Stand and Deliver is a classic American drama movie that was produced in 1988 based on the story of a devoted high school teacher who worked against all odds to emerge victorious in what seemed to be an impossible mission. Jaime Escalante had left his career in engineering so that he could pursue a new career as a high school teacher. As fate would have it, he is assigned to a notorious school that is famous for gangs, drugs, indiscipline, and dropouts. He finds that teaching at Garfield high school is one of the most challenging tasks he has ever encountered but he still does not give up on his students, who he believes has the potential to make it in life. The school is at the brink of losing its accreditation because the results over the past couple of years have been extremely low. Escalante makes it his mission to ensure that his students excel. He makes use of offbeat teaching methods as well as antics and humor to motivate his students who come from low-income households. Most of them are Latinos who belong to gangs and drug crews and as such, getting them to see the importance of working hard in school proves to be a very hard task. Jaime observes that the prevailing socioeconomic circumstances deter the students from achieving their full potential and believes that with the proper guidance and tuition, they can actually pass. The school administration grudgingly agrees to approve his calculus class and pressure builds up. He devotes all his time to teach the students over the summer breaks and after school and against all odds, they sit for the Advanced Calculus exams and pass.
From the book, Ballantine, Hammack & Stuber (2017 notes that social stratification plays a very important role as far as the education system is concerned. He believes that it is very important for individuals to note that the organization of individuals within the society determines the status, class, and access to income, wealth and power. An analysis of Stand and Deliver shows that there is a clear distinction in the way the sociological theory is used to explain distinct aspects of social interactions and how they are used to influence the prepositions and of a person. The theory is used to explain why children from the Hispanic neighborhood used to post low grades and why the school was on the verge of losing its accreditation. As the movie unfolds, it becomes evident that the theory can be used to explain why this phenomenon (high rates of drug use, gangs, and school dropouts). The movie provides a very good example of this theory because there are a number of factors that have contributed to this sociological trend over the past years in the school and all these come to light as one watches it. By analyzing the theory from its basic perspective, it is obvious that there is a solid relationship between the aspect of students failing in class and their exposure and involvement in drug abuse, crime, and other illegal activities. It also goes without saying that children raised in different social classes have different material realities and these realities impact their educational outcomes ( Ballantine, Hammack & Stuber, 2017 ).
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Question 2
A good example can be seen in the neighborhood where the existence of gangs has promoted violence and threatened the peace of its residents. For instance, in the film, there is a scene where students are chased through the school’s hallway by a person who was trying to hit them with a chain. The fact that such an incident can occur in school premises shows how unsafe it is for learning. In normal schools, such incidences are usually very rare and their likelihood of occurring is usually minimal. “It is clear the social class differences exist in childhood socialization, and that these differences differentially equip children for school success” ( Ballantine, Hammack & Stuber, 2017) . The social class of a student in Garfield High school is very different from that of a student in a school in a good neighborhood. In the former, concentration in class is very difficult because the environment does not facilitate learning.
Another good example from the film can be seen from how most of the students struggle on a daily basis to deal with the difficulties of their family life, neighborhoods and having to grow up in pitiful conditions. The financial status of most families in the film is very low, and as such, children have to struggle in life from the time they are born. They have to understand that they cannot get access to some necessities and luxuries of life because their parents cannot afford these. In addition to this, some families are too messed up, with the parents being involved in lives of crime and drug abuse. Children of such parents end up in gangs and drug cartels because this is the only way of life they understand. According to Ballantine Hammack & Stuber (2017) , students from privileged families do not succeed in school because they are naturally gifted, but because they have access to cultural capital and this is normally matched to the expectations of the education system. The implication of this statement is that the financial status of a child’s family will directly influence their performance in school, and this is why students from Garfield High school used to fail. Cultural capital in this context refers to symbolic, non-economic assets that facilitate or promote social mobility and success in school and the workplace (). It is through primary socialization that children will end up in the same social class as their parents.
The rate of drug use, involvement in crime and lack of cultural capital negatively influenced education in Garfield high school. Escalante has a very hard time teaching the students because they have not been brought up well and as such, they are very rebellious. At the beginning of his new career, he receives constant threats from the students so that he can quit his attempt to teach them, but he is relentless in his efforts to make them succeed. It is imperative to note that the children only passed because Escalante understood that the socialization theory influenced the education system in the school. He saw something that other teachers could not see, potential and the need to give special attention to the students by taking time to understand them and using different teaching techniques to reach out to his class. Without this understanding, the social factors in the neighborhood would still have continued to negatively impact the education of the students in Garfield high school because that is how the socialization theory works.
References
Ballantine, J. H., Hammack, F. M., & Stuber, J. M. (2017). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis .
