The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Love Thy Neighborhood. This is one of the teacher movie asides that provide a companion commentary to each section of the book. Enjoy!
LIGHTS, CAMERA, EDUCATION: The Blackboard Jungle
The Nazis had been obliterated. So too the imperial Japanese. The Communists loomed, but Eisenhower had successfully downgraded the conflict from an escalating Korean War to a professionally managed, remote Cold War. The Americans of the 1950s were thus freed to turn their energies fully to the challenges and opportunities of the homefront. Postwar prosperity was in full bloom, record numbers of men were attending and graduating college (thanks in large part to the GI Bill) and a historic baby boom was underway.
Not everything was coming up roses, however. Though the Great Depression was in the rear view mirror, poverty remained the grinding reality for a significant segment of America, as Michael Harrington would argue to momentous effect in 1962’s The Other America. There was also the alarming rise of juvenile delinquency, especially in urban areas, captured memorably in West Side Story (first introduced on Broadway in 1957 and adapted as a film in 1961). Coinciding with the in-migration of African Americans and Puerto Ricans to the big urban hubs, these trends sparked an intense public interest in solving social problems.
The dominant spirit behind this new social focus was not the radical zeal of the revolutionary (that would come later) but the can-do spirit of American optimism. The same people that had survived or defeated the worst horrors of the 20th century and melded the descendants of the warring peoples of Europe into a unified nation could clear a few final hurdles. And the early thinking was that the usual All-American heroes would be the ones to do it. For instance, Disney’s first big step into contemporary social issues was to send Fess Parker, the star of their new smash hit Davy Crockett show (1954-1955) and a product of the GI Bill, on a goodwill tour of American cities. His focus was spreading his cornpone wisdom to the troubled youth of the day.
The same spirit animated the film Blackboard Jungle (1955), but through a grittier lens more appropriate for the increasingly rough-and-tumble world of urban education. It provides a valuable snapshot of contemporary American attitudes to the emerging challenges of race relations, academic apathy and rebellion against moral and social authority in the urban public school systems. Its clunky but confident combination of social realism, sensationalism, idealism and unapologetic patriotism make it a sometimes preposterous, sometimes stirring tribute to 1950s America.
Starring Glenn Ford, a Hollywood workhorse in the 1950s for his convincing portrayals of the fiercely determined, fundamentally decent American everyman, Blackboard Jungle follows the struggles of a first year teacher in an urban high school. Ford’s Richard Dadier is a soldier readjusting to home life and chooses teaching as a way to support his Baby Booming young family and make use of his new college degree. An idealist, he relishes the challenge and opportunity of teaching English in an inner-city school, initially dismissing the bitter cynicism of some of his more experienced colleagues.
But the ice-cold slaps of (sensationalized) reality come in rapid succession, pushing his good-natured idealism to its breaking point. First he breaks up an attempted rape of a teacher and roughs up the teenage perpetrator. Instead of garnering him respect, that act wins him the loathing of the local teen gang. They ambush and beat him up, terrorize a similarly idealistic colleague out of the profession and begin a campaign of harassment that reaches his pregnant wife.
All the while his classroom teeters on the edge of total chaos. Racial slurs fly between whites, blacks and Hispanics. On the rare occasions when students don’t make a mockery of his English lessons, language and cultural barriers do. The one sincerely smiling, attentive face in the crowd belongs to the kid with a “66 IQ.” Adding to Dadier’s growing frustration is what he suspects to be sabotage from Gregory, the intelligent, charismatic black student (played by Sidney Poitier) who seems to be behind the sullen rebellion.
These overwhelming challenges threaten to break Dadier’s idealism, his self-confidence and even the domestic tranquility of his nuclear family. It’s not just the kids’ but his own Americanism that is at stake. In a low moment, he almost forsakes it all, barely restraining himself from tarring Gregory with one of the same racial epithets he had earlier denounced. But neither Dadier nor his optimism ever fully break.
Slowly, painfully, he makes progress in earning the respect and loyalty of his students. His first step in the right direction comes when he volunteers to organize the Christmas program. This exposes him to Gregory’s sober and reverent leadership of a small caroling choir. This discovery of Christian unity forms a basis of trust that eventually leads to a pact between the two: Dadier won’t allow himself to be bullied into quitting if Gregory doesn’t quit on his education. In a revealing display of the ethic of the time, Dadier convinces Gregory not to allow racial prejudice to become an excuse for failing to reach his potential, instead pushing him to emulate those who had overcome.
With Gregory’s charismatic support, Dadier’s conquest of the classroom is all but complete. But the most hardened delinquent element, led by the white thug Artie (played by Vic Morrow), won’t bend to order. In the climactic confrontation that closes the movie, Artie pulls a knife on the unarmed Dadier, trusting that the rest of the class won’t rat on him. Dadier is outnumbered and outmatched, but the intervention of his students saves the day. First Gregory subdues Artie’s evil accomplice. Then, in an act of charmingly clumsy symbolism, the 66 IQ smiler charges Artie and knocks him to the ground with the business end of the American flag pole.
Blackboard Jungle’s sensationalist elements overstated the contemporary challenges of the urban public school even as its bright-eyed idealism undersold the obstacles to overcoming them. Still, it offered a prescient preview of the coming crisis in American education and society. Further, the remedies it proffered, namely the dogged persistence of flawed but fundamentally decent community servants deeply committed to American values, flowed from the very real strengths of 1950s America.
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