Cultural Conflict In Freedom Writers

The movie I chose to analyze this week is The Freedom Writers, and I rented the movie online through Amazon Video. The movie and true story, The Freedom Writers, is about a White high school English teacher named Erin Gruwell who is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson High school, a low performing and troubled school in Long Beach, California. The story is told in 1994, only two years after the civil unrest and race war after the 1992. Los Angeles riots. Her English class is filled with all minority students ranging from African-American, Asian, Latino, Mexican and only one White male student in the class. For the majority of her students, education and learning are not a top priority and instead, the conflicts outside of the classroom, is of uttermost …show more content…
Cultural conflict is defined in the readings as a type of conflict that arrises when different cultural norms clash. (Markos, 2017). Students were displaying attitudes of prejudice, violence, hate, discrimination, racism, intolerance and disrespect of one another solely because their cultures clashed. One day in class, Ms. Gruwell confiscates a racist and crude illustration depicting a black student in the class with lips that are stereotypically exaggerated. It was not until Ms. Gruwell introduced the horrors and evil of the Holocaust and the idea that those similar attitudes displayed were also contributing factors to the Holocaust that made the student’s start to see things in a new perspective. She explains that racist illustrations like that one she had found, are similar ways people used to isolate and stereotype Jews during the Holocaust. This scene of the film is particularly pivotal because her student’s start to demand that she would never be able to understand their hardships as minorities. Ms. Gruwell negates her student’s experience and their perception of death and respect as minority groups to comparing the experience and oppression Jews felt during the Holocaust. She emphasizes that just because society says her student’s do not matter or could not succeed based on their culture, does not mean they have to fall victim to it. Each student matters and their lives matter and she …show more content…
(Markos, 2017). Each student in the class, as well as Ms. Gruwell, was subject to be defined as disabled simply because of a misunderstanding of cultures. In the readings, Black Ants and Buddhists, Ms. Cowhey describes the challenge of teaching students who come from cultural norms or a culture that is different than hers. Ms. Cowhey approaches the challenge by educating herself and incorporating diverse perspectives into her lesson plans that would pertain to many students, “I found it was better to be proactive, honest, and humble enough to admit I wasn’t confident about how to handle it than to bank on a strategy of avoidance.” (Cowhey, 2006. P. 197).This is the approach Ms. Gruwell took, she took the task head on. Instead of just doing the bare minimum of try to teach what she is supposed to, Ms. Gruwell actively abandoned all the teaching practices she had and adapted her lessons based on her specific students needs and what would connect with them. She knew that the only way to effectively teach these students, she needed to first connect with these students and understand their culture and diverse backgrounds. In order to connect with the students, she chose books and stories that dealt with similar backgrounds as her students that were relatable to