This movie is very interesting, because we could learn about other people how they live and understand their behavior. We can see how they little by little demonstrate their feelings. I didn`t relate with no characters but I got impressed how Eva at last helped her enemy and made justice. She had anger inside her, she hated white people because they think that they were better than black people. But her teacher was able to change their mind with other strategies and activities to attract their attention.
The students can about this movie that a teacher more than authority is friend. To be in a gang is bad it could you and your family and everything that surround you. The difference of white and black people is our color of skin but it doesn`t mean one is better than the other. We all are human being, we have to get on well to each other. You don`t know one day that person you treated bad could help you.
The teacher have to understand that all their student are different, that have different style of living. All educators has look different ways to attract their attention like Ms. Gruwell did.
I think that everyone could see this movie, you can learn to be a better person and not disregard some people because they have another style of living. Look for a way to help this people and be their friend they really need it.
Teachers could learn not to judge students by their aritud, and try to find a way to talk and understand that student that may be screaming for help.
My personal response the movie is very motivation. It show us have to persevere and keep on with life no matter how many problems we have. Mrs. Gruwelll show us in the movie that those who fight will be victories, and her student learn to make a difference and even throw has difficulties to keep on going with help they made it. I like the character of eva , because she was the one how shock me most, she can all identify are self in this movie. We all have difficult moment in our lives. Perseverant and then we feel good with our self and that help us keep going. The recomended, because it teacher us to further the goals.
People should see this movie because you won’t regret it, it will make you laugh and cry, it’s a great movie.
A Reaction to Freedom Writers
People should see this movie, because it’s very interesting and it will touch you in a way that it’s indescribable.
My opinion is that the movie is very good and it really made me think. Ms. Gruwell is an example of a teacher and I am excited when students started to change that much to me as reality. I am acquainted with Ms.Gruwell, where a teacher look for alternatives not only to educate but also help them in the personal. Ms Gruwell is my favorite character., she faced the problems alone and with courage to help others. I learned to be patient and to achieve the goals although people leave me alone. Teachers can learn the techniques and teachings of Ms.Gruwell when there are teachers like her and not try to go find help. I recommend this movie because it inspires us to improve nustra quality of life and those of others.
1) I felt a little sad by the situations that passed the student s to and the suffering of each one of them to not to much age and the racism that habia and the separacion, although to the end allwas better.
2) I do not relate to none because in my life they have passed things but not as strong as the of them and if in algun moment had me to compare with some serious with Mrs.Gruwell by its valentia effort and never to give up.
3) Ido not relate to none because in my life they have passed things but not as strong as the of them and if in algun moment had me to compare with some serious with Mrs. Gruwell by its valentia effort and the never to give up.
4) The students learn to not be racistas to that all we are equals and not there are some better than other. The teachers can learnto fight and to seek solutions for us the students that problems or not we are servants as we should bit due to the situations.
5) I do not relate to none because in my life they have passed things but not as strong as the of them and if in algun moment had me to compare with Mrs. Gruwell by its valentia effort and the never to give up.
My personal response to the movie is good and strong, because in the live have situation positive and negative in the youth. My favorite character from the movie is Mrs. Gruwell because is strong and severe. The students learn from this movie is listen to a teacher. The teachers can learn from the movie is pay attention in the student. I am recommend this movies because it really impressive and good.
Even worse are the horribly underwritten, sometimes laughably bad supporting characters. The other teachers in the English department are such stock villainous characters, they practically do everything but twirl their oily handlebar moustaches. Imelda Staunton’s Mrs. Campbell appears to have a moment of redemption, but it is immediately forgotten in the next scene.
That being said, I’m reviewing the film itself, not the good intentions it portrays, and I’m afraid it’s a mixed bag at best.
I immediately thought of MUSIC OF THE HEART, with which this film shares many similarities
There is a lot to like in FREEDOM WRITERS, and I admittedly got teary-eyed not once but twice, which is very rare for me. I was particularly moved by a section of the film during which Mrs. G, as she becomes known, introduces her students to “The Diary of Anne Frank”.
Free Freedom Writers Discussion Worksheet
In a nutshell: A dedicated teacher in a racially divided Los Angeles school has a class of at-risk teenagers deemed incapable of learning. Instead of giving up, she inspires them to take an interest in their education and planning their future, much to the consternation of her fellow teachers as well as her family.
Before you can say DANGEROUS MINDS, she walks into a classroom full of gang members, druggies and every minority stereotype you can imagine, and she quickly begins to question whether she has made the right decision to teach at Woodrow Wilson High School.
Patrick Dempsey is utterly wasted in a thankless role as Erin’s neglected husband. The whole subplot involving their marriage could easily have been extracted, and the last 20 minutes or so lose steam and seem to only exist to be able to provide an uplifting ending.
Mario is one of Hilary Swank’s students in FREEDOM WRITERS. © 2007 Double Feature Films − All right reserved.
Based on a true story, the movie stars Hillary Swank as Erin Gruwell, a young teacher who accepts a position teaching freshman and sophomore English at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, Calif. It’s two years after the Los Angeles riots in 1992, and Mrs. Gruwell is having trouble relating to her mixed freshman class of Hispanics, blacks, Asians, and one white student. The white student just wants to leave, and the Hispanics, blacks and Asians have taken their gang warfare from the streets into the classroom. They aren’t interested in her earnest attempts to discuss Homer, the Greek poet, or teach proper grammar.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Romanticism teaches that Man is essentially good and noble, and civilization (by which Rousseau, the “father” of Romanticism, meant Christianity) corrupts man. Man is controlled by his “heart” and emotions, not by his intellect or logical mind, and education (usually divorced from God or gods and God’s transcendent moral law) can transform Man, as well as his society, for the “better.” Paganism and mob rule are related to Romanticism, though Romanticism is more consistent and avoids totemism. Romanticism is not related to the idea of romance, but is an idealistic worldview.
When one Hispanic student draws a racist picture of one black student, Mrs. Gruwell angrily starts telling them about the horrors of racism through the historical prism of National Socialist Germany and its bigotry and genocide against the Jews. Adolf Hitler’s “gang” puts your gangs to shame, she tells her students. She realizes, however, that only one of the students knows anything about the Holocaust at all. So, she decides to rebuke their hatred of one another by teaching them about the Holocaust, and having them read THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK and write about their own experiences in a daily journal. Slowly, the students start to change, but Mrs. Gruwell’s efforts generate conflict with the backward thinking of her department head and with her husband, who just wants to forget about the outside world when he is home.
(BBB, Ro, Fe, LLL, VV, A, M) Very strong moral worldview encourages young people to do the right thing, tell the truth, be kind, be polite, treat others with respect, gain knowledge about truth and apply it to your life and those around you, etc., with one positive mention of God (plus song talks about making a stand and promoting light and truth, and respected elderly woman encourages rapt students to light a candle in the darkness) and some light Romantic notions about the power of education to transform, but doing the right thing is emphasized most of the time so it's couched in a context of fulfilling good moral values, and, though the movie has a slightly liberal point of view about race relations and education, it's not politically correct because it generally avoids multiculturalism and the identity politics of envy of the current liberal left, but there's a silly feminist element in that the protagonist is married but writes "Ms." before her last name
What You Need To Know:
FREEDOM WRITERS is a little too slick and polished, but its positive, uplifting moral messages and interesting characters and situations echo the good qualities of such classics as BLACKBOARD JUNGLE and STAND AND DELIVER. Do the right thing, end the murderous violence, and stop separating into hateful tribes of angry racists, the movie repeatedly teaches. These morally positive messages are emotionally powerful, intellectually stimulating, uplifting, and entertaining. The movie contains, however, plenty of foul language and some brief gun violence.
If FREEDOM WRITERS is a little too slick, it still contains enough heartfelt, provocative moments to become the first really good, entertaining movie of 2007 to be released. Though the movie’s emphasis on the efforts of a public school teacher is mostly secular and, hence, somewhat Romantic (see the definition below), the movie keeps returning to moral issues. Do the right thing, end the murderous violence, treat others with kindness and respect, and stop breaking up into hateful little tribes of angry racists, the movie repeatedly teaches. Thus, the focus of FREEDOM WRITERS is on positive moral values. This focus, which also strongly rebukes racism and inner city gang activity, is not only emotionally powerful and intellectually stimulating
Finally, although FREEDOM WRITERS is slightly liberal and (more strongly) secular in its approach, it is not so offensively liberal or secular that a conservative or a Bible-believing Jew or Christian couldn’t enjoy the movie and its messages (in fact, today’s average left-leaning liberal and atheist probably will think the movie doesn’t go far enough at all). What is more offensive is the movie’s inclusion of too much foul language, but the foul language lessens as the teacher transforms her students for the better, morally speaking as well as psychologically speaking.
From the onset, one gets the picture of a learning environment where racism and discrimination along racial-ethnic lines are rife. Students can only talk to and associate with those of their races. In fact, this is something they are used to as most of them have been brought up in neighborhoods where racism and gang violence are the order of the day. One student expresses hatred for white people who are always demanding for ‘respect like they deserve it for free.’ Everything around is all about one’s race/color. Eva says ‘I hate white people.’ This expression evidences the extent of hatred and racism as openly expressing that is as normal as practicing the phenomena under focus. Why does she hate white people? Her hatred has grown out of her perception of whites: she knows they hate and look down upon her race so in a way she is only hating back. Eva and many other students struggle through racism for the most of the movie and teacher Gruwell does everything she can to help them deal with this problem.
As such, strategies rooted in the social development model would attempt to make predictions to the effect of preventing the onset of the implied activities by reducing contextual risk factors that lead to delinquency while increasing or magnifying the protective factors that are thought or believed to negate the identified risks. This viewpoint finds support in the presentations of developmental researchers, theorists, criminologists, and scholars in the disciplines of psychiatry, education, public health, and psychology(Tonry, & Farrington, 1995). Some of the most common predictive factors of offending include poor or failed child management, offending tendencies, separation from parents, low educational attainment, low intelligence, and antisocial behavior in children. (Laub et al., 1994
Racial segregation is a defining feature of the school. For instance, the English class (honors) is made up of white students, but one, a girl who no one thinks has the potential to excel. In the eyes of her classmates, she belongs to an inferior race and her abilities are therefore limited. The class teacher of this particular class, Mr. Guilford has a racist mentality, an inference that one makes from her assertion that before black and colored people came to the school it was only made of an ‘A-List.’ He detests integration and calls it a lie and ironically implies that pointing such things out might attract the ‘racist’ label. In as much as Victoria, the only black girl in the honors class has suffered racism and racial stereotyping
Freedom Writers stands out as one of the movies that has, for a long time, attracted the attention of commentators and scholars alike especially for the manner it highlights the struggles of adolescents and other people entering the young adulthood stage. The plot of the movie revolves Erin Gruwell, a teacher who finds herself handling students whose problems are as diverse as their backgrounds. With many of her students on probation, she is determined to help them lead better lives amid all the challenges. Notably, some of the students are struggling with their identity and their situations are made even worse by the overlap of problems like stereotyping and developmental changes. Examining the challenges and themes in the movie reveals that applying the social developmental model would help the students cope as it would address their behavioral problems and other general issues in the learning environment. This paper discusses the challenges at the school and how the social developmental model can be applied to the same context.
Freedom Writers summary essay
The problems the students are facing can be understood by exploring the intersectionality of the axes of social-economic and ethnic/racial inequalities.For instance, Victoria and Eva have to deal with racial profiling and stereotyping from not only their teachers but also their peers. The gang-related violence affecting most of the students in the English class captures attention. Each student has at least a family member or friend who has been lost life due to this violence. Through the journals or diaries that Mrs. Gruwell required them to keep, the audience can gain insight into the nature of their lived experiences. For instance, the Hispanic girl called Eva had witnessed a man get killed by her friends. She, in the company of her friends, found Paco, the man at the store, attempting to kill a black man they knew was from their school. After taking a shot at the black man, Paco missed and instead shot one of the students. After witnessing the incident, she got back in the car and appeared traumatized, psychologically affected. Her friends could only tell her that it was important to be able to fight for themselves and protect their own. Later Paco was charged, and it was even more traumatizing for her to be involved in the case as a witness. While her friends wanted her to lie to protect the gang, her conscience pushed her, to tell the truth of what had happened. She struggled a lot with her identity during the process, for she was faced a dilemma whether to lie to please people or just tell the truth and risk dislike and contempt. She opted for the latter. Her story is just an example of the hard experiences each of the students in Freedom Writersexperiences.
Against the background of the issues highlighted above, it would be interesting to apply the social developmental model to help the students deal with their behavioral problems. Imperative in this regard is a need to address gang-related violence that emerges as one of the most common problems in the movie. An obvious line of thought would be to find a way of preventing gang violence and any groupings aligned to committing vices in the society. Before exploring the model, there is a necessity to comprehend the notion of prevention and how it is different from other criminological concepts of sanctions and treatment. According to Tolan (1995), it does not seem utilitarian to, in the crime prevention narrative, focus on all activities oriented to the comprehension social ills. It would be optimal to limit prevention efforts to those actions meant to prevent the onset of such activities in specific individuals and in certain locations. Here, interest would be how to apply the model to help manage behavior and other developmental issues affecting students in the school setting.
The Social Control Theory that also finds a place within the social developmental model has it that delinquency stems from weak social bonds. Here, missing or weak bonds in social institutions like the family and others like schools gain relevance. Adding their voice to this conversation, Laub et al. (1994) assert that criminal offenders share an array of factors or characteristics such as sub-standard rearing practices, dysfunctional families, poor/low school performance, weak or no attachment to learning institutions, and associations/relations with peers engaging in delinquency. In the Freedom Writers scenario, these factors emerge when trying to explore and understand why exactly most of the students are involving themselves with gangs and gang-related violence. Efforts to uncover and comprehend these factors should factor in the possibility of intersectionality in the same respect. For instance, lack of attachment to the school or particular influential actors within the school have a big impact. A good example is a case of Victoria and the honors class teacher called Mr. Guilford. The teacher’s conduct and attitude have suppressed any bond that would have existed between students and the school administration. That is the reason she opts to go to join Mrs. Gruwell’s class where she feels comfortable. An effective strategy here would be to improve relations between students and teachers so that there can be that attachment, lack of which is a strong predictor of delinquency. Student-teacher relations directly determine student’s attachment to their schools. For instance, it is wrong for Mr. Guilford to create an impression that the school would be better off with only white students as they are the only ones he considers capable and intelligent. This mentality is racist and be eliminated from the school so that it is not a defining feature of the management. That way, attachment to the school would be enhanced hence reduce chances of delinquency.
Watching the film, I found it a little ridiculous. The woman wore pearls for goodness sake! Pearls! In an inner-city school with violent, abusive and aggressive teenagers. As if! Then I saw a photo of the real Erin Gruwell and discovered that in the making of the film, the costume team actually raided Erin's wardrobe! :) So yeah - the woman did wear pearls. Really.
I, of course, got the book after seeing the film. And the entries are even more horrific. These teens open up about abuse, drugs, illness and violence in such a brave and honest way that it is intoxicating! But what makes the book absolutely incredible is that not one of them is moaning. It is honest and real and brutal and not at all cheesy. They are simply trying to make something positive out of a very negative childhood and are trying to spread a message of tolerance to others and that there are alternatives to violence and something worth living for besides drugs - yourself!
It's not all happy endings though (this is real life after all!) but the overwhelming success of Gruwell's influence is phenomenal as many of these "no-hopers" ended up being the first in their families to graduate and many went to university.
The film is good but has been done before - Dangerous Minds, Take the Lead (also a true story) and others - but the book is something else entirely. It takes what they learn in the classroom and spreads to all corners of the globe.
In the film, Gruwell (or Miss G as the kids call her) offers hope to a bunch of teenagers by giving them diaries to write in and getting them to read books like The Diary of Anne Frank and The Color Purple. These diaries are what later get compiled into the book that will be known as The Freedom Writers Diary.
I randomly caught the film a while ago at one of the early evening slots on Film4. It was a perfectly watchable film until I reached the end and discovered it's based on reality. Then it became an inspiring and brilliant film. Hilary Swank plays Erin Gruwell, the young white middle-class teacher assigned to teach the no-hope children who society has given up on.
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An inspiring, heart-wrenching read that should be made compulsory in all secondary schools across the world!
LE xx