Freedom Writers
The master of change
Over half a century is past since Sidney Poitier left a lot of people with eyes full of water in “To Sir, with Love” (USA, 1967). Since then, several films have shown teachers dealing with school problems. So what else is new in “Freedom Writers” (USA, 2007), starring Hilary Swank?
The movie would already be interesting for the simple fact of portraying real events, lived in a California school, shortly after the civil upheaval caused by the arrest of a black driver, Rodney King, in 1992, which resulted in 54 deaths and more than two thousand hurt people.
However, some universal concepts, known but little used, can be observed in the film, which will interest not only education personnel, but also business administrators and other professionals who deal with persons.
Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) was an enthusiastic and inexperienced young English teacher when she arrived at a high school in Long Beach, California. Due to an experience of racial integration, schools were forced to accept students from different ethnic groups. The problem is that these groups not only hated each other, but lived in constant territorial dispute.
For Erin , a young white middle-class woman, it was a reality shock to find a room in permanent state of conflict, with violent students, some on parole, many of them barely able to read.
Without knowing anything about the life of them, Erin had an interesting idea. She handed over a notebook for each one of them to keep a diary, writing whatever they wanted. After reading what they had written, she became shocked by the crudeness and lack of perspective of them. Determined to change that picture, Erin faced the fight, having to buy books out of her own pocket, because the school did not want to borrow those from the library.
One of the most interesting moments occurs when someone makes a sarcastic caricature of a young black man. Extremely irritated, Erin parallels with Nazi domination and persecution of the Jews, and was shocked to discover that almost no one knew about Hitler and the Holocaust.
Once again, she turned the crisis into an opportunity, and took the students to the Holocaust Museum, watched “Schindler’s List” with them, making them realize that they are not the worst-off people in the world.
After reading “The Diary of Anne Frank”, they decided to write letters to Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank’s family, and managed to bring her on a visit to the school.
Erin had to face the direction of the school to carry out their projects, and sacrifice her own marriage due to the extreme dedication to her students. The diaries of students were transformed into a book, which gave start to an NGO called “Freedom Writers” which seeks to repeat the Erin’s experience with other American schools.
“Freedom Writers” is a beautiful lesson about life, which stresses that change is a matter of attitude and life project. Who gets the DVD or Blu-Ray will have access to short documentaries telling the story behind the movie, including even the participation of Erin Gruwell herself. There are several videos about the topic on Youtube, and the movie is available on the Amazon Prime Video platform.