The movie “Chalk” illustrated many of the concerns both John Gatto and Paolo Freire expressed in their writings. The movie its self is a staged documentary that gives a closer look into the lives of your seemly average high school teachers and faculty.
We meet Mr. Lowrey, a first year history teacher at Harrison high school. He has had absolutely no teaching experience in the past, and therefore, is completely clueless of what it takes to manage a classroom. There is a scene early in the movie where he is having his class read along to a passage written on the chalkboard. The class is obviously unenthused, unmotivated and just plain bored. In John Gattos article Againt School, he mentions the topic of boredom. Referring to when he was a high school teacher, Gatto says: “They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around”. Freier also speaks of this topic. He refers to teachers as “narrators”, and expresses that students are merely just objects of learning. “The contents” Freier says, “whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.” Students in Mr. Lowrey’s classroom were suffering from the same “narration sickness” Freire was speaking of.
Throughout the movie we see teachers desperately trying to be these power-tripping authority figures. In one scene, a student is running into math class just as the bell had stopped ringing. Ms. Webb, the gym coach, caught the student running into class, and then confronted his teacher on the fact that she did not punish him for being (only a few seconds) late. She ends up telling his teacher she is forcing the student to go to the office. This is an example how public schools are becoming more like jails than learning environments. John Gatto stated in his article “I had more than enough reason to think of our schools - with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers - as virtual factories of childishness.” I believe Gatto was explaining that with schools today being overly-strict, prison-type environments, where students are getting in trouble for every little thing- How can they ever possibly get ahead in life?
In a significant scene, Mr. Stroope, a teacher who is passionate, yet not completely adequate at teaching, confronts a student who has been using big words in class. “You use some big words I don’t understand” he told the student. He continues.. “Use words I can understand, try not to be as smart as me.” This scene was rather humorous to watch. But it was also an example of what Gatto was trying to convey when he quoted H.L. Mencken. “The aim (of public education)..is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.” Similarly, Freire states “The teacher knows everything, and the students know nothing.” Encouraging students to be incompetent seems to be part of the virtual plan of public schooling. A scary, and depressing thought.
Mr. Lowery, Having had no teaching experience, floats through class time teaching the curriculum without any creativity. He does not provide the students with exciting or encouraging lessons. In one scene, he has a confrontation with a student over a cellphone. The student storms out and says “You’re a horrible teacher.” Mr. Lowery fires back by shouting “You would know, you’re a horrible student!” In school, the students attitude, and eagerness to learn is a reflection on the teacher. In The Banking Concept of Education, Freire says “The teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students.” He goes onto talk about how it is the teacher’s job to regulate the way the students see and learn about the world. If we have teachers that are not confident and barley knowledgeable of their subject; and are always arguing with their class- of course students will not take them, or the work seriously. Gatto suggests in his article that a good policy in school would not be to regulate students to the point of ridiculousness, but rather to "encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight - simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then."
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