Log #4

The Freedom Writers Diary 138/280 pages
Author: Erin Gruwell

Originally, I knew this book because my senior high school teacher recommend its adapted movie to our class. But despite the high recommendation from the teacher, I have not took a look at it until now I am really obsessive with the education approaches.

In the background of the book, the society filled with many problems, such as racial issues and violence and drugs. People in such an aggressive era, especially those in different color couldn't have the entire rights as a human being. Therefore, the government started to adopt a new policy, trying to make a difference with the nowadays society. A class existed as a laboratory mouse. Many students, who were deemed to be uneducated and troublesome, gathered in the class. In addition, the feature of the new policy, unlike the usual way, students were assigned to a class without judging by their colors. This was the teacher that had to do her utmost to revive those students' life 'cause she knew those students were considered to be dead, and that those students didn't do the way that the public thought. The biggest problem was that they didn't receive the proper resources in education. What they lacked was to be saw, to be trusted, to be regarded as normal kids.

I don't know do you think a teacher can affect a student deeply in a good or bad way. My answer is YES, and I won't never change the answer. When I read this book, I start to reflect on my life, especially in junior high school. Every time after school, it was not weird to see some students smoking outsides school and riding in the street as only 15-year-old teenagers. Their night movement was more of a amazement than you thought. You can call them stray children or just simply gangs. Having fights and taking drugs seemed to be their routine like other people would eat and sleep. Soon after their reputation preceded them, other "normal" students were informed by teachers, "Do NOT get along with those notorious students." From then on, those bad kids were in the hell and it was not a teacher's business. A teacher's business was to keep other student far away from something bad according to their speech. All I could see in that time was that no one helped those kids and I could do nothing but stay away from them.

Believe or not, they were not really bad actually. If they could meet the teacher in this book, their life could be changed thoroughly. If there was a teacher willing to spend time with those students listening their inner thoughts, perhaps the one wouldn't saw them as a lost cause anymore, and tragedy could be prevented beforehand. Once I got acquainted with two students of the gangs. As far as I was understood, their family were the significant cause for them. I am not searching for excuses to make amends for their behaviors. Instead, their family didn't give sufficient concerns to them. Some of them were live in a single-parent family. Some had suffered something really bad and in turn change their life; Meanwhile as a ordinary kid, like me and you, was enjoying dinner in Mom's love.

Little can I change the phenomenon, but I still hope that one day I can raise people's awareness of this issue. We don't have the right to give up on any people because we all know that a person's potentiality is infinite.