Saturday Night At The Movies
The Tutors
By Dennis Hartley
I don’t need to tell you that the news from academia this week has been bleak. As we grapple with the incident at Virginia Tech and debate the coulda-shoulda-wouldas, the one glimmer of light in the story emanates from the English professor who reached out to the troubled young man (although, tragically, we now know that he needed much more than individual tutoring.)
Teachers are traditionally (and thanklessly) thrust into multiple roles by default. Depending on the situation at hand, they take on the responsibilities of social workers, surrogate parents and life counselors, and are perennially undercompensated for doing so.
There are a plethora of movies that have dealt with the dynamic of teachers and students, particularly the “troubled youth” genre that proliferated from seminal films like “The Blackboard Jungle” and “To Sir, With Love”. Of course, the definition of “trouble in the classroom” has become a bit more complex. “The Blackboard Jungle” was considered quite “shocking” in its depiction of leather-jacketed delinquents pulling switchblades on teachers, but when compared to the Columbine-inspired “Elephant”, with its scenes of trench coat wearing 16-year olds leisurely strolling down the hall, blowing away teachers and students with automatic weapons, the former film feels like “the good old days”.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, however, as long as there are dedicated educators in our midst. I think we need to be inspired again. That’s why this week I’m taking another look at one of 2005’s finest documentaries, “The Boys of Baraka”, which the Ironweed Film Club recently released on DVD (Number 12 in the club’s series).
Co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady have fashioned a fresh and rousing take on a well-worn cause celebre: the sad, shameful state of America’s inner-city school system. Eschewing the usual hand-wringing about the under funded, over-crowded, glorified daycare centers that many of these institutions have become for poor, disenfranchised urban youth, the filmmakers chose to showcase one program that strove to make a difference.
The story follows a group of 12-year-old boys from Baltimore who attend a boarding school in Kenya, staffed by American teachers and social workers. In addition to more personalized tutoring, there is an emphasis on conflict resolution through communication, tempered by a “tough love” approach. The events that unfold from this bold social experiment (filmed over a three year period) are alternately inspiring and heartbreaking.
Many of these African American youth seem to have sprung straight from Central Casting for HBO’s “The Wire”; they are the corner boys, the habitual troublemakers “acting out” in the cacophonous homerooms, the kids with junkie mothers who only get to see their fathers during visiting hours at the jail. In other words, most seem destined to lead the kinds of lives that only serve to fuel the stereotype of the inner-city poor.
Something amazing happens, however, when these “at risk” kids find themselves in a completely new environment-a place of light, space and none of the distractions of urban living. As cliché as this sounds, they begin to find themselves, and it is a wondrous transformation to observe. By the time they embark on a day hike to Mount Kenya to celebrate their one-year anniversary at the school, and you realize that they have at that point literally and figuratively “been to the mountain” and gazed over the limitless landscape of their potential, I guarantee you’ll have a lump in your throat.
Of course, all good things must come to an end; the boys return to Baltimore for their summer vacation, which becomes a permanent break when Kenya’s political climate turns too volatile to facilitate continuation of the project. There is no pat, sugar-coated denouement (that’s life) but one is still left with a sense of hope as some of the boys are inspired to push forward and build on their newfound momentum. Recommended.
Teach your children well: Goodbye, Mr. Chips
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