Elizabeth Cutter , a former teaching colleague of mine and a teacher educator today, kindly agreed to let me share her recent reflection about a 7th/8th grade literacy classroom she observed last week. She offers it as evidence that "Good teaching about the Constitution is still happening in public schools," even in the face of Orwellian threats of cameras in classrooms to monitor teachers and similar concerns about student privacy. If you read all the way to the end, as I hope you will, I'll also share what the Library of Congress holds related to 12 Angry Men - the play these middle school students were reading.

Elizabeth Cutter's Reflection: 

I keep puzzling over all the accounts of legislation proposed (in other states) about installing cameras in classrooms to monitor what teachers are teaching and/or about requiring teachers to post each upcoming year’s unit plans, lesson plans, and instructional materials online. Didn’t any of these legislators read 1984? Besides all the safety, student privacy, legal, logistical, budgetary, and efficacy concerns that seem to have been overlooked, these camera proposals seem Orwellian.

Of course teachers should be accountable for their actions and lessons, but they already are. In a local-control state like Colorado, school districts approve their curriculum, and policy rules govern the teaching of controversial subjects. The old-school way for parents to find out what their children are learning is to ask them. Or peek over their shoulders when they’re doing their homework. Or attend back-to-school nights and parent-teacher conferences. Or read classroom newsletters. Or volunteer in their kids’ schools. Or set up a friendly, genuinely curious, non-adversarial meeting with their teachers early in the year just to get to know them. As we used to say at back-to-school nights, “If you promise not to believe everything your child tells you about me, I promise not to believe everything I hear about what happens at home.”

But if non-parents would like a glimpse of what is happening in schools today, I offer a lesson I observed in a 7th/8th grade literacy classroom last week. It was based on the following Colorado Academic Standards for Reading, Writing, and Communicating:

• Analyze how particular elements of a story or drama interact (for example: how setting shapes the characters or plot).
• Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text.
• By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 6-8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
• Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.
• Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.

These middle-school students had finished reading the play 12 Angry Men, by Reginald Rose. (They will get to watch the Sidney Lumet movie linked here, with Henry Fonda as Juror No. 8, when they’re done.) The teacher broke them into smaller groups, each assigned to analyze the development of a single juror and prepare a presentation to the whole class. Students were engaged virtually bell-to-bell in developing their presentations. They analyzed their juror’s dialogue, voting history, and the ultimate reason he gave for changing his vote from guilty to not guilty. They also, indirectly, got a lesson about critical thinking and the power of one individual, acting conscientiously, to influence his peers.

When the students watch the movie next week, they will be reminded that 12 Angry Men never states whether the defendant is innocent or guilty. All it does is show how one man, holding out for the defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial, calmly defends his position about reasonable doubt. If you have never watched 12 Angry Men, or if it has been a while, I highly recommend it. And take heart! Good teaching about the Constitution is still happening in public schools.

__________________________

Beth Cutter included a link to Sidney Lumet's 1957 film interpretation of 12 Angry Men on YouTube. 

After reading Beth's thoughts, I searched for related resources at the Library of Congress and discovered that former Librarian of Congress, James F. Billington, named the film to the National Film Registry in 2007. The announcement described the film as follows:

12 Angry Men (1957) In the 1950s, several television dramas acted live over the airways won such critical acclaim that they were also produced as motion pictures; among those already honored by the National Film Registry is “Marty” (1955). Reginald Rose had adapted his original stage play “12 Angry Men” for Studio One in 1954, and Henry Fonda decided to produce a screen version, taking the lead role and hiring director Sidney Lumet, who had been directing for television since 1950. The result is a classic. Filmed in a spare, claustrophobic style—largely set in one jury room—the play relates a single juror’s refusal to conform to peer pressure in a murder trial and follows his conversion of one juror after another to his point of view. The story is viewed a commentary on McCarthyism, Fascism, or Communism. 

Among other prominent films, it joined Bullitt (1968), Oklahoma (1955), Back to the Future (1985), Wuthering Heights (1939), and twenty other titles added to the Registry in 2007. 

I think students might be surprised to learn that Sidney Lumet was a child actor. This portrait by Carl Van Vechten shows him in 1939 in My Heart's in the Highlands. I wonder if he is about the same age in this photograph as the students in the classroom described above. The summary states, "Photograph shows Sidney Lumet, a white, male, Jewish, Polish American child actor, who would grow up to be a film director, producer, and screenwriter."

Sidney Lumet, 1939

The Library also has an excellent program essay on 12 Angry Men written by Joanna E. Rapf. 

The final paragraph is worth copying here:

Although it did not win, “Twelve Angry Men” was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Direction, and Best Screenplay based on material from another medium. It did win first prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, and in this country, Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, and Sidney Lumet were all nominated for Golden Globes. But it is the content of the movie that is its lasting legacy, allowing it to speak across generations and economic and racial divides. It reflects Lumet's ongoing concern with justice within the legal system, with the importance of moral responsibility, and with the necessity in a bureaucratic and mechanized world for personal authenticity. Lumet himself has said that the theme of this film is simply: "listen."

I am so grateful to Beth Cutter for giving her permission to share her remarkable observations with the entire TPS Teachers Network. I hope others will express their thanks, too, and let us know if you also teach 12 Angry Men. 

  9 - 12    English/Language Arts    Social Studies/History    Art/Music    National Film Registry    teaching strategies    literacy    film