The Atticus Finch of Hobart Elementary

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted September 6, 2005.

Documentaries today may be giving us what we hunger for. The film March of the Penguins, which reveals the birds' harsh and glorious Antarctic mating season, has become the second highest grossing documentary in history, behind only Fahrenheit 9/11. Another documentary, Mad Hot Ballroom, takes us inside a ballroom dancing competition for New York City's fifth graders. A third film, The Hobart Shakespeareans (premiering on PBS Tuesday, Sept. 6), made by filmmaker Mel Stuart, follows Rafe Esquith's fifth-grade class in inner-city Los Angeles as they learn to perform a full-text Hamlet by the end of their school year.

Whether it's penguins or fifth graders, all these documentaries are about goodness, dedication and purpose, as well as respect and treating others well. There's something joyful and painfully touching when we see the life force in action with purpose.

Rafe Esquith leads his fifth graders through an uncompromising curriculum of English, mathematics, geography and literature. His classroom mottos are "Be nice. Work hard," and "There are no shortcuts." Every student performs in a full-length Shakespeare play. Despite language barriers and poverty, many of these Hobart Shakespeareans move on to attend outstanding colleges.

Esquith, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended the city's public schools, has taught fifth grade at Hobart Boulevard Elementary for over 20 years. "I don't want my students to be ordinary," he says. "I want them to be extraordinary because I know that they are. If a 10-year-old, who doesn't speak English at home, can step in front of you and do a scene from Shakespeare, then there is nothing that he cannot accomplish."

TERRENCE MCNALLY: Rafe, what led you to teaching and to Hobart Elementary?

RAFE ESQUITH: I became a teacher because my father taught me that a life without service is a wasted life. I found I had a knack for teaching, I taught at a middle-class school for two years. Great kids, but they didn't need me. I was challenged by a principal to come to Hobart School, where there are 2,400 children, and I realized that we were a perfect match. These were kids who want a way out, and after many years of teaching, I figured out a way to help them get out.

Mel, what led you to this documentary?

MEL STUART: Luck. That's a very important part of being a filmmaker. You have to be lucky. I was read in the paper that Rafe had won an award for teaching inner-city schoolchildren, nine and 10 years old, a curriculum that included performing Shakespeare. I'm a Shakespeare nut, have been since I was 13 and saw Henry V with Olivier. So I called Rafe and asked him, "What play are you doing next year?" and he said, "Hamlet." I said, "Perfect, that's the one I want to do."

I was initially attracted to the film because of the Hamlet hook, but when I watched it, I saw so much more. What did you know before you decided to do it, and what surprised you?

MEL STUART: I went there planning to do Hamlet, but it turned out, they were playing baseball to learn to be American citizens, they were simulating a money economy in the classroom, they were reading the most incredible books. Rafe was guiding them through the great books of our literature.

Fifth-graders.

MEL STUART: Fifth-graders reading Catcher in the Rye and Malcolm X, or Huckleberry Finn. You see the effect it has on these kids. I only wish that my own children could have gone to Rafe's class. I made the film because I want the whole nation to know what Rafe can do with children that don't have the background and the money that other children in this country have.

Rafe, in the film and in your book you mention a turning point, when you realized that you were a pretty good teacher and you were a teacher kids liked, but that you weren't making the difference you needed to make.

RAFE ESQUITH: You're too kind. The truth is, I was failing, because the real measure of a teacher is not that the kids like him or that they do well at the tests at the end of the year. The real measure is where are these children five years from now, 10 years from now? What am I giving to these children that they'll be using for the rest of their lives?

One night when I was really ready to give it up, my wife Barbara said, "Rafe you ought to re-read To Kill a Mockingbird." In Atticus Finch, I found the model I was looking for. Early in that book his children ask, "Are we gonna win?" Finch says no. But he doesn't run from the courtroom, he goes in and fights the fight anyway, because he believes strongly in Tom Robinson's innocence and he's going to speak the truth.

My classroom is that courtroom. I feel all the time that I'm a very ordinary human being, but what separates good teachers from other teachers is good teachers don't give up. I tell the children not to give up. That means I can't give up either.

Late in the documentary, you say, "I've won these awards, I've written this book, I've got this documentary, I could make more money doing something else, and I've been here 20 years now ... But for 20 years I've been telling them this is important. For me to walk away would make me a hypocrite."

Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org), where he interviews people he believes can help create 'a world that just might work.'

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