The High Library sponsored an Open Book Open Film event Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. in collaboration with the Open Book Initiative. The initiative is a campus-wide common reading experience for first-year students. It encompasses a nonfiction reading selection, group discussions and events such as the Open Film screenings.
“Freedom Writers,” a 2007 film starring Hilary Swank, was chosen to be screened at Gibble Auditorium in collaboration with the Open Book initiative this semester. The movie focuses on a new teacher, Erin Gruwell, at a California high school trying to connect with her students. These students are involved in gang activity and street violence. Their teachers and the school’s administration made few efforts to connect with these students or help them improve their education until Gruwell was hired. She took the initiative to give her students reasons to learn and connect with each other. These students took her belief in them and the education she offered and used it to turn their lives around.
John Wood’s Room to Read Foundation focused on improving literacy around the world, specifically in developing countries where education is difficult to come by for one reason or another. “Freedom Writers” focuses on the low education levels in America’s inner cities, showing that the plague of illiteracy and lack of education is not relegated to the developing world. It is rampant in our own country too.
There are many people who do not realize that this country combats the same problems that other countries around the world face. In some cases, the situation in the United States is better. In America, education is compulsory until a student is 16 years of age, at which point they can drop out of school.
We have the No Child Left Behind program, which is meant to improve the academic achievement of the disadvantaged. There are divisions within the country about the effectiveness of such policies, but they do ensure certain standards about American education. Developing countries rarely have such infrastructure. It is difficult for people in these countries to find safe education and the financial stability for continuous education due to the often chaotic nature of politics and daily living in these countries.
The American education system still suffers from similar problems, though. While compulsory education is part of the system, many of the people who drop out are expected to do so, whether because of their attitudes or their backgrounds. Because of this, they are not encouraged to continue their education or to strive to improve themselves or achieve academic prowess.
Underprivileged students in the U.S. tend to deal with just as much adversity as school-aged children in developing countries. Even the ones who strive for an education have a lot of trouble, because of the lack of faith in their abilities or attitudes. Those who are supposed to help them instead see only the stereotypes that may surround these students.
The film shows books and education as valuable tools to bring about social change and to help people improve their situations. It also makes clear the fact that the tools are not enough. The people using the tools need to want to use them. The film does a brilliant job showing just how Gruwell got through to her students and how they began to change through the things they learned in the classroom. People need passion to change anything and Gruwell gave her students something to base their passion on by getting them interested in reading.
“Freedom Writers” makes it clear that the problems involved in education systems around the world do not end in developing countries. Many countries around the world deal with problems in their education systems for many different reasons. The film was an important one to show at Etown this semester, because it ties into the literacy focus of “Creating Room to Read.” The film shows exactly how the problems with illiteracy and the lack of education are universal problems with the system and are not relegated to one group of people. Every country has different reasons for the systems it uses, including education systems, and each of these countries has problems just like any other. “Creating Room to Read” offers an important message about aiding education in developing countries, but “Freedom Writers” informs its audience that the developing countries are not the only ones that need aid. The film screened at Etown on Tuesday night reminds us that we need to look close to home to improve our world as well as looking abroad.
