Detachment

This film should be required viewing for people involved in education. (It is on Netflix.) It's about a temporary teacher in a secondary school that is in complete and utter chaos, where the students are violent, abusive or abused, the headmistress is on notice, and no parent comes to parent teacher evening. Our teacher, Adrien Brody, has family problems of his own. His kindness to an underage streetwalker results in him becoming a surrogate parent to her.

The film is generally very depressing with our teacher seemingly the only beacon of hope. However, if you can get past the horror and gloom, which at times is difficult enough, the film is rewarding in the end. You will have to decide for yourself where solutions to the problems lie. It seemed to me that there was too much focus on exam results rather than education for life, but that is only one viewpoint.

Ossian