A Town Torn Apart

It's a good movie, with a good direction, and also good actors. The major character is an idealistic teacher who becomes the principal of a problematic school. His ideas "torn the town apart". He brings some revolutionary changes in the teaching methods that searching for the intellectual side of the stundents. In the line of Dead Poets Society.

While an inspiring story, the film is a bit melodramatic; the protagonist is depicted as invariably correct, righteous, and without failings, while his adversaries are simpletons, egocentric or superstitious (or, in any event, simply wrong to oppose him).

On a more nitpicking matter, I found it ironic the producers went to the effort to put an accurate highway directional sign (showing NH State Highways 10 and 119 in the standard "Old Man in the Mountain" profile outline) in the town centre during the opening credits, yet many of the adult natives of the town and essentially all of the children spoke with decidedly uncharacteristic New Hampshire accents -- that is, they knew how to pronounce an "r" unlike most native New Hampshirites; a plurality of the children seemed to speak like hick southerners instead of hick yankees. That the town's name sign (in front of the highway sign in the opening credits) was excessively new and thus obviously a film prop was not as "fake" looking as the fact that the sign was in the town centre instead of at the town border where such signs are normally found.

The movie is very very good, especially because it is based on true story. I use it in my classes, on educational topics, and found that the students love it. I often look for another copy and can not find, which is a pity. The Israeli video libraries don't have it anymore. The movie can be used for many topics, like: traditional community versus a modern one, traditional methods versus progressive, attitudes to education, leadership in education etc. Last and not least - I use it to show the Deweey theory, and it is excellent. I wish I had more of similar movies to show I can use in educational classes; I'll be happy to get more names of movies.

The story here is over simplified, "progressive" vs. "traditional" teaching methods, but this movie is really more than its story. What's interesting here are the pedagogical techniques introduced by this principal as well as his apparent inability to sense "trouble" just around the corner. I was disappointed not to find this on vhs or dvd because I would love to use it in my educational leadership classes. It is quite thought provoking and lends itself well to class discussions.