The Influence Of Minority Groups In Freedom Writers

The movie “Freedom Writers” is based on a true story. Hilary Swank as Erin Gruwell plays an inspirational teacher at Wilson High School. She is ready to take on the teaching world as she steps inside Wilson High School for her first day. Her class, varied with teenagers of different ethnic backgrounds, wants nothing more than to just get through the day. African Americans, Latinos, Asians, gang members, and much more are from poor neighborhoods, that all share a similar hatred for each other. On the first day of teaching she is very scared and unsure, but she knows she has to stop the racism in the class as well as their attitude towards life. Despite her students' persistent refusal to participate

In the movie Freedom Writers there are many examples of criminology theories that explain the way the characters act the way that they do. The characters in the film all go through different stages in the film, and all of them have different theories that relate to them. There are three main theories that are seen in this film they are, Conflict Theory, Social Control Theory, and Neo Classical Theory. Inside of each of these theories is a sub group, some of them are Labeling Theory, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Social Bonds, Neutralization, and Social Exchange. The main characters that fit these theories are Mrs. Gruwell, Eva Benitez, Andre Bryant, Marcus, and Miss Campbell. There is also a school in Washington D.C. that had this kind of problem that the classroom of 203 had.

“Freedom Writers” is a powerful film that is based on a true story about a teacher named Erin Gruwell, who struggles to connect with her students to make them believe that they can succeed in life, and to show them that their lives, experiences, and knowledge is valuable, all while attempting to unify them and to overcome racial segregation and gang violence that is part of their daily lives. Gruwell focuses on introducing the concepts of discipline and obedience in her classroom. She gradually begins to earn their trust and buys them composition books to record their diaries, in which they talk about their experiences of being abused, seeing their friends die, and being evicted; Gruwell refers to the composition books as “The Freedom Writers Diary.”

In The Freedom Writers, racism is shown through school and gangs. The students in the school are all segregated by race. They are not forced to segregate, but they do by choice. Not only do they stay in their respective race groups, but they also dislike the other races. They were raised to hate each other so that is what they did. This also ties into the gang issues. The gangs are forced to segregate and hate all of the other gangs. This does not help the country’s issues with racial tension. In the movie, Mrs. Gruwell uses the idea of gangs to tie all of her students together. Most of them were in gangs, so they knew the struggles of loss and

Eva’s soliloquy- “you can’t go against you own people, your own blood.” - Symbolism of conformity.

In the Freedom Writers there were challenges that they had to overcome including the inequalities of students at Wilson High School. These inequalities ranged from skin color, background, grades, and age. We try to keep this from happening at OHS, but it can come out in some ways even here. This isn’t what we want to happen since it divides us as students and as a school, but it is almost impossible to keep from happening especially at a school as large as OHS.

When watching the movie Freedom Writers, I noticed much to do with nonverbal communication, but I thought I would focus on the topic of space or “proxemics.” Proxemics is the study of how close or far away from people or objects we position ourselves (p.88). When the students are outside of the school before class they segregate themselves into cultural groups. There are large spacial gaps between these groups which gives you the idea that the groups do not mix. Edward T.Hall has four zones of Space (p.88). When the groups outside are separated, they are in what Hall refers to as Public Space, which is 12 feet and beyond. The split follows into the classroom when the students sit for the first day. Many pull their desks toward and away groups

The students are so unwilling to associate with each other because they’re not used to getting along with the other group of people. Their used to having to run or shoot at the other ethnic/racial groups. This intolerance comes from growing up in hostile environments towards the other ethnic/racial groups.

This relationship is also used to show that by getting to know each other, students will stop fighting. At the beginning of the film, it showed violence on the street and a narration that stated, “We kill each other over race, pride and respect” (Freedom Writers). As the film then progresses on, it demonstrates that fighting in the classroom was a daily thing. The reasoning for this was because the students believed that it was unsuitable to go against their own race. Erin Gruwell realized this when one of her students drew a racist picture of Jamal. A few days later she had them play a game that involved standing on a red line in the middle of the room if they could relate to her question. As the game started, the tone of the scene was lighthearted

In the movie, The Freedom Writers Mrs. Erin Gruwell (Hillary Swank) plays a role of a dedicated teacher who did all she could, to help her students learn to respect themselves and each other. She has little idea of what she's getting into when she volunteers to be an English teacher at a newly integrated high school in Long Beach, California. Her students were divided along racial lines and had few aspirations beyond basic survival. Mrs. Gruwell was faced with a big challenge when a group of freshmen students showed her nothing but disrespect which made it hard for her to communicate, teach and understand them. However, Erin Gruwell was determined that no matter the cost she would teach her students not only

This selection, Letter by a Female Indentured Servant, really gives you incite as to what life was like in the 1700s as an indentured servant. (Foner, 2011) The reader can really feel the pain she is going through while she was in America trying to pay her dues for passage to what they thought was the promise land. She wanted to ensure her father really knew what kind of horrible life she was living because of the details she included like she was whipped to the degree that she now serves the animals. Apparently, you didn’t speak of the horrible things that would occur as an indentured servant because she writes to her father that she hopes he will pardon the boldness of her complaints and she also hope

A perfect example of a movie that demonstrates how poverty and feelings of oppression affect school violence is “Freedom Writers.” In this movie a 23 year old teacher named Erin Gruwell (Hilary swank) takes on the challenge of teaching at a school full of students brought up in gangs. These students had been written off by their school as hopeless cases but she tried to change that and get through to them by buying them new books such as Anne Frank and believing in them.

The thorough presentation of a well researched context in the film provided the environment for priming the viewers on the concept of belonging which was highlighted in the film. This grounded the film and prepared the viewers on the film’s main focus. Through the brief but meaningful snippets of what happened during the trial of Rodney King, the viewers were introduced to the conflict used in the film that surfaced and distinctly placed attention on the concept of belonging.

The movie Freedom Writers is about Erin Gruwell who is starting her first year as an English teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School. This school is racially divided with many gangs and violence erupting at any time. Ms. Gruwell was the students main subject of hate too. After having a discussion with her students about what they were feeling about their lives and situations, she took the responsibility of educating the students no matter what the cost was. She would eventually get through to the teens by passing out journals for them to write their personal life stories in. As the year went on, the students started to trust Ms.Gruwell. The next academic year, she had the students getting along with one another and reading The Diary of Ann Frank. She faced many critics within the school, but she ultimately succeeded.

“Everybody thinks you should be happy just because you’re young. They don’t see the wars that we fight every single day”. Brandy Ross, one of the students in the movie Freedom Writers once said. This is the predicament that the students in Woodrow Wilson High School faced every day. There are dead bodies on the street, the students have to protect themselves from other gangs, and most of them didn’t finish high school. It might not be a big issue for us because we didn’t face it by ourselves, but after watching this movie you will know that it is a significant thing to look at. The differences among race caused all of these problems, to deal with this is not easy at all. Freedom Writers show us that we can live our life with distinction because it shows us how to understand and accept dissimilarity that we have and also to