Directed by Alan Raymond and Susan Raymond
Home Box Office
June 2008
This documentary has already been dissected in several places, but it's almost two hours long so there's plenty more to say about it. Though it offers a few uplifting scenes, Hard Times at Douglass High is mostly a picture of failure and despair in one Baltimore school. The year before it was filmed, only 10 percent of Douglass students passed the Maryland state English exam and only one percent passed in algebra. By the end of their freshman year, 50 percent of the school's ninth graders will either drop out, move, or stop attending. That's despite the fact that the school's faculty and staff spend inordinate time and resources on these freshmen. For instance, we meet Audie, a ninth-grader who shows not an iota of interest in his class work or respect for the school's employees but nonetheless monopolizes their time. Finally, enough is enough and the administrators kick him out--but only after they have wasted untold hours chasing him through the hallways between classes. We also see the uninspiring workings of a city-mandated Saturday "attendance court," which parents of chronically-truant students (mostly freshmen, the principal tells us) are required to attend. The students sit there dumbly as their parents (or parent, more often) express either mild concern, helpless despair, or outrage at the school. In no single case does one get the feeling that attendance will improve. Again, the clearest conclusion one draws from the scene is that a tremendous amount of time and attention is being devoted to the students least likely to benefit from it. Of course, one senses, too, as another reviewer (and Fordham staffer) points out in his review, that regardless of how they spend their time, many of Douglass's employees are simply ineffective in their jobs. These are just a couple of the factors that make times hard at Douglass. Watch the film yourself and see more of them revealed.
