Stand and Deliver
“There will be no free rides, no excuses. You already have two strikes against you: your name and your complexion. Because of these two strikes, there are some people in this world who will assume that you know less than you do. Math is the great equalizer... When you go for a job, the person giving you that job will not want to hear your problems; ergo, neither do I. You're going to work harder here than you've ever worked anywhere else. And the only thing I ask from you is ganas. Desire.” Ramon Menendez (Stand and Deliver)
Stand and Deliver, a 1988 film directed by Ramon Menendez follows the true story of how teacher Jaime Escalante, played by Edward Olmos in his Oscar nominated role, takes a group of poverty stricken students in a run down school and defies the odds by not only getting them to learn but want to learn. Throughout the whole movie is the proof that being underprivileged does not mean less intelligent, Stand and Deliver shows that with hard work, the proper push, and desire, anything can be accomplished.
The film begins with a new teacher, Jaime Escalante, arriving to Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. On his first day he comes to find out that the computer science class he thought he was going to teach doesn't exist, because the school has no computers. In turn he is assigned to take over the general algebra class. From the beginning the film portrays the school as one on its downfall, and with students that are facing poverty. The class he receives is full of students who, according to other teachers at the school, are unintelligent and incapable of learning much of the material. Students cannot be expected to learn material when the teachers themselves do not believe in the stude...
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...out the idea of equal opportunity, and that no matter what, anyone can accomplish what they put their mind to.
The film Stand and Deliver gives us a true story of hard work and perseverance. The kids in this movie prove everyone wrong when they buckle down, give up their Saturdays, their summers, and in turn their fun as high school seniors, and learn what no one but Mr. Escalante believed that they could. While some like Henry Giroux and Robert Scholes seem to just see the negatives and the deceiving from video texts, as can be seen in Stand and Deliver there is still a belief in portraying proper morals in the world. Mr. Escalante teaches not only his kids, but those watching the movie, that it does not matter where your from, success is measured through hard work and your desire to get it done. If you have those things anything can be accomplished.
This film is one that has faults, but is also very credible and a major wake-up call for those currently in power to make a change and help improve the schools of America, securing a better future for all.
“I viewed each of the films at least once…taking notes on the role of the teacher, peer relations, among students, relations between students and adults, student attitudes toward schoolwork, extracurricular activities, the role of the family, the resources of the school, the use of violence and drugs, exploitation of sexuality (4).”
One of the main historical topics that the movie addresses is segregation and the civil rights movement. In the beginning of the movie, the kids are sent to the camp where they are supposed to learn how to eat together, sleep together, practice together, and ultimately spend
The movie follows the lives of three students as they go through their first year at Columbus University. These students are faced with issues of race, sexual
Once you arrive, however, your optimism turns into a living nightmare. Your daughter comes home from elementary school crying because somebody called her a “wetback”. Then your son comes home from middle school with a black eye because he was jumped by a group of white guys who said they did not like “spics”. This not only horrifies you as a parent but astonishes you at the same time, because you come from a diverse place in which your siblings were not told racial slurs or woefully stereotyped as illegal aliens. You can not stop thinking about your kids’ first day at school, but you know you must pull yourself together and go to work.
The goal should have been to promote and ensure equality of opportunity for people regardless of
... equal opportunity before the law and in society, but his idea was equal opportunity to succeed. He felt “it [was] the exceptional people who improved society” (Labin). Harrison Bergeron is his frightening caricature of what society would become if people continue with the absurd equalization ideas of the sixties.
In his autobiographical essay, “Workers”, Richard Rodriguez tells about a summer in which he gets a job at a construction site in order to show that not all construction workers are poor and uneducated. Toward the conclusion of his essay, he explains that your skin color does not give people the right to judge others based on their skin color or their occupation selection. The speaker makes an obvious case people should not judge a book by its cover while also implying that skin tone should mean nothing.
America has forever long been looked upon as the land of opportunity, yet for just as long struggled with the actual attainment of equal opportunity by all of its citizens. The lines of this inequality have b...
Equality and equal opportunity are two terms that have changed or have been redefined over the last 100 years in America. The fathers of our constitution wanted to establish justice and secure liberty for the people of the United States. They wrote about freedom and equality for men, but historically it has not been practiced. In the twentieth century large steps have been made to make the United States practice the ideals declared in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The major changes following Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her bus seat to a young white man and the Brown v. Board of Education trial in 1954. These Supreme Court rulings altered American society and began the desegregation and integration movements. In the 1950’s many writers took interest in writing about segregation, desegregation, integration and black history in general. Many historians write about segregation still existing today and the problems in which integration never had the chance to correct.
Their own film culture would encourage more Chicano filmmakers and lessen the damage created by stereotypes in the film industry (Berg 33). A Chicano film culture resists the past incorporation of Chicanos into the American industry and allows for a space to tell their own story and forge their identity. An excellent example of a film that does this is Walkout. Walkout is a film about Chicanos for Chicanos directed by a Chicano. The film tells the true story of the 1968 East L.A. walkouts, a successful protest against unjust conditions and opportunities for Chicanos. The director, Edward James Olmos, himself starred in the film Stand and Deliver, another true story set in an East L.A. high school, directed by Ramón Menéndez another Latino. The Chicano film culture is educational in that it has the powerful to inform on the complexities and history of Chicanos in response to their socioeconomic
This is also about power, because a common theme in this documentary is poverty. All 5 of the children featured live in communities that lack the basic commodities. With run down schools that in most cases are over packed and under staffed it’s only a matter of when the children in its walls will fail instead of why. When Francisco’s mother brings him to school and is first met with a security desk it’s only a wonder why these communities prosper with crime. When the learning gap between children is determined on whether their rich or poor it’s only a matter of how didn’t our system fail.
Diversity, equality and fairness are the latest buzzwords being kicked around in academia and the media. Everybody is supposed to achieve the American Dream today, regardless of who you are, where you came from, or what you do to get there. According to their math, equality of opportunity equals equality of outcome, and if it doesn't, rig the formula so it does.
My first year of junior high, (in our school that was seventh grade) I was not spending all my time trying to be popular like all the other people in my grade. I was just being me how I always had been. One day at I was sitting at the lunch table with a bunch of people I would hang around with sometimes. Some of them were talking about there weekends.
Non judgmental and Compassion was a message in this movie. If more people would have compassion for others we would live in a better world. It is important to be non judgmental because people never know what happens in a person's life to cause them to act out in a certain way. Mrs. Erin Gruwell’s students were separated along racial lines and had few aspirations beyond street survival. Many people warned her that her students were all criminals who couldn’t be taught. With all odds stacked against her, she accepted the teaching position at Wilson High School. Erin Gruwell saw more in the students than a future as criminals and gang members; she saw them as people who have lost their ways in life. Instead of turning her back as society had done, she held out a helping hand. She had compassion and was non judgmental toward the children’s actions and hatred for one another. Being judgmental...