One student raised a hand. “What’s the Holocaust?”
In their sophomore year, their journals became a book: The Freedom Writers Diary . In their junior year, they all passed the Advanced Placement English exam—a first for any “at-risk” class at Wilson High. In their senior year, every single one of them graduated. Many were the first in their families to do so. They went on to college, to law school, to teaching, to social work. the freedom writers
Erin was stunned. She realized these students, hardened by gang violence and systemic neglect, were living in the trenches of their own war but knew nothing of the ones that came before. So she put away The Scarlet Letter and Great Expectations . Instead, she brought in rap lyrics and compared them to the poetry of the Bosnian conflict. She confiscated a diary from a girl who had been beaten and read an excerpt from The Diary of Anne Frank . One student raised a hand
On her first day, Erin was greeted with a middle finger. The second day, a spitball. The third, a full-blown race war in her classroom. She learned that the only thing uniting her students was their contempt for authority. In their senior year, every single one of them graduated
The final lesson of the Freedom Writers is this: No one is unteachable. Everyone has a story. And sometimes, the pen truly is mightier than the sword.