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Issue Date: July 17, 2005
DVD Insider
Today's lesson
The Education secretary previews the "we don't need no education" classic "Blackboard Jungle."
Margaret Spellings thinks teachers should study this '50s film, recently released on DVD.
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THE PLOT: Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) is a new teacher at inner-city North Manual High in this 1955 film. He hopes to sculpt lives but instead runs head-on into violence, gangs and cynicism.
INSIDER'S CREDENTIALS: Margaret Spellings, U.S. secretary of Education, was one of the architects of the No Child Left Behind Act.
OVERVIEW: "This movie was actually before my time, but the issues still are compelling, about character, race, discipline and teachers -- who they are and what they contribute."
Scene 3: If You Can Handle Them -- A veteran teacher advises Dadier: Don't be a hero, and never turn your back on the class.
"I think that's practical advice. On the 'don't be a hero' side, that implies, Relate to the kids. Get down with them. And don't ever forget you're the one in charge. Be an authority figure, but don't be so on a pedestal."
Scene 18: Broken Records -- Students destroy a teacher's precious record collection.
"[The worst thing I've seen in a school was] at my middle-class, integrated school in southwest Houston. I remember being a seventh-grader in the late '60s and feeling terrified, seeing weapons and drugs and having to go to the bathroom between classes and finding a bunch of the bad kids smoking."
Scene 26: Knifepoint -- A student pulls a knife in class and threatens Dadier.
"I can sense this even now. When I go to a high school you have a sense that any minute something could happen. That was embodied in this scene. When you put thousands of teenagers in one place with fewer adults, anything could happen."
-- Melanie D.G. Kaplan
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