Freedom Writers Movie Analysis

The film Freedom Writers is based on a true story and set in Long Beach, California in the mid-1990s. The film focuses on an English teacher named Erin Gruwell. She is a white teacher who is assigned to teach a class of students, primarily made up of students of different colors and races. In the beginning, she cannot grab a hold of them, because many of the students are a part of rival gangs or induce racial tension between each other. Added to her struggle, the other teachers and faculty are highly racist to the students and feel they do not deserve a higher education. However, once she starts to teach the class about the Holocaust and the stories of the victims, the class begins to show interest in learning, as they relate to the struggles of the victims. Her tactics persuade the students to tell their stories and come together as a family, built on trust and love, rather than hate that had consumed them before.

The movie has a few examples of operant conditioning; this is primarily within the first hour of the movie. Specifically, an example of the operant and the reinforcement situation. This is evident in the first scene in which, Erin meets the class, the class is unfocused, not caring about Erin or what she must teach them. Her student, Jamal, begins to crack jokes and act like a class clown, being the operant, thus leading the rest of the class to giggle along and cause a ruckus, which is the reinforcement. A similar example of this in the film, is later when a Latino student makes a racist drawing of Jamal and passes it around class. In this situation, everyone knows what the drawing is and how it is insulting to Jamal, and they start laughing and giggling. This is another example of the operant conditioning because, in context of the film, many of the students do not like each other, they are willing to laugh at each other’s expenses. As stated before, the students are a group of people varying in different races, also in conflict with each other. This can also be applied as an example of cultural differences in attitudes and beliefs, as many of these students behave in a way, they feel they must, while also not entirely having a sense of their identity yet. This type of operant conditioning typically does not happen for the rest of the movie after this point, but this is a situation that happens a lot in other schools and classes.

In the same scene, where Jamal is targeted with a racist drawing, Erin begins to argue and chew out the students who are laughing and being disrespectful. She does not attack them, but she puts their ideas to shame by yelling at them, which causes some of them to cry out of anger and confusion of their situation. As most of these students are part of gangs and have a life of crime behind them, she essentially tells them that if they continue to normalize this lifestyle within themselves, nobody will care when they die, because they would leave behind a sense of hate towards everyone else. This is an example of negative respondent conditioning because she argued with the students and put them on the spot. Though, while I, do not know if this situation played out as this in real life, if a teacher in our time was to react the same way Erin does, that teacher would likely be fired. This is one of only a few times in the film in which she must deal with misbehavior from students in a certain way, maybe not the correct way, due to the fact that another student may not have appreciated the things and the way she was talking to them. However, she begins to implement positive respondent conditioning once they begin to learn about the Holocaust by placing the students into a daily routine. She has them playing games, reading, and analyzing books, and Erin induces a sense of generalization. She manages to get the students to cooperate and progress with each other, removing the racial tension and conflict from one another.

Towards the end of the film, the students are nearing the end of their sophomore year, and they become worried that they may not learn with Erin again, as she is not allowed to teach juniors. This is a case of extinction, because, while ultimately, she is not separated from them, they have become used to her methods of teaching, and refuse to learn from anyone else. Especially telling, because the rest of the teachers are racist and discriminatory; they do not care about these students. This is a typical situation that every student goes through, once they lose the teachings and familiarity of one teacher, the sense disappears from the mind, and it generally does not come back. In the case of Erin’s class, they never cared about school in this way, so they were not ready to move on to a new style of learning. 

As stated before, Erin’s students become motivated to learn of the Holocaust and Anne Frank because of the stories that the victims had to tell. They felt that they could relate to those stories, and Erin saw this and felt the need to teach them about it, seeing that many of them did not even know about it. In the case of most of the students, they have a motive which is a cross of mastery goals and failure-avoidance goals. They become motivated to do in Erin’s class because they genuinely want to improve their knowledge, but they are also afraid to fail, as some of the students early on have an idea of giving up and state, that if they did not become a big rapper or basketball player, then they would likely not be successful in any other profession. Much of this motivation comes from an internal locus of motivation, as the students genuinely begin using their skills and abilities to accomplish certain tasks and situations. There is an example of encouraging mastery goals later in the film, in which Erin gives a self-evaluation assignment, and one of her students gives himself a failing grade, feeling in himself that he deserved it. Erin then confronts him, somewhat aggressively, but not to intimidate him, she tells him she will not let him fail, and that he should not think of himself as less. This is a good example of her encouraging him to try harder because she is showing her students that she believes in them and she wants them to succeed, not just in school, but in life as well. 

The film has a few examples of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. One example is the use of belonging needs. As most of the students initially lived off hate and distaste for others, they eventually realized, once they came together and friends, all they needed was to be a part of something. Therefore, everyone begins to build up strong relationships and friendships with each other when it seemed impossible. The students also seem to exhibit esteem needs, as they want to be able to achieve grand things and gain recognition. This is evident when they manage to get Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank, to visit their school and tell her story of the Holocaust and the way they were treated. When one of the students tells her that she is his hero, she responds saying, “I am not a hero, you are the real heroes.” Referencing to the fact that they were willing to tell their stories, when no one else would, and they encouraged others, like Gies to do the same. The film also explores self-actualization, because the students begin to grow in themselves personally, and fulfill their achievements, as the epilogue states that most of the students went to college after high school, many of them being the first in their families. This affected their motivation by giving them the courage to come together as people, not separated by conflict.

Altogether now, the moral of Freedom Writers is that if we just come together as people and look at what we have in common, we could live as a better society. Personally, I feel the film is quite astonishing. It has a good message at the end of the day, and it makes me feel that we could all get along with each other and see things from the same point of view, if we try and work together. It is a film that most teenagers should see at least once in their lives. Freedom Writers is a film with a powerful message and a powerful conclusion.