Released in 2007 Freedom Writers is a film based on a book by Erin Gruwell. The film is about Ms. Gruwell’s (played by Hillary Swank) experience working as a white teacher in a multi-cultural school in Los Angeles. The film which was produced in part by MTV is directed at a young adult audience.
Freedom Writer explores how Ms. Gruwell adapts to her class which is mostly made up of people of color from bad neighborhoods.
Initially she was determined to teach them classic literature like Homer, but she soon realizes that her students can not relate to the course material.
Ms. Gruwell abandons the banking method of teaching and instead encourages her students to talk about their experiences in the real world. She democratizes the classroom by allowing her students to discuss freely how activities should be conducted and promotes discourse by having her students write about themselves in diaries. Through this teaching method she changes education from a form of oppression to a means of obtaining freedom.
But what is freedom?
Many horrible things have been done in the name of “freedom” and “progress”. The war in Iraq which has caused the deaths of thousands of people was renamed “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and in “the Colonial Present” Gregory explains that the idea that imperial powers brought progress to those they subjugated still lingers on. “Western” ideas of progress and freedom are clarified through defining others and support a master narrative of white superiority. This master narrative is reinforced by cultural products like films.
According to this narrative white settlers and their descendents are heroic, innocent and civilized and it is the duty of whites to civilize and save racialized groups from themselves. Conversely non-whites are violent savages who should be grateful for the civilizing presence of the colonizer.
Freedom writers helps to perpetuate the idea of white superiority by portraying the students as irrational and violent. In one scene Latino students start a fight with black students because a black student walked to close to their seating are. This results in chaos and students of all nationalities start fighting each other. The white school teachers are forced to civilize or discipline the unruly students.
While inner city schools may be plagued with violence and the Film Freedom Writers is based on a true story the film fails to analyze the social issues which might have caused such a volatile environment in the school. The problems of the students which are revealed through their diary entries are presented as individual problems resulting from bad luck or individual failings. The film does not address the institutionalized racism that has resulted in blacks and Latinos living in ghettos or out on the street. As a result viewers are left to conclude that problems affecting black and Latino students are a result of the inferiority of these groups and the only way these groups can “progress” is for white people like the teacher in Freedom Writers to the show them the way.
Freedom writers is an uplifting movie which does a good job of demonstrating the application of some Paulo Freire’s ideas, however this is a little overshadowed by the many stereotypes masquerading as students which populate the film.
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