Hacker CinemaThe Street Stops Here
2010 · Film · documentary · 82 min
Directed by Kevin Shaw
The Street Stops Here is a portrait of the nation's best high school basketball coach, Bob Hurley, Sr. and his career-long struggle to inspire and motivate those around him in order to keep the doors of a poor, inner-city Catholic school open. This is a story about teenagers fighting their way out of the 'hood, armed with little more than a basketball and the hard wisdom of a fierce, demanding coach. For 35 years, Hurley has led St. Anthony his way. He's an uncompromising teacher who demands perfection from kids who've known little discipline growing up on the streets of Jersey City. His methodical, yet volatile style works miracles.
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3 comments on Hacker News
It is probably an extreme example, but there is always "The Street Stops Here", a docu. about Bob Hurley, who is simply obsessed with keeping kids raised in dire poverty out of prison through the education system.
Of course he coaches basketball but that's almost peripheral (although he also loves winning ). His program is tightly integrated with the rest of a Catholic school. These kids live in a state of despair. He will fight this until his last breath. And he does not fight fair. Bob is a retired parole officer.
If anything, the film leaves me with the unsettling feeling that this is a very hard problem. It'd take decades of failure as a parole officer to make one Bob Hurley, and there seems to be only the one.
Extremely good essay.
Here's the thing.
A left tackle ( using "The Blind Side" here ) has a particular set of physical properties. If suddenly, for nutritional or environmental reasons, there are 10x of the number of people who can qualify physically as a left tackle, then the locus of competition will move elsewhere.
This, IMO, is what we see now. Paul's not advocating it ( again, IMO ) he's commenting on it. We are without the massive corporations of the 1950s to absorb people of "ordinary" ability[1]. Then again, I get stories of how those jobs slowly killed people.
[1]Yes, I hate that sentence but that's how the story goes...
Investing in inner city kids is a great idea, but it's hard to do. Using yet another sports film as a source, "The Street Stops Here" talks about Bob Hurley.
You don't find a Bob Hurley every day. Bob Hurley is a retired parole officer. It's clear from the film that he'd do nearly anything to keep kids out of prison. This is his white whale; he doesn't play fair and he doesn't care who objects to it.
Money will not help with that. Finding what can be done is a profoundly difficult problem.
One takeaway from the film "The Street Stops Here" ( which is a documentary of an extreme outlier teacher/coach, so caveat caveat ) is that it takes a strong sense of dedication to make a difference in education.
The person in question - coach Bob Hurley, in a decaying New Jersey town - is a retired parole officer, and he's there to keep kids out of prison. So this is is his white whale.
I don't think you can buy that, but you might be able to buy furniture - support systems, assistance, the like - to keep it from being killed off. Instead, we get six-sigma metrification which may well make it worse. At least it Heisenbugs the curriculum and distracts from actual teaching.
Something must be done, this is something, this must be done...
Then again, the canonical teacher is Socrates, and he was forced to drink hemlock...
I think people get embarrassed by being discarded by the sorting-machine and resent the system, even when it's their kids in it. We don't really value education for its own sake - it must be shown to be in service of other societal goals - mainly economic goals. That can get out of control quickly.