Dangerous Minds

Dangerous Minds
In chapter 4, Freire begins to discuss freedom. Although he believes that it should have some limits, he wants us, as teachers, to give our students all the freedom they need. Watching the movie Dangerous Minds made me question where one draws the line and if we even have that choice over our students. In this movie we see how these students in her Academy class are "bright, challenging" students who actually turn out to be rowdy and disrespectful inner-city kids. These students have all the freedom in the world to do and say whatever they want causing a BIG interruption in the lesson and teaching process.
In reading Adams- "The School as an Ecosystem", he brings up the question of who should control our schools and how? In the U.S we have a multilevel government bureaucratic structure that does the decision-making in education. In addition we also have groups such as teacher unions that also put pressure at the federal, state and local level of these bureaucracy. In the movie Dangerous Minds we not only see Ms. Johnson's challenges as she faces teenage pregnancies, fights between students, parents who think school is a waste of time, but on top of that she has to deal with a school administration that's far from helpful and supportive. All this for $24,700 a year! So one has to ask ourselves where is the federal, state and local level of these bureaucracies to help out schools like these. Why does it seem that there is no control and why are these administrators walking around blindly?

The Postmodern theoretical paradigm would interpret this movie as having a great way to show student-teacher relationship because it interprets the connection between knowledge and power as a potential source of injustice and inequality in the student-teacher relationship. The student-teacher relationship in this case would be considered a strong one (although it was hard to obtain at first). The postmodernist would agree that teaching is a very hard job to do. We have to be very good communicators and have to understand that not everything we teach is going to be viewed as the right way but that should not stop us from continuing to learn and grow as people so that we can become stronger educators.

The Conflict Critical theoretical paradigm would say that most teachers don't want students to know that they are low, as seen in this movie they would be considered "rowdy, disrespectful inner-city kids". Ms. Johnson treats all her students with respect and makes them feel as if they can accomplish anything they set their minds to. This paradigm also believe that change in education due to the conflicts faced in society, is good. The paradigm would support Ms. Johnson's willingness to go have the time to drive out to visit the family of each student who gets into trouble -- or who needs a little extra encouragement because this would be considered as doing what is necessary for change.