Fighting the Culture of Poverty

Robert C. Bulman's work called Hollywood Goes to High School, focuses on contemporary social issues within the school system. Chapter 3, titled "Fighting the Culture of Poverty" looks at how urban public school films celebrate utilitarian individualism. The idea is projected through Hollywood films that no matter what one's socio-economic status, race, or other cultural factors, an individual can succeed through hard work and achievements. This is tangled up with contradictions because the American individualism said to push students forward towards success requires a type of dependance. Hollywood simplifies the problems with urban public education and instead reflecting the ideals of middle-class society that an individual's morals are the main problem that can be fixed individually. In order to make it, the students must adopt middle-class values like hard-work and individual achievement. The problem with these films is that they ignore the various structural obstacles to success that can only be fixed structurally, rather than the individualized approach shown in urban school films. What Hollywood is neglecting to include in these social commentaries about urban public schools, is  the fact that individual effort is not the only factor determining success, but rather more of an issue of unequal funding, lack of employment in the inner-city, and culturally biased curricula. I am most bothered by the fact that these films are attempting to make a serious social message about real social problems in real schools much too easy to fix than they actually are. The problems projected through urban school films like Blackboard Jungle, are less about cultural values and result more from poor public housing, inadequate healthcare, and other conditions in the social structure. It is fascinating that Hollywood made urban school issues as easy as a change in action by the students. Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, "Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions" which is indicative of the pragmatic advice that would make urban school students become responsible and self-sufficient. Suburban middle-class is able to attain relief of anxieties  and responsibilities for the issues common to urban public schools by explaining poverty as the result of individual failure, which most certainly is not the case. This pedagogical fallacy can be explained through the several explanations offered by social science research that the performance of these lower-class students is a direct reflection of the opportunities awaiting them in the job market. A significant example of this is when Dadier, the teacher from Blackboard Jungle, tries to get one specific student, African American part-time mechanic, Miller, to go above and beyond what he thinks is possible. However, is it really possible? The question remains the same even after reading this chapter, will Hollywood ever get it right? And how negatively do the fallacies commonly found throughout urban school films affect the ideals of the average American and our idea of why there are so many students with so little drive to succeed?