Anna Backens - Freedom Writers

The film Freedom Writers, teaches many lessons about the importance of forgiveness. The movie is set in the later 1990's and it profiles the hatred in a Long Beach, California high school, among teen gangs. Hatred has risen largely due to the racism of teens. The gangs are made up of mostly Asians, Hispanics, and blacks and each of the gangs have grown up hating eachother because of wrongdoings to each other in the past. A middle-class, white teacher, Erin Gruwell, who is a new teacher is full of enthusiasm for her class comes to teach at the high school and soon realizes that the bitterness and hatred has even to led to the students difficulty in education; if they can't stand the person sitting next to them because of their race, they don't want to be in the same classroom as the person. Therefore Gruwell works hard to figure out how to bond the group. She goes through several days of traditional teaching and realizes that the education of her students won't excel unless she can understand their hatred and help them come together in communitas. She initiates a game where she draws a line in the middle of her class and the students have to step on the line if her directions apply to them. She tells the students to step on the line if they have had a relative killed in a gang-related incident and then asks them if they have had friends killed as well. As the game progresses, more and more of the students realize that they are not alone and that others bear the same hardships and hurts that they do. After several weeks of breaking down the racial barriers, Gruwell, is able to create an environment of friendship and community within the classroom. The students start to act like family to each other and Gruwell herself begins to learn more about her students than she ever thought she would. For Gruwell, her role, was to help the students address the issues that they never talked about. Her character helped them to become better students and more enlightened individuals on moral issues, like hate and love. She was also inspirational for the students because she saw value in them when other teachers did not. Interestly, one of the honors students in another class asked to be moved into Gruwell's class because she saw how much fun they were having together.

Even though the term "forgiveness" is never mentioned in dialogue in the film, it is shown in actions between the students. ThAlso, the students realize that when they start to work together, they get more accomplished than do as individuals. The movie depicts the reality of how violence can errupt from hatred and create an atmosphere of hostility among social groups, creating division. The Eccliastes 4:12 principle is also supported by claims made in the movie how a "three-strand chord is not easily broken". Forgiveness allowed for the teens to become more successful students and taught them how having prejudices cause destruction in life and keep them from loving.