Hacker Cinema
Dangerous Minds
1995 · Film · 99 min
Directed by John N. Smith
Former Marine Louanne Johnson lands a gig teaching in a pilot program for bright but underachieving teens at a notorious inner-city high school. After having a terrible first day, she decides she must throw decorum to the wind. When Johnson returns to the classroom, she does so armed with a no-nonsense attitude informed by her military training and a fearless determination to better the lives of her students -- no matter what the cost.
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3 comments on Hacker News
You are both stretching the parenting analogy too far and not far enough at the same time.
I liked my kids, even though they both had special needs and we're often difficult to deal with. Similarly, I generally enjoy talking with people. I don't want to deal with abusive nastiness, but I also don't expect everything to go perfectly smoothly all the time. Communication is a process.
I like talking about social phenomenon. I enjoy talking about group dynamics and group culture.
I see a lot of harm in just saying "Not my problem. They just need to know how to behave." A lot of people grew up in crappy households where people don't know how to be civil. If we aren't willing to talk to them until they learn to be civil, they have no opportunity to learn to be civil. If everyone is as intolerant as you, then some people are basically headed to jail with no hope of redemption because they grew up poor, were possibly abused and never learned manners.
I think about this a lot: How do we help the most unfortunate in society to have a shot at joining the ranks of the privileged? And I think one baseline thing that works is we talk with them, we engage them in a civil and mutually respectful fashion and we help them learn what that looks like.
There is an excellent detail in the movie Dangerous Minds where a kid goes to the principal's office and the principal throws him out and won't discuss his issue with him because he burst in without knocking. The boy ends up dead.
Some people are in constant crisis. They are ill or being beaten by their spouse or struggling to get enough to eat. Trying to be adequately well mannered to engage in polite society is a real challenge. And many privileged people will cut them out because of it.
You aren't required to be one of the people willing to talk with those who are failing to be polished. But you are free to do that without pissing on the idea that this is how we create a civil culture. I don't understand why you feel compelled to shoot the suggestion down. To my mind, it is an argument that advocates that anyone who wasn't born into privilege is not welcome to try to shoot for a better life by getting online and trying to talk with polished people even though they lack polish themselves.
The internet is the best way for the Haves and Have Nots to mingle. You don't need enough money to dress properly. You don't need enough money to hang out in the right places, like the local country club. You can be dirt poor and still talk to those who know how to get things done.
I would hate to see more of your attitude in the world. When I was homeless, I was treated quite abusively on Metafilter by privileged people who like to brag about what good people they are, making the world a better place. I still am quite angry about that and I hope some of those people burn in hell. It makes me have some sympathy for people who go postal and kill a bunch of people.
The insistence that you aren't welcome unless you are capable of fitting in from the start is an insidious form of classism that is actively harmful to people who have any kind of serious personal problem. I feel that anyone who genuinely wants to see some of the serious problems in the world resolved should eschew such a policy.
As a legal immigrant American citizen living in Elk Grove California, let me be the first to say "duh". Movies are a fantasy world. Before I moved to the US, I saw Dangerous Minds and thought all kids in all schools carried guns with them. Of course, this wasn't reality when I moved here.
America has her faults but you really shouldn't discount her beauty based on the news and it's mismatch to movies.
"Hollywood is destroying little guys' lifes for downloading a bunch of songs" - technically they've only sued a few people... and really, people shouldn't be stealing music anymore with songs available for 99cents now.
"insane financial schemes" - ya, there are a few really ethically challenged people who are smart enough to take advantage of others in America. But really, there are a lot of really fantastic people here as well. My business partner is someone I would be comfortable giving a blank check. I've accidentally forgotten my iPhone at Starbucks a couple times and it was returned both times. The area I live in is very safe (knock on wood.) Our garage door has accidentally been left open twice in the last ten years and we had left for the weekend. The first time nothing happened. The second time, our neighbor stayed up all night to keep watch. True story.
There are a lot of good people and yes, there are some bad people. America is a diverse collection of people. That is her strength.
Somehow, I suspect the people who would drop out of high school unless $24k/year is spent on their education are not going to college. I'd be willing to bet that the tiny fraction who do don't give $170k/student worth of benefits. If you want to propose spending lots of money, there should be lots of potential upside, and I'm just not seeing it.
Also, I suspect that yes, the benefits of having these people graduate high school is a wash. Currently, a high school degree is a signal that you are not dealing with the utter dregs of society and that the student can do what they are told for 12 years. If we spend $16k/year graduating everyone, a high school degree will be a signal that if an employer is willing to devote $16k/year to supervising the employee, they might be able to get some useful low skill labor out of them.
As for your theory of poor kids dropping out and then going bad/getting arrested, it just doesn't fit my experience. At the school I dropped out of, the kids were carrying metal long before they dropped out, and there was nothing that Dangerous Minds could do for them.
Look, I haven't worked out all the numbers. I've just a feel for the orders of magnitude. If you want to "spend 3x more", we will spend more on education than we spend on SS, Medicare and the military combined. I don't see any remotely reasonable way that the benefits would exceed this cost. But feel free to post your own numbers.
[Edit: just noticed I used a slang term. "Dangerous Minds" is a mocking term for nice liberal white girls trying to save their students. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112792/ (Also usable as a verb.)]