Alternative Education & Inequality Exposed in "The Bad Kids"

Youth activist group, Do Something, estimates that over 1.2 million students drop out of high school each year in the United States, meaning every 26 seconds a child’s entire future is affected across the nation (dosomething.org).  Although the dropout rate has fallen nearly 4% since 1990, there are still a significant amount of young people without the resources and opportunities in their communities to do well in school. The number of dropouts and at-risk students is largely composed of children in lower-income households, disproportionately from Latino and African-American families, which highlights larger issues of income and racial inequality within that United States overall. Considering the systemic inequalities stacked against students, many young people are losing faith in the education system and the possibility of success within their own futures.

These issues of inequality are explored within an educational context in the documentary, “The Bad Kids”. The documentary serves as a visual representation of the obstacles placed against the youth of America today and observes the hardships they face in all aspects of life. The documentary follows the students and staff of Black Rock High School, an alternative high school offering high school students at a junior or senior standing the opportunity to complete credit requirements and earn a diploma. Black Rock is located in a disadvantaged town in the Mojave Desert, which student Joey McGee describes as a place that “swallows up people and brings them down”. The location is as a place of limited opportunity for many of the kids at Black Rock, where there is “nothing for kids to do” and children are forced to stay in (often unstable) households or hang out on the streets, a place further exposing the teenagers to drugs, crime and other unsafe activities.

For kids like Joey with difficult home lives and little confidence, the streets offer a pseudo-freedom through drugs and alcohol, and give them space away from unstable parents and challenging living situations. To combat these insecurities and personal hardships, Principal Vonda Viland promotes a reward-based system where students finish work and earn credits on their own schedule, fostering a sense of achievement in the students. At Black Rock there is no punitive system in place to keep students in check, as it made clear that the consequence for poor attendance or missing work is failure to obtain a diploma. Principal Viland continuously describes a high school diploma as necessary for the students to succeed in the game of life. It is emphasized throughout the documentary that students must at least reach a minimum requirement to make something of themselves, that cultivating their minds will the ultimate key to survival in the world.

The downside to this approach, as teenage father Lee shows with his own hardship as a busy father, is that each student must focus on what Principal Viland refers to as the “power of the positive” and not lose motivation. For Lee, working and taking care of his child put his education on the backburner as he struggles to see the significance of a high school education if he’s already a man in the eyes of the world. Another student named Jennifer struggles with low confidence impacting her motivation, finding it difficult to challenge her own father’s assumptions based on his own experiences as a school dropout. Besides many student’s challenges living in low-income households, dealing with drug addiction and mental illness, and living in a location with few opportunities available, the students’ own assumptions and external standards of success leave many kids with an overwhelming sense of entrapment.

Though the premise of the documentary paints a critical portrait of California’s public education system, there is an underlying optimism that most students can achieve great things when given a support system that encourages growth and self-confidence. There is much debate over the success of alternative education and whether requiring students to reach certain bars of expectations rather than cultivate their own critical minds is a successful pedagogical approach. However, it is a privilege to be able to consider the nuances of education when many children like the kids at Black Rock High are depending on any resource available in order to survive. As graduates from Black Rock can attest, the most valuable aspect of receiving a diploma and continuing education is the capability to break the system of inequality that persists in their own struggling communities. “The Bad Kids” and Black Rock High School do not offer all the answers of how educators can best approach education in California, but it does offer an optimistic alternative that sets a framework educators can work with to better help the children of America.