AboutMel Expertise A moviegoer for fifty years, I will attempt to answer practically anything that deals directly with films (silents and talkies), directors, actors etc.....
If you can take the trouble to ask it...then I will spend the time to try and answer it.
Experience Ex-Cinema Manager and Film Publicist with a lifelong love of movies/
Expert: Mel Date: 3/24/2008 Subject: trying to find a film about a teacher in a school in the Bronx
Question Hi I'm trying to fin the title of a film I saw years ago. It is about a class in a school of the Bronx. It is about a teacher who get a class of very bad children, they don't want to study and they are told they are stupid. They get very bad grades but then this teacher is fighting to get them to study and it works. The class get A to a test, but the schoolboard does not believe the classmates and the teacher and he get fired. The class has to take the test again and all of them get A. In the end all the students stand on their tables or chairs because they want him back.
Answer Hello Helle,
There were several films made throughout the 80's and 90's with this same basic storyline, and it is very difficult to name the one that you "saw years ago" (some idea of a year would have been useful). However, the two that seem closest to it are as follows......
"STAND AND DELIVER" (1988), starring Edward James Olmos as Jaime A. Escalante, the new mathematics teacher in a school in a Hispanic neighbourhood of East Los Angeles. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students. Despite concerns and skepticism of other teachers, who feel that "you can't teach logarithms to illiterates", Escalante nonetheless develops a program in which his students can rise to take AP Calculus by their senior year. After receiving their scores, they are overwhelmed to find that they have all passed, a feat done by few in the state. Later that summer, a shocking accusation is made. The Educational Testing Service calls into question the validity of their scores. Outraged by the implications of cheating, Escalante feels that the racial and economic status of the students has caused the ETS to doubt their intelligence. In order to prove their mathematical abilities and worth to the school, to the ETS, and to the nation, the students agree to retake the test at the end of the summer, months after their last class. With only a day to prepare, there is high stress to show that they have what it takes to make something of themselves. After the retake, these students truly stand and deliver when they all pass the exam again, showing they deserve all they have achieved.
"LEAN ON ME" (1989), with Morgan Freeman as Principal Joe Clark who sets out to clean up a downtrodden, crime-filled, East Side High School in Paterson, New Jersey. His unorthodox methods enrage some of the students, parents, and local residents. At one stage he even chains up the school doors to keep the drug dealers out and the good students in. Clark is arrested for conspiracy to violate the fire safety code, but his students rise up to demonstrate outside the high school. He is released from the local jail in the hope that he can appease them, but as he is addressing them, news arrives that the students have, as a group, passed the minuimum basic skills test, thereby saving the school, and making a hero of Principal Clark, whose unconventional methods have saved the day.
