Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
HW 49-
Savior/Teacher Film Analysis
In our group project, I had the job of back-up director. During the first few days of filming that essentially meant that I did nothing, as I would only work when our director was unavailable. On the 16th though, our director no longer wished to direct so I stepped-in as director. We did one day of filming under my direction and then eventually did not finish the film, as certain key actors were unavailable when needed. Therefore, the rest of this post will be in reference to the film made by class 1.
In class 1's film, the teacher, played by Will C., is sitting at his desk drinking (What I assume to be alcohol) after a long day of teaching. From here the film flashes back to a past class, where Will is attempting to teach the class about literary techniques used by famous writers. However, the class is not really responding particularly well to his lesson and is largely brushing him off, while being disruptive. Despite this, Will seemed to be enjoying himself overall and was functioning as a happy, if ineffective teacher. The next day, he has had enough and no longer has the drive to teach the class, although he has it in him to personally critique nearly everybody in the class, analyzing them and pointing out their flaws, after which he leaves. Upon his departure, the classroom antics return to normal and everybody proves to be as unaffected by his teachings as always.
The message of this film seems to be that students need to be more well-rounded and open to new ideas. This is supported by the ending of the film, in which Will points out to Devin that all he knows is school and nothing else and calls this pathetic, implying that focusing too much on school is a bad thing. He further supports this with his next interaction, with the so-called "Gossip Girls", who are talking about social things, and he then says that this is all they will ever know, and that's it for them, implying that they are not well-rounded either, just in the other direction. The tone of the film completed this nicely, as it was portrayed as very subdued, which highlighted the students reaction to Wills teachings (They being ineffective). This subdued tone stayed constant throughout the film and showed how his efforts meant nothing in the long run.
This film had a lot in common with many of the savior/teacher films that we have watched in the past months. First among the similarities are the supporting characters, the class. The most notable among them would be the rebellious youth/leader of the class. Next would be the straight-A student and also the group of chatty girls unaware of everything going on. All of these students can be found in other films, including but not limited to Freedom Writers, Stand and Deliver, and Hamlet 2. In addition, the teachers in many of these films tells the kids that they need to fix something about themselves to become a better person (Not directly, but implied), and Will as teacher does the same thing. However, it is the way that this is done that allows this film to differentiate itself from the others we have seen before. In the films we saw in class, the teachers would make revelatory statements that define a student and the student becomes a better person as a result. This was normally through a course of self discovery though, when the bad habits they need to change have caught up with them and they decide to try something new instead. In the film by class 1, the students bad habits have not caught up with them yet and as a result when Will tells them what their problem is, they don't fully accept it because they haven't experienced first hand what the consequences of continuing their course or action will be. The film by class 1 is also different in that he outright fails the class. Despite his best efforts, the class brushes him off and acts as if nothing had happened, where all of the other films at least had the students change their ways in one form or another. This film had the teacher fail, not the students.
The reason that everybody sees salvation in the movies and never in the real world is really very simple. Everybody wants to be in the position to save somebody, nobody wants to have to be saved. Granted, this is an overall encompassing statement and there will be exceptions, but overall, nobody wants to be the damsel in distress. When you require a savior though, you place yourself in the place of the damsel in distress. Since this is the case, whenever people ARE put into a situation where they need to be saved, they are too stubborn to admit it and deny the help of the savior. This is shown by class 1's film, where everybody finds out something very important about their character and yet they complete ignore it because they are too stubborn to accept help. Those who are able to suck in their pride and accept they need to be saved are the students who change their lives dramatically, however this is rare and much more complicated than that. However I feel that in order for schooling and education to be truly revolutionized, it's the people and not the system that need to change.
Monday, April 19, 2010
HW 50
Gatto- Gatto's "teachings" are broken down into 6 lessons. These six lessons are taught by teachers around the world and he feels that in actuality, these six lessons are hypocritical and develop what he calls the "permanent underclass". These six lessons in execution do not allow students to learn, but instead they train obedience and roles in society, essentially causing a "good student" to lose their individuality and conform to the structure that has been laid out for them. These students cannot possibly learn anything except how to fit their role in consumerist society.
Gatto seems to think that the solution to this is homeschooling, to which I disagree. The problem with homeschooling in line with Gatto's beliefs is that it is simply progressing the same lessons under a more personalized and potentially more (Or less) restricting institution. If somebody home-schools their children, odds are pretty good that they went to an institutionalized school. Therefore they will teach based on how they were taught and progress the institutionalized teaching under a different, more trusting banner. Even if the person teaching from home was a product of homeschooling themselves, they will base their teaching on how they were taught (Which could be traced back to institutionalized teaching at a certain point) or on how they "think" they should teach, which would be partially based on books written by people who are a product of the institution. As a result, I feel like homeschooling is in fact worse than institutionalized schooling because it lies to the student to get them to hope they will be learning "freely". Freedom when learning is a lie.
Freire- Freire proposes that teachers are depositing knowledge into students, forming the banking approach. This approach implies that with the more knowledge a student accepts into their mind, the less they will critically think about the information. This makes the students more subdued and accepting on the world around them and more likely to become followers, discouraging independence and leadership. They become people who are more likely top want to work for the world around them then try to change things and work their way up, becoming employees instead of employers.
I disagree with this model of teaching quite heavily. The ability to thoroughly analyze a certain material and gain deeper knowledge from it is something I find very important, because it avoids exactly what is being taught here, and that is the spoon-fed approach. People taught this method of learning will learn nothing but how to fulfill a role somebody else laid out for them, effectively trapping themselves in a single role for eternity. Not only that, but this contradicts everything that human nature has indicated, and that is the urge to evolve and demand more than what is offered. Looking back on history, were people to merely accept the knowledge and roles handed down to them by those in higher position, the United States would still be a British colony, Australia would be a jail, and black people would still be slaves (And that's just concerning modern history). Freire's approach to teaching is both unnatural and immoral.
Delpit- Delpits teachings seem to focus on the difference between cultures and how this affects the way they are taught. For instance, black students statistically perform lower than white students. This is often due to the economic situation of the family in question. For instance, a poor black family having students with lower success rates than rich white students. However, all students, black and white, need to be assisted to truly understand the system of power. For the poor students and/or black students though, this must be done with the assistance of parents and teachers in order to choose what type of instructor would be the best for the student.
I largely agree with most of Delpit proposes and suggests. For one, I agree that students should be taught by somebody in the same situation as them. This goes back to being able to trust, like, and relate to a person. Typically, people identify with people who have similar connections with them, such as a shared event or a similar background. Therefore, if somebody is poor and black, have the teacher be black and formerly poor, to show where they can get. I don't think that this necessarily has to affect how they are taught, but I can understand why it does in some ways. The quality of the education should never be in question though, it should simply be the techniques and the route taken to gather such knowledge.
Mr. Fanning- Fannings teachings focus mainly on giving back to the students after a life of taking. As a result, he wants to genuinely give the students an education. Ideally, students will learn to learn for life under his guidance and will all go off to college, as he feels it is a crucial step in education, for scholarly and social reasons. In order to accomplish this set of goals, Fanning is a "ball buster" and will in fact stop students from making the same mistakes he made in his youth. He feels like New York City students grow up too fast, that they need to take a step back and learn to be a kid. In regards to his model of school, he feels that they need to progress from the old factory model of making clones to making individuals. To do this, he plans on focusing on creative learning and away from textbook and lecture-based study.
Fanning seems to believe that schooling comes not from a book, but rather a series of books in a way. Learning should be constant and interactive, and with this I agree. If everybody stopped learning after school ended the world wouldn't evolve, it would simply stay in the same state. So on this front I agree with Mr. Fanning in that people need to learn how to learn for life, if for nothing else but the evolution of ones identity and society. In fact, I agree with everything Mr. Fanning said, but for different reasons. For one, being a "ball buster" keeps kids in line (Hopefully) and if nothing else shows what a better path would be, allowing students to see more choices. In addition to this, people don't always know or do what is in their best interest, so you need a "ball buster" to keep an eye out for trouble and lead them to a better life.
Monday, April 12, 2010
HW 48- Treatment for Savior/Teacher Movie
My Savior/Teacher Movie Short Film Treatments
*Note: There are two different directions I would like to take this in, and I am unsure which I prefer so the scenes will differ and be indicated as either version A or version B when necessary*
1. Low, steady shot of students feet, lots of commotion and talking, erratic but not violent. Mid-shot of students walking around, lots of people coming and going. Follow a student over their shoulder, show them saying hi to people, show everybody's faces and the school through their eyes. Continue this shot until they walk into the classroom and see the student, at which point camera comes off the student and circles around to show the classroom and the history teacher closing the door. Switch camera to the hallway with everybody closing their doors and class beginning.
2. Scene begins with the class being introduced to the history teacher, who immediately proposes that he will change all of their lives and they will never see the world the same way again. Multiple close-up shots follow, focusing on the various students in the class reacting to the news, very brief, under a second a piece. The history teacher continues to tell the class about how what they see if a facade and they have already been sorted into their own categories and placed in boxes, trapping them and setting them on a path they think they chose but didn't. Have one of the students, alpha-dog or nerd, question why if they are being placed in boxes, why they are being taught in another box. History teacher responds, who said I'm going to teach you anything? I'm here to learn.
3.a Class ends, with an indication of time passing, ring a bell, mid-shot of the hall again, with commotion and mayhem, everybody running to class but going upstairs, class begins. Follow the same group of students to another class, indicating that the focus is on them. Begin class with new teacher, unsure of how to begin and fumbling about. The science teacher introduces themselves and that they have a lot of learning to do and that it'll be as fun as they make it. One of the students, the same one who had questioned the history teacher, asks the science teacher if they are there to learn, to which the science teacher tells the class they are done learning and are here to teach now. The student replies with a sarcastic remark, indicating that they got stuck in a lame box. Science teacher looks confused.
3.b Class ends, with an indication of time passing, ring a bell, mid-shot of the hall again, with commotion and mayhem, everybody running to class again, doors slamming, class begins. A new group of students is now in the room, completely different than the prior group. The history teacher gives the same speech about boxes, but realizes that this class isn't responding very well to it and is uninterested, so the history teacher asks them why they chose to be there and what they expect. Answers vary from being forced to to being genuinely interested in changing the way they see things, but not the way the history teacher has described it so far. History teacher tells them that they have to ask the right question first, so a student asks why. The history teacher says that is the right question.
4.a Class ends, with an indication of time passing, ring a bell, mid-shot of the hall again, this time following the students through a longer hall back downstairs. Class begins and half of the students from the previous classes are there. The english teacher introduces themselves and acts in a very droll, monotonous manner. The students slowly start to drip to sleep and drift away, attention waning. The teacher asks why everybody is so tired, it's the first day they should have been there ready to learn. The same student as before questions the teacher, who says we're here to learn?
4.b Class ends, with an indication of time passing, ring a bell, mid-shot of the hall again. A new class walks in and the history teacher begins yet another class, introducing themselves and giving the same speech as the first class. The students here all have there notebooks out and are observing everything the teacher does, taking notes studiously. The history teacher points out how nice it is to have such competence on the first day of school and notes how they all have the potential to break free of this habit. One of the students questions the history teacher on this, asking what they mean. The teacher tells them that they have been programmed to act like this, and they all happened to have good programmers, which has led them to where they are. One of the students follows this, asking why this is a bad thing, to which the history teacher replies, because it's depriving you of independence.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
HW 47- Class Film Preparation 1
1. The teacher is wrong. -The teacher in all of the movies we have seen in class is always right, their way of teaching is the way it should be. Well, what if it wasn't? What if the teacher was wrong? What if both the teacher and the system were wrong?
2. Forced "F"'s. -We have talked about this in class, but none of the movies have shown this. So what happens when a teacher is forced to flunk certain students to fill a quota or keep their job?
3. The system does work. -Why is it always that every student is failing under the school system and then they miraculously pass with the new teaching system? What about the students that work best under a system like "the system"? I think it would be interesting to show how the system has it's place or how certain students need that in order to succeed.
4. How much of their situation is actually the kids fault? -For this, I imagine that it would be like somebody who gets impacted greatly by something completely outside of their control and suffers academically because of it. Like, what if somebody's dad got hit by a car? Then they might have to work or they couldn't afford the hospital bills, which would affect their academics. How would that play out?
5. The teacher learns a lesson from the kids. -What would happen if Michelle Pfeiffer had entered the classroom expected a bunch of ghetto black kids and started talking to them like such but they ended up being much smarter than she expected? How about if she expected them to succeed but realized her methods weren't working so she instead has to learn what the kids have gone through and doesn't teach them as much?
6. Where in the world are all of these anyways? -I know we can't do this due to budgetary constraints, but what if the school were in Nebraska? How would that compare to the same story in Chicago? How much does the environment affect the story and learning for the students?
7. More than one class. -Seriously, the fact that in each one of these films there is only one class makes sense. I understand, there would simply be too much to focus on otherwise. But then it's like they don't teach anybody else and the students don't learn from anybody else. Every school obviously has more going on than this so why not show it? Show four classes and then just focus on a smaller cast of students per class. If this is a problem, decrease class size so it seems like a more specialized school.
8. Follow the students home. -Every one of the movies we watched in class were about the teacher. Fair enough, writers forgot what it's like to be kids I guess. But with ours, it's written by kids. So why not follow the kids home, or if not home, show more of them outside of the school than the teacher outside of school. Make the students the focus, not the teacher.
9. Parents do care. -Not every child with bad grades comes from a broken home. Yet Hollywood clearly thinks so, because that's the only way that their minds can comprehend people doing poorly, blame the parents. Well, what if the parents are great, the school is great, but the friends cause the downfall? Where would that lay in terms of importance on a students academic performance?
10. Where do they go? -With the revelations the teacher lays down for the students, where do they go in life? Can we get a like "Ten years later..." and show a reunion with everybody in a new place in life, to show where these brilliant teachings take the students? I think this is a make or break for the entire premise of these movies, which is why they largely fail.
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