Movies and School Conditions

The Aug. 3 article by Richard Lee Colvin, “3Rs: Rebels, Rock and Redemption,” on conditions in American public schools today, impressed me strongly, with his glossary of movies that spotlight growing violence and undisciplined behavior in high schools. I am a 70-year-old ex-teacher, who earned secondary teaching credentials at UC Irvine in 1974 and, because of a glut of teachers on the market then, could only get work as a substitute.

However, at one of Tustin’s high schools where I had frequently been called on to sub, I was thrown onto the asphalt by a boy who had repeatedly distracted my class from the doorway and windows and whom I had called the office to remove, only to have him back. I was leading him to the office again when he hurled me to the ground, ruining my clothes and causing bruises. Nevertheless, I asked that he be put on probation and suspended for a week rather than expelled, so that he could graduate the following month. In other schools I had a radio and art equipment stolen (I was an English/art teacher) and a cherry bomb set off in the classroom, and these were all in Orange County in the mid-’70s. Yet my rapport with students in my classes was rated excellent, and I was very gratified with the accomplishments of those who wanted and tried to learn.

I gave up trying to teach in public schools after the physical assault, and, as a lifelong artist and poet, resumed my career and taught private painting classes.

The deterioration of behavior in public schools is a reflection of deterioration in self-discipline in the population in general, and rooting out its evident cause, drugs, is, sadly apparently impossible.

JUNE B. PETERSON

Aliso Viejo

Colvin may have researched the films about teachers but he apparently did not research their production backgrounds or he would have known that the disclaimer was originally not part of the credits of “Blackboard Jungle.” It was added after conservative U.N. Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce objected to the film being shown at the Venice Film Festival because she felt it gave a negative image of the entire American educational system.

RICK MITCHELL

Los Angeles