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The “rebel with a class” as it were, is a relatively recent development in Hollywood. That is a sacred trust,” he tells them before urging them not to quit, though all the forces of a racist society are arrayed against them. When his all-black college-debate team is told it cannot compete in a national tournament, he lets them know his stake in their struggle is personal. Stand And Deliver‘s math teacher, Jaime Escalante (Edward Olmos), for instance, helps Latino students overcome first their own resistance to authority, and then, when they start to succeed, the unfair perceptions of administrators wielding standardized tests.ĭenzel Washington is up against even stronger forces in The Great Debaters, a 2007 film set in the segregated south of 1935. Teachers who care - and you wouldn’t make a film about them if they didn’t - must not only relate to students, but must also shield them from their own parents, from school administrators, from the police and from social forces that lead them to not value education in the first place. This gets him in trouble with the headmaster, and that’s pretty much a standard Hollywood plot development. Most onscreen teachers confront more conventional students and forge bonds with them over more conventional problems: kids who don’t think they want to learn … who mistrust authority …who are bored … and who inspire teachers like Robin Williams in 1989’s Dead Poets Society to climb on his desk and find other unorthodox ways to enliven classwork. And Helen spells it back, and as powerfully as it ever has on film, a whole world of knowledge opens up. And Annie puts Helen’s hand on her face and smiles and nods “yes.” Immediately Helen wants other words … pounding on the earth beneath her feet.
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She mimics Annie’s hand movements, spelling it back. and you see her puzzle out that those movements of fingers and lips symbolize an idea: the wetness she’s feeling. Her breakthrough comes in what amounts to a ferocious battle with Annie at a backyard water pump, where she suddenly realizes that the motions her teacher has been making in the palm of her hand connect to the movement of Annie’s lips.Īnnie spells out “w-a-t-e-r” and says urgently to this girl who can’t hear her, “it has a name.” And suddenly, in the midst of the struggle, Helen pauses. With only a few gestures to signal what she wants, 7-year-old Helen has no way to communicate with those around her, and initially, no concept of language itself. The Miracle Worker‘s Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft), for instance, had to get through to a kicking, biting, almost feral Helen Keller (Patty Duke), who had been deaf and blind since infancy. And they’re all that while confronting - because Hollywood never does anything halfway - the sort of challenge that would give pause to a miracle worker. You know the type: hard-working, earnest, and most of all, inspirational. They’ll also answer to “Hey, wassup teach?” if that’s what it takes to get their students to stand and deliver, to be great debaters or to form dead poet societies while heading up the down staircase in a blackboard jungle. Chips, Miss Brodie, Miss Moffat, Mister Miyagi, or just plain “Sir” (with love, of course) They’re mostly young, they’re always energetic, and they answer to honorifics: Mr. Teachers are a type in Hollywood, as bound by convention as the guys who wear white hats in westerns.