Vice used to be fairly good before it went all culture war and became boring and predictable doing what most other media is doing with a left-wing slant. They used to be more unique as a media company. This is from when Vice was good yet still focused on drugs and different cultures. This is about Black and Hispanic students in a school for troubled kids in Chicago. First episode is great and reminds me of one of the greatest documentaries ever made called Hoop Dreams. About ghetto kids close to crime and unemployment. They dislike school as they are not great at it. They shout in class. We see a fight in a bus where all kids join in. A camera records it all so it's later used against them. A kid visits his father in prison while he is serving a 60 year sentence. First time seeing him in 8 years yet they both look like they don't care either way. The kid has low IQ and doesn't have much to say. The dad tries to educate him, but via speech I don't think you can do much.
A 14 year old Hispanic girl often sleeps over in other places not telling her mom so we see her mom search for her. Obviously as the camera follows the kids they know what is up and may change their behavior based on it. Many of the kids have mental issues or look off. So they are bullied as it's an easy way to have some fun for the other kids who need an excuse to not focus on school.
There are quite a few interviews with parents, teachers, a principal, a priest, a former gangster who is now a boxing coach. It's pretty unstructured. I like the first episode as it tried to stay focused on the story. The remaining 7 episodes are very short and focus on interviews. So there is not much story and we rely on low IQ kids to tell their story. Which frankly is hard to understand much of the time. The adults, even the teachers, are not smart either. So yet again they can't really clearly explain what they experience or what they feel. They all have thick ghetto-slang accents and mumble everything making some stories very confusing. We see students lash out and fight and the teachers be overly aggressive and irritated. So it's a two-way street where teachers don't know how to keep calm and make the kids calm down too. Teachers like the mental fights and the power they have in school. At the same time the kids have such huge mental issues that you can't really make them become school focused anyhow even with good teachers. The best outcome is just to not let them end up on the street. But it's a lot of money and work they can easily do. While school is way too hard for them. So they don't have many alternative options. They can't becomes CEOs, doctors, or professors.
Since the show only follows the kids for days you don't really get any endings. Just a short look at how they are doing right now. It's now 8 years later so all these kids are adults with either good or bad outcomes and it would be interesting to see how they are doing. Apparently some the students we know about it's prostitution, ran away from home, and in a gang and getting shot multiple times. So not ideal for the few cases we have rumors about. I don't think there are great success stories here. Women can marry rich and become stay at home moms. The men can get low-level jobs. That's it. It can be boring for many people and not a choice they want to make. When it's hard to focus you don't want the most boring job in the world.
