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