I finally got a chance to watch this movie recently. The "Cheaters" movie about the teacher who helps his students cheat at a regional academic decathlon is based on a true story, like many of the inspirational teacher films. I won’t tell you where on the internets I found it, because invariably some corporate suck-up is going to cry “ohnoes copyright infringement teh poor megacorporations!”
First of all, I absolutely love this movie. I love everything about it, from the conflict that the kids faced in the beginning, to the insurmountable obstacles they had to put up with, to the teacher's dilemma, the teacher's decision to do what he had to do to help those kids. And I can tell you that if I were that teacher, I probably would have done the exact same thing.
But I think we could stand a more thorough analysis of the movie. It needs to be pointed out that this was a very subtle demonstration of determinism, and this needs to be acknowledged. This film was not quite as egalitarian, level the playing field, give-them-a-fair-shake as it made itself out to be.
Study the academic team more carefully. All you have to do is look at them. And then pan out and study the demographics of that high school as a whole. What do you see? Did no one else notice that the high school was predominantly poor and black, and yet the academic team was all poor and white?
In the beginning of the film, the Jeff Daniels' teacher character was saying that they should pare through the entire high school and find the select group of kids that have the highest IQs. Or highest SAT scores, something like that. They decided that they should, you know, pick the ones that actually stood a fighting chance to win any kind of academic competition. And guess what-- they mostly turned out to be white. I am assuming they did not have a whole lot of Asians at that school.
In a recruitment meeting that was held in the beginning of the movie, there were originally a few black kids that passed muster. If they were invited to the meeting, that indicated they did in fact have higher IQs than the average student body, same as the white kids did. However, as soon as Jeff Daniels uttered the phrase "hard work," they were out the door.
At some sort of school district conference in the movie, Jeff Daniels' character brought up some thought-provoking points. There was a rival school that always participated in the academic competition every year. Somehow they always managed to win, place, or show, and not by cheating. Daniels remarked that that school was a private school that operated within the public school system.
Hmm... That is an interesting way of putting it. What does it mean? The points made about safety and violence vis a vis public schools v. private schools are legitimate points.
I do remember that at the middle school I attended, the students were incredibly violent. This was due to the particular neighborhoods in that school's zoning district. We had fights break out almost every week, we had bomb threats every month. This was ameliorated a bit once I got to high school. The reason for this, and I stand by this firmly, was that the zoning guidelines were very different from those of middle school. The zoning districts that the high school covered in the town simply did not overlap the poor neighborhoods as much. (The poverty-stricken, crime-riddled, drug-infested, teen-pregnancy-and-other-illegitimate-pregnancies-with multiple-odd-combinations-of male-and-female-parent-addled. Most of the high school kids from these types of environments were shunted off to the other high school in town.) Yeah, the place was crawling with violent ghetto types. But you know what? I got over it, I am currently working on my Ph.D. in biochemistry, and those people that got into fights are probably all dead now, due to gang-related warfare or something.
My high school mostly served upper-middle class white families. (There were very few Asians in the town I where I went to high school. Otherwise, undoubtedly they too would have attended my high school.) Remarkably, it seemed that the vast majority of fairly affluent parents simply sent their children to this high school in their district, rather than pay for private school. Looking back on it now, I realize that this was a short [blunt] miracle that these parents sent their kids to this public school, which effectively elevated the educational standards for all involved. These were the kids that, in any other town in the US, their parents surely would have sent them to private school and gladly paid the steep tuition. Just somehow, in this particular town, there were a sizable number of upper-middle class families. Enough so that if all of them sent their kids to public school, there would be a large enough upper-middle class population so that it would at its core, essentially turn the public school into a private school.
I've been saying this for a long time. The school in and of itself does not matter nearly as much as the community as a whole. The socioeconomic makeup of the entire community, i.e., school district, strongly influences the performance of the school. For example, a school could set high academic standards. But those standards will not counterbalance the negative effects if the majority of students come from drug-addled home life. If a large percentage of students come from violent homes with no structure, let alone love, that creates a bad school district. A bad school district has little to do with the school itself. The community makes an impact. If the community members have resources, then the school will receive resources.
So did the cheating help out the kids that entered the academic competition after all? Yes. It DID help them out, but only to the extent that they had actual potential and could help themselves out.
See this movie. Rent it, look for it on the internets, borrow it from a friend, access this movie however you can. And relish the experience.
First of all, I absolutely love this movie. I love everything about it, from the conflict that the kids faced in the beginning, to the insurmountable obstacles they had to put up with, to the teacher's dilemma, the teacher's decision to do what he had to do to help those kids. And I can tell you that if I were that teacher, I probably would have done the exact same thing.
But I think we could stand a more thorough analysis of the movie. It needs to be pointed out that this was a very subtle demonstration of determinism, and this needs to be acknowledged. This film was not quite as egalitarian, level the playing field, give-them-a-fair-shake as it made itself out to be.
Study the academic team more carefully. All you have to do is look at them. And then pan out and study the demographics of that high school as a whole. What do you see? Did no one else notice that the high school was predominantly poor and black, and yet the academic team was all poor and white?
In the beginning of the film, the Jeff Daniels' teacher character was saying that they should pare through the entire high school and find the select group of kids that have the highest IQs. Or highest SAT scores, something like that. They decided that they should, you know, pick the ones that actually stood a fighting chance to win any kind of academic competition. And guess what-- they mostly turned out to be white. I am assuming they did not have a whole lot of Asians at that school.
In a recruitment meeting that was held in the beginning of the movie, there were originally a few black kids that passed muster. If they were invited to the meeting, that indicated they did in fact have higher IQs than the average student body, same as the white kids did. However, as soon as Jeff Daniels uttered the phrase "hard work," they were out the door.
At some sort of school district conference in the movie, Jeff Daniels' character brought up some thought-provoking points. There was a rival school that always participated in the academic competition every year. Somehow they always managed to win, place, or show, and not by cheating. Daniels remarked that that school was a private school that operated within the public school system.
Hmm... That is an interesting way of putting it. What does it mean? The points made about safety and violence vis a vis public schools v. private schools are legitimate points.
I do remember that at the middle school I attended, the students were incredibly violent. This was due to the particular neighborhoods in that school's zoning district. We had fights break out almost every week, we had bomb threats every month. This was ameliorated a bit once I got to high school. The reason for this, and I stand by this firmly, was that the zoning guidelines were very different from those of middle school. The zoning districts that the high school covered in the town simply did not overlap the poor neighborhoods as much. (The poverty-stricken, crime-riddled, drug-infested, teen-pregnancy-and-other-illegitimate-pregnancies-with multiple-odd-combinations-of male-and-female-parent-addled. Most of the high school kids from these types of environments were shunted off to the other high school in town.) Yeah, the place was crawling with violent ghetto types. But you know what? I got over it, I am currently working on my Ph.D. in biochemistry, and those people that got into fights are probably all dead now, due to gang-related warfare or something.
My high school mostly served upper-middle class white families. (There were very few Asians in the town I where I went to high school. Otherwise, undoubtedly they too would have attended my high school.) Remarkably, it seemed that the vast majority of fairly affluent parents simply sent their children to this high school in their district, rather than pay for private school. Looking back on it now, I realize that this was a short [blunt] miracle that these parents sent their kids to this public school, which effectively elevated the educational standards for all involved. These were the kids that, in any other town in the US, their parents surely would have sent them to private school and gladly paid the steep tuition. Just somehow, in this particular town, there were a sizable number of upper-middle class families. Enough so that if all of them sent their kids to public school, there would be a large enough upper-middle class population so that it would at its core, essentially turn the public school into a private school.
I've been saying this for a long time. The school in and of itself does not matter nearly as much as the community as a whole. The socioeconomic makeup of the entire community, i.e., school district, strongly influences the performance of the school. For example, a school could set high academic standards. But those standards will not counterbalance the negative effects if the majority of students come from drug-addled home life. If a large percentage of students come from violent homes with no structure, let alone love, that creates a bad school district. A bad school district has little to do with the school itself. The community makes an impact. If the community members have resources, then the school will receive resources.
So did the cheating help out the kids that entered the academic competition after all? Yes. It DID help them out, but only to the extent that they had actual potential and could help themselves out.
See this movie. Rent it, look for it on the internets, borrow it from a friend, access this movie however you can. And relish the experience.
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