The film is woefully cliché with some interesting points made.
Racism is alive and functioning quite well at a Los Angeles school in the 1970s. When Caucasian students are summarily transferred there, the situation becomes much more intense.
A black athlete and white teacher in a predominantly white area is brought to this school as an assistant principal and teacher. Nice to see that he is assigned classes. In the real world of education, assistant principals never teach and therefore lose reality with what is really going on in the classroom.
The film makes note that older methodologies just don't work and Helen Kleeb, who played in the Walton's, is a perfect example of a teacher with bigoted ideas, who should have long retired. Ditto for the principal as well as local school board members.
The whites are given the worst treatment possible by the black students and tempers flare. A young black teacher, teaching for 4 years, can't take much more and is leaving by the end of the year.
The ending is a bit too much to take. Students rampage, the police are called and our assistant principal has it out with the principal. We are left to believe that things have to get better as the black people take charge of the school. In one respect, the ending was a good one, there are just no answers to these urban educational problems, but we must keep working at it.
Having some difficult black students create their own mural will not solve everything. The scenes showing the black students poor vocabulary and reading performance as compared to their Caucasian counterparts are sad to view. Why has this come about?
A better title for this film would have been "No Way Out!" The film is nearly 40 years old and we face the same problems today.
Racism is alive and functioning quite well at a Los Angeles school in the 1970s. When Caucasian students are summarily transferred there, the situation becomes much more intense.
A black athlete and white teacher in a predominantly white area is brought to this school as an assistant principal and teacher. Nice to see that he is assigned classes. In the real world of education, assistant principals never teach and therefore lose reality with what is really going on in the classroom.
The film makes note that older methodologies just don't work and Helen Kleeb, who played in the Walton's, is a perfect example of a teacher with bigoted ideas, who should have long retired. Ditto for the principal as well as local school board members.
The whites are given the worst treatment possible by the black students and tempers flare. A young black teacher, teaching for 4 years, can't take much more and is leaving by the end of the year.
The ending is a bit too much to take. Students rampage, the police are called and our assistant principal has it out with the principal. We are left to believe that things have to get better as the black people take charge of the school. In one respect, the ending was a good one, there are just no answers to these urban educational problems, but we must keep working at it.
Having some difficult black students create their own mural will not solve everything. The scenes showing the black students poor vocabulary and reading performance as compared to their Caucasian counterparts are sad to view. Why has this come about?
A better title for this film would have been "No Way Out!" The film is nearly 40 years old and we face the same problems today.