*Typed while nursing*
Ah, why do I homeschool, let me count the ways. Or you can go see this movie and I won't have to bother. This movie is perfect example of how kids live up or down to what is expected of them and how at least this particular public school in the film expects less than more. My personal experience with public schools has been no more has been expected of minority students beyond being bipedal, but perhaps I should talk more about the movie than my bitter public school experience.
Coach Carter (Samuel L. Jackson) is a Joe Clark(a great man by the way who I think should be cloned and sent to every public school)esque type of man. He utilises strange tactics like discipline and a sense of self respect in how young men carry themselves to make a high school basketball team live up to their potential, and hopefully achieve college.
Now, I am not a very good movie reviewer because I never know exactly how much more of a plot I should reveal than what is in previews without spoiling the movie.
I will say I found the scenarios realistic. I do recommend this film and I would almost give it an 'A' except for one big problem I had with it that almost had me walk out. It made me feel so bad. One of the basketball players' girlfriends, played by Ashanti, is pregnant. She decides because the future is unsure and she really wants her boyfriend to go off to college instead of remaining in a dead end life in the ghetto to have an abortion. After that all is well in the world. There is one point in the movie where Coach Carter stresses the importance of star athletes not getting special treatment and having to obey the rules like everyone else. But then the girlfriend has an abortion.
Watching the games is fun and watching the transformation from thugs into young men is also fun. I also liked the soundtrack and perhaps will purchase it. So I give the movie a 'C'.
The problem stems from the fact that if you expect many public high schoolers to be anything more than "bipedal," they'll be there until they've either dropped out or have reached the maximum age limit.
My experience in public high schools - first as a student and then as a teacher - is that parenting makes all the difference. If a child is held to a high standard at home, he/she will be more likely to succeed on that front. The problem with so many young urban students as portrayed in this movie is that they don't get that balance of positive/negative reinforcement at home. Instead, a high school teacher is expected to do the job of the absent family. And it hardly ever works.
Meanwhile, the kids who actually care do quite well in their A.P. Calculus class just a couple doors down.
Josh,
I think this is part of the problem. I think this is the start certainly, but when a student attends school where most of the kids come from families where students do not care, this has an influence on most of the students at the schools. But is it not the job of schools to give a kid a chance who may come from a broken family to do more with their lives? Now granted my father graduated from HS in 1968, but he was the son of factory worker parents who never passed 8th grade...and who were not the nicest people either. Yes, that was a while ago, but what changed?
The movie recited a few stats, which in my experience were pretty accurate. The school in the movie had a 50% graduation rate. Not college record, graduation.
Standards have been lowered in school districts because they do not expect more of students. We have seen that with the Regents exams in NYS. Instead of pushing the kids to learn more and to pass them, they lower the standards.
I also attended a PHS in central NJ that was not urban. However 30-40% of the population was black and they did not care to educate those kids. Now perhaps every students parents should have come in each semester to argue with the guidance counselors about putting them into college bound classes, I dunno.
And yes, there were some black students who graduated with honors from AP classes, but at a dissproportionate rate. And not every kid who didn't attend an AP class and who fell through the cracks did not necessarily come from a broken uncaring home.
The fact is, even though some kids did succeed, it has very little to do with a caring school administration. The Joe Clarks and the Coach Carters are the exception, not the norm.