Team colors: film explores racial divide in 1930s America.

Team colors: film explores racial divide in 1930s America. As reviewed by David Steiner The Great Debaters Viewed May 2008 In the 1930s, an all-black debate team from a small East Texascollege defeated the all-white debate team of the University of SouthernCalifornia The U.S. News & World Report ranked USC 27th among all universities in the United States in its 2008 ranking of "America's Best Colleges", also designating it as one of the "most selective universities" for admitting 8,634 of the almost 34,000 who applied for freshman admission (USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. ) in front of at least a thou sand people. The WileyCollege team was trained by English professor Melvin Tolson and anchoredby James Farmer Jr., later founder of the Congress of Racial Equality Congress of Racial Equality(CORE), civil-rights organization founded (1942) in Chicago by James Farmer. Dedicated to the use of nonviolent direct action, CORE initially sought to promote better race relations and end racial discrimination in the United States. .Take a little poetic license to replace USC with Harvard, and you have aclassic David-defeats-Goliath tale that is Denzel Washing ton'smovie The Great Debaters. Even this wordy summary, however, fails to give you the measure ofthe film: James Jr. was 14 years old at the time of the great debate andsomething of a child prodigy; his father, a minister and son of a slave,was the first African American to earn a doctorate in the state ofTexas. Tolson became an important poet (best known for his work"Harlem Gallery," a meditation on black America and the natureof art) and a courageous organizer of farm laborers across the colorline. And that's just the start: throw in the movie's powerfulreminders of brutal racism (a showdown over a run-over hog has oneriveted, a lynching becomes all the more powerful for its indirection Not direct. Indirection provides a way of accessing instructions, routines and objects when their physical location is constantly changing. The initial routine points to some place, and, using hardware and/or software, that place points to some other place. ),a love story, a meditation on the universality of D. H. Lawrence Noun 1. D. H. Lawrence - English novelist and poet and essayist whose work condemned industrial society and explored sexual relationships (1885-1930)David Herbert Lawrence, Lawrence andJames Joyce, a paean Paean(pē`ən), Paean was an epithet for Apollo, the healer. The paean, a hymn of praise to Apollo and often to other gods, was sung as a prayer for safety or deliverance at battles and other important occasions. to the dreams education makes possible, a debateabout Jesus as radical social reformer, and you begin to get the wholepicture. Denzel Washington as Tolson and Forest Whitaker as Dr. James FarmerSr. give strong performances, no more so than in a brief theologicalfencing match on the lessons of Jesus that is the memorable debate ofthe movie. The shimmering fury that underpins the direction and actingof the racially charged scenes scrapes the psyche of the viewer andalone is enough to recommend the film. Given the penumbral pe��num��bra?n. pl. pe��num��brae or pe��num��bras1. A partial shadow, as in an eclipse, between regions of complete shadow and complete illumination. See Synonyms at shade.2. riches, both historical and invented, thatdance around the core narrative of the film, the college debatesthemselves barely register: the positions are repeatedly stacked infavor of Wiley, the interactions of the team are merely sketched, anddeeper pedagogical questions of lasting importance remain buried. AsWiley College's own account made clear (it seems to have beendropped from their website), Tolson wrote out all the speeches for hisstudents, who then memorized them, and even provided rebuttals so histeam would be fully prepared. Some would call that instruction in theart of plagiarism Using ideas, plots, text and other intellectual property developed by someone else while claiming it is your original work. . But the movie only touches on the ethics ofprofessorial authorship. The debate topic is changed the night before toeliminate any advantage Wiley would otherwise have enjoyed fromTolson's work. Then and now, there is a fine line between debatecoaching and scripting. At the same time, Tolson challenged his teamthrough his considerable erudition, buttressed by contributions fromother faculty members. California State University Enrollment professor David Gold, on whose fineresearch I am relying here, makes it clear that Tolson'spedagogical techniques combined extensive memorization, acutesensitivity to issues of logic, appeals to the classics, exhortation tosocial activism, and demands for the highest level of academicperformance. Tolson, whose father was self-taught in Latin, Hebrew, andGreek, combined "racial pride, radical Christianity, philological phi��lol��o��gy?n.1. Literary study or classical scholarship.2. See historical linguistics.[Middle English philologie, from Latin philologia, love of learning rigor, and liberatory rhetoric that changed students' lives."In a phrase that E. D. Hirsch might embrace, Tolson evidently remarkedthat "the only difference between a bank manager and a janitor isvocabulary." James Farmer Jr. recalled being told to "finishWar and Peace" and then "tackle Darwin, Freud and Marx.Don't just taste them, chew them and digest them." There was, then, another movie hiding here--about a great, complex,bullying, courageous, immensely talented teacher, whose fiercediscipline, acute sense of social inequalities, firsthand encounterswith Jim Crow, and highly refined ear for language, literature, andculture would merit careful documentary treatment. But it is enough thathis singular life and work enticed Denzel Washington and Oprah Winfrey(the movie's producer) to place his story on the ever-hauntingcanvas of our fraught racial history, and to remind us of the constantstruggle to summon education as the midwife of what we can only hope isa more equitable future. As for debating itself, the movie highlights the skills of academicresearch, of memorization, of elocution, of logical thought, and ofteamwork that together make a compelling case for the educational valueof formal debate (for more on the value of debate for education, see"Intellectual Combat," school life, page 88). Schooled as Iwas in the English form of debating--focused on persuasion, on speedyand sharp repartee rep��ar��tee?n.1. A swift, witty reply.2. Conversation marked by the exchange of witty retorts. See Synonyms at wit1. , on humor and the ability to move an audience--Iwould add that combining American and British debating would make for aneven richer educational experience. David Steiner is dean of the School of Education at Hunter College,CUNY CUNY City University of New York , and former director of arts education at the National Endowmentfor the Arts National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)Independent agency of the U.S. government that supports the creation, dissemination, and performance of the arts. It was created by the U.S. in Washington, D.C.