In recent years, many Indian films have a fairly good reputation, and one of the most important reasons is that these Indian films boldly and sincerely depict real problems that are closely related to ordinary people.
For example, the gap between rich and poor, class differentiation, gender discrimination, domestic violence, etc., and one of the most common is probably the problem of education.
If you're familiar with Amir Khan, you'll remember how Stars on Earth and Three Fools Bollywood reflect the chronic disease of The Indian educational system. If your memory is not too bad, you should remember the educational injustice shown in "The Starting Line".
The equally well-received "Hiccup Teacher" released today can be seen as a kind of continuation of "Starting Line".
Hiccup Teacher is a bit like a remake of the classic inspirational film Call Me Number One, based on Brad Cohen's true story, and also purchased the rights to adapt Cohen's biographical novel.
In The Starting Line, we know that the Indian government, for some nominal educational equity, mandates that all schools in India allocate a quota of places to children in slums. In "Hiccup Teacher", there is such a special class composed of slum children - class 9f.
With only 14 children in the 9f class, it seems out of place in a high school with a long history and a first-class atmosphere. Teachers don't welcome them, classmates despise them, and they themselves go from being mischievous little by little to giving up on themselves. Until, the protagonist of the film, "Hiccup Teacher", Naina, becomes their class teacher.
The reason why Naina is called "Hiccup Teacher" is because she always "burps" involuntarily, but in fact it is not really hiccups, but some strange sounds like hiccups. Because of the incurable Tourette syndrome, her nerves twitch uncontrollably, making these strange noises.
It goes without saying that this strange disease, which is unlikely to be heard by others, has plagued Naina since she was a child. When she was studying, she was ridiculed by her classmates as a "monster", and when she grew up, she was a strange coffee who couldn't find a job.
It is precisely because she has known the pain of discrimination since she was a child that Naina can better understand the situation of the students in the 9th class. So, even though the principal and the other teachers at the school disapproved, Naina began her own transformation of the 9f class.
Step by step, she won the trust of her children, helped them build self-confidence, and let go of their preconceptions and fears. At the same time, with a set of novel experiential teaching methods, the knowledge of mathematics, physics, chemistry and other disciplines is integrated into daily life.
She gradually began to change these students who were stubborn in the eyes of others, but it was still difficult to change the way other teachers looked at these students. In the eyes of many people represented by Mr. Vadira, the students of the 9th class will always be a bunch of waste materials that are impossible to become qualified students.
The class led by Mr. Vadira is the 9a class, which is also known as the so-called "top class".
The students of Class 9a are in every way the complete opposite of Class 9F. They come from excellent backgrounds, have excellent character and learning, and strive for the glory of the school, and receive the school's commendations and medals on the stage every year.
The existence of the 9a and 9f classes is a vivid portrayal of the huge class differences, and it is also a proof of naked discrimination. The so-called good students and bad students are defined and characterized early in the morning from the moment they enter school, and the later learning time in school is nothing more than to make people further strengthen this existing cognition.
A similar scene, I think we are not strangers.
Although our schools should not dare to openly set up a 9f-style "bad student class", most of our schools have a "9a class". Even in any ordinary class, good learning is always treated with all kinds of attention, while poor grades are gradually allowed to be free and disregarded.
The first important concept put forward in "Hiccup Teacher" is that "there are no bad students, only bad teachers".
The so-called "poor students" are actually the result of teachers who are not responsible enough to treat students with a set of existing stereotypes. Or in other words, how the teacher perceives him, what kind of student he will be.
At a young age when everything has all kinds of plasticity, if even the teacher responsible for teaching sermons cannot really treat and treat their students equally, some students will do some unruly things because of fear, rebellion, inferiority, and so on, that is, normal things.
When they make mistakes, if we put on another hat of "bad students" and then use a cold system to limit and punish them, we may fall into the most common but terrible vicious circle.
If it were not for The arrival of Naina, under the guidance of Teacher Vadira's concept, the children of the 9th class would probably only be dropped out of school and then struggled in the quagmire of society.
The second important concept put forward in "Hiccup Teacher" is that in education, the establishment of character is far more important than the dissemination of knowledge.
Unfortunately, in reality, most people subconsciously regard grades as an indicator of knowledge acquisition (although in fact it is not entirely the case), and pay more attention to the character of students, but always consciously or unconsciously ignore the character of students.
There are two scenes in the film that are the most touching, and they are particularly prominent in their performance.
The first was when the students of the 9f class destroyed the school's model of participating in the competition, and Mr. Vadira asked the participants to stand up on their own, except for the two children who actually participated in the destruction, everyone else stood up one by one.
This scene is undoubtedly reminiscent of the classic scene in The Dead Poetry Society, where all the students stand at their desks and respond to The Kiding, played by Robin Williams, with this silent gesture. Keating is a teacher who "teaches almost nothing to his students" except for character building.
In this scene of "Hiccup Teacher", for the first time, the students of the 9th class have such a strong collective identity, and begin to understand each other's support and responsibility.
The second touching scene is at the end of the film, when Teacher Vadira discovers that a "top student" of the 9a class he brought has forged evidence of cheating in the 9f class, he openly takes the crime to himself in front of all the teachers and students of the school.
The significance of this speech is far from just returning the innocence of the 9th class in front of everyone, but it means that Vadira, who has always stood in opposition to Naina, has finally become a teacher like Naina.
If he had previously believed it, he should have made the facts public, and then punished or even expelled the student in class 9a according to the rules. But he used his stigmatized first move to save, more precisely, truly educate the fake student.
Punishment is always easier, while education is much harder.
Seeing this ending, we will understand that Hiccup Teacher is no longer just a film designed to reflect the Indian education system, but a more universal and profound film that explores the nature of education.
What it dispels is no longer the discrimination between the Indian middle class and the slums, but the set of evaluation standards and concepts that every child's teachers and elders take for granted when looking at their children.
It reminds us of how we were educated, and then it makes us think about how we should educate our next generation.
This article is an exclusive article of [Movie Wanted].
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