Every High School Teacher Should See This

Rating: 10/10 (10 August 2007)

Drew Barrymore's line is the best one of all. Kicked out of a provincial high school faculty because she dared make her students think, she says, "We're losing them. We give them all this prescribed fecal matter and they get nothing." She is fired by the dumb, bureaucratic principal so like every principal just about that I've ever had, out-IQ'd by every teacher in the school except for the aging cheerleaders masquerading as counselors.
Our high schools are failing because they are undereducating our kids, avoiding anything controversial like the plague, forcing our kids to take meaningless tests that only test memory, not the ability to think. This kid is obviously both brilliant and disturbed. I couldn't help but think of the kids I know from Bedford, Ma. who might not have turned schizoid had he not done a few innocuous drugs that made him vulnerable to what he had probably inherited. Who knows? But those parents must have felt like these parents, intelligent and kind even if they were Republicans.
Great movie, and Jake Guygendal with his eerie, evil smile is tops.
Yes, I'll be seeing it again, and wonder why more wasn't made of it at the time, except that it might disturb our corporate masters who love the fact that we are an undereducated nation of peasants. "Without an educated electorate this delicate experiment called 'democracy' is doomed to failure." So said deTocqueville, and boy, was he ever right!!
See it, think and demand more of your School Committee than they slavishly follow the dictates of whatever Town Clique is ruining/running YOUR town, as in Canton, Ma. And support any teacher brave enough to each controversial subjects, such as "What really has caused our country's corrupt government to be despised by every right-thinking human being in the world?"