BEFORE: This Labor Day, let's take a moment to appreciate the importance of hard-working teachers (if you can read this, thank a teacher). Especially since I don't know when Teachers' Day is. I had too many great teachers to list here, plus a couple duds, and then I had teachers who put me right to sleep. Literally. What the heck, shout-outs to all of them.
Linking from "O", Martin Sheen was also in the 2004 documentary "Tell Them Who You Are" with Sidney Poitier (last seen in "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner").
THE PLOT: Idealistic engineer-trainee and his experiences in teaching a group of rambunctious white high school students from the slums of London's East End.
AFTER: It's one thing to have an unruly student, but a whole class full of them? I suppose it must happen from time to time. The "unteachable" students are about as much of a trope as the incompetent Little League team or the hockey kids who can't skate very well. But the unteachable class is perhaps just waiting for the perfect teacher, the one who can get into their heads and take the time to care.
Mr. Thackeray arrives from Africa (he must have been home-schooled...) and takes a teaching job because there are no engineering positions available. If you're not a "people person", maybe teaching isn't for you. But after losing his cool a few times, he hits on the magic formula - treating the teens with the respect that they don't deserve. Plus, he's down with their rebellion, pointing out that every generation before has done some variation of the same thing.
He also turns the class time over to discussing whatever the teens what, which sort of seems like letting the inmates run the asylum. But I guess if that's what it takes to win their trust - but what if a few years later they find themselves wishing they'd studied math and science?
It's a bit of a bumpy road, but eventually he gets them to act respectably and they earn a trip to a museum, where they touch a lot of priceless wonders in a still-frame montage, and somehow manage to not get booted out. But even though he said he wasn't going to become friends with the kids and let them get under his skin, darn it all if that isn't exactly what happened.
Also starring Judy Geeson, Christian Roberts, Lulu
RATING: 5 out of 10 health insurance forms
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