career at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California where the school is integrated but it’s not working. Mrs. Gruwell is teaching a class fill with at-risk teenagers that are not interested in learning. But she makes not give up, instead she inspires her students to take an interest in their education and planning for their future as she assigned materials that can relate to their lives. This film has observed many social issues and connected to one of the sociological perspective, conflict theory. Freedom Writers have been constructed in a way that it promotes an idea of how the community where the student lives, represented as a racially acceptable society. The film upholds strong stereotypes of …show more content…
Erin Gruwell is horrified when she realized what going on and makes a lesson about its similarity to the propaganda of the Nazis. This scene experience the racism and violence due to racial profiling caused by the human society. This relates to the conflict theory because there are some tension and struggle between the students in the Gruwell’s class. The students struggle to get along because of their race, ethnic, etc. and after the incident on the racist image of Jamal, Ms. Gruwell sends a message to her classroom that their lives are not that bad as she does it harshly by related it to the lives of the Jews in the holocaust. In one of the class discussion we had this semester, we talk about the stereotypes, ethnicity, racial profiling etc. and how it label specific groups and how it used today. Back to the scene where the image of Jamal, all the different type of students except the students that associated with the ethnic or race thought it was funny. This scene is an example of stereotype as it shows Jamal as black guy with fat …show more content…
Because of this, she needed to protect her owns as she need to lie in the court or her family will no longer be protected nor respected. This related to one of the social issue, violence, when Eva decided to tell the truth, but had to pay the consequence, beaten up by her own gang. All she had time to worry about was her safety and survival, and nothing else which the rest of her classmates felt. Another social issue would be poverty as most of Gruwell’s students either live in the project or the parents kick them out or any type of situation that can happen. This film also contrasts poverty and middle class by placing a white student among gang affiliated students. In the beginning of the film, the white student sat in the front of the class as it was a sense of safety being in front of the teacher as she is also white. But when Gruwell arranged the classroom for all her students to get along and not to get violent with one another, the gang affiliated students resent him because he is white and does not live a harsh life. In a way, poverty is connected to gang life because they want to feel protected, and
During the 1950s, African Americans struggled against racial segregation, trying to break down the race barrier. Fifteen year old Melba Patillo Beals was an ordinary girl, until she’s chosen with eight other students to integrate Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. They are named the Little Rock and fight through the school year, while students and segregationists are threatening and harassing them. Warriors Don’t Cry—a memoir of Beals’ personal experience—should be taught in schools because it teaches students to treat each other equally and to be brave, while it also shows the struggle of being an African-American in the 1950s. Another lesson taught in the retelling is that everyone can make a change.
Over the course of history, racism has become far more institutionalized and still affects people to this day. In the book, Uprooting Racism, by Paul Kivel the institutionalized racism and its effects are thoroughly discussed, as well as possible causes and ways to work toward ending racism. In the film, Walkout, by Edward James Olmos, the way institutionalized racism affects not only the adults but as well as the children is explored. In the film, Teenagers in the east side of Los Angeles fight for equal rights as well as equal opportunities in school. The book and film work together to show the situations that integrated racism places these young adults in. These situations can vary widely from simply having lower school budget, to being embarrassed in front of other students as punishment, not being allowed to speak spanish in school, and even being purposefully shied away from going to college.
Take a stand for your rights. The author is trying to explain that without the constant need for change, there will be no change. They’ll be stuck in an endless cycle of racism and oppression. In this day and age, social has become more racist and has profiled certain religions and racists deeming them murders, terrorist, and thugs, when in reality we are just humans trying to survive by any means necessary. “I wanna do something.”-”Protest, riot, I don’t care.”--”And neither did talking!””I did everything right and it still didn’t make a difference.I’ve gotten death threats, cops harassed my family, somebody shot into my house, all kinds of shit. And for what? Justice Khalil won’t get?They don’t give a fuck about us, so fine. I no longer give a fuck.” (389-390) Starr took a stand to fight back for justice. She had gone out and tried to create change after talking didn’t help her. These books need to be in the curriculum because it empowers people to take a stand and fight for
Bell hooks knows about the challenges of race and class, and why some people have a harder time than others in achieving the American Dream. It is normal to feel uncomfortable and awkward arriving at a new school for the first time, but this was something completely different. For bell hooks, walking through the halls with eyes staring at her as if she was an alien, she realized that schooling for her would never be the same. She describes her feelings of inequality a...
Paul Buck once said, “If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday” (Buck, P.). Considering that the relationship between America and minorities is entrench with bias, prejudice, and oppression it isn’t difficult to see why the public education system is over flowing with policies that promote institutional racism. The novel, The Shame of a nation by Jonathan Kozol and the short film, Eyes on the prize aim to educate the masses about the history of oppression in America’s educational system and the residual effects of the oppression on the present. Although many of the overt struggles outlined in these two pieces of work are no longer seen in schools today there residual effects are still covertly visible
Another implication of the Divided Class Documentary” was the knowledge that students had regarding the way they treated each other. They were able to identify bad treatment with the way whites treated black. Furthermore, when the students played the roles of black treatment, these students felt rage. It was inconsiderate for these students to be treated as students who were not smart. The idea of discrimination stirred students to think that they were not equal based on the way they were classified. The students who were had power used the power to form segregation and crushed their peers’
The clash between social classes consistently affects the plot of the novel. It affects each character's interactions with each other, and puts many barriers up for the characters as they try to achieve their goals. Without this central theme, the story would fall apart.
There are eleven thousand children in public schools in Detroit. Out of those eleven thousand children, only twenty-six of them are white. Third graders wrote a paper to Kozel on what they think about their school day in and day out. The children wrote back how they have nothing. They don’t have a clean school or a clean place to study.
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
Gruwell was successful in teaching her class and having them grow. A majority of them went to college and were the first to do so in their families. Many of them were able to escape the gang wars, make friends of other races, and have a place of safety. Her students went from exhibiting ethnocentrism to using the concept of cultural relativism. At the beginning of freshman year, the students and even Mrs. Gruwell judged each other on the morals of their subculture. But once the class started to learn and read about the Holocaust, they were able to view that culture by using the concept of cultural relativism.
The documentary A Class Divided chronicled the decision of a third grade teacher, Jane Elliott, to teach her class a lesson in discrimination and prejudice. Prompted by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Elliott sought an easier way to teach the abstract ideas of prejudice and discrimination to her third grade students. What originated as a simple lesson to very young children eventually left a profound effect on all those involved. Elliott’s lesson started with rules for eye color. Because of the children’s young age and Elliott’s status as their superior and their teacher, the children easily accepted Elliott’s new eye color rules almost without question and quickly slipped into their roles without hesitation with the superior eyed colored children bullying and making fun of the inferior eye colored classmates.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” once said minister and activist Martin Luther King Jr. in the Letter from the Birmingham Jail. Where to start with inequality is anywhere and everywhere -- no one in the world is permitted to stand idly by while others are persecuted. And for this essay, it all starts in our education system. In this society, the standardization of public systems has stomped our creativity and given way to unopposed prejudice. Our world, our innovation, starts with our students, and pushing them into conformity is no way to begin the stages of adolescence, of which soul searching is a hallmark. In no conceivable way does
People give zero respect towards others because of the color of their skin. The students had no respect for the teacher and could care less about learning. They had other more important things on their mind. Everyone divided into groups and only had respect for their own race. Drive-by shootings were a normal occurrence in the inner-city. Violence continues throughout the majority of the movie, for instance, an innocent man is shot and killed in a gas station. With gang related activity going on daily, it was extremely hard to learn in the
The movie “The Class Divided” was a very inspirational movie because it taught a lesson on discrimination and racism. The film covers Jane Elliot experience with the “eye-color” exercise and it shows how the participants responded to being a victim of discrimination. The teacher who came up with the exercise was a third grade –teacher that wanted to explain to her kids the reasons behind Martin Luther King death. She divided each class she taught up by their eye color and treated them according to whatever eye color was more superior that day. Her lesson influenced and inspired the younger kids and older adults because it taught them a life learning lesson that could stick with them for years to come.
Hooks, Bell. "Chapter 1 Engaged Pedagogy." Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. N. pag. Print.