I attended Whitney Young H.S. and was a member of the 1st Whitney Young Academic Decathlon team in 1982; the first year this competition was nationalized. I was very interested to see this movie as I did not even realize Whitney Young had continued to win the Illinois competition.
Had it not been for the misrepresentations in this movie, I probably would have given it a much better rating.
For those outside of the Chicago area, basically Whitney Young AND Steinmetz are BOTH Chicago Public high schools. The difference is that Whitney Young is a magnet school, where you apply and get accepted on the basis of merit of your grades in elementary school, whereas Steinmetz is a district school which accepts anybody who lives in the neighborhood. Whitney Young is NOT a privileged school filled with rich kids (some of the people making comments, after seeing this movie, even had the impression that it might be private and/or suburban.) The overwhelming majority of my classmates were minorities, with nearly 70% black. As a matter of fact, there were probably more minorities at Whitney Young than Steinmetz, which is located in a white neighborhood on the north side of the city. I was disgusted by the Jeff Daniels' rant implying that rich suburbans were sending their kids into the city to attend a public high school; some line about this school being a "fortress in the city" -- The majority of kids who attend Whitney Young are from middle class and poor families. I just could not believe that Hollywood could stoop so low, to portray high achieving public inner city public school city kids as privileged snobs, for the apparent purpose of getting the audience to sympathize more with the Steinmetz kids .. to make us feel that the kids being cheated deserved to be cheated.
And Whitney Young having cheerleaders at this event .. PLEASE .. that's just insulting the intelligence of the viewers.
The reason that Whitney Young would consistently beat out other Chicago schools year after year is very simple: There is a system in place in Chicago with centralized magnet schools such as Young, Lane Tech, where all of the A students from grade schools across the city can attend and be in classes with each other ... for the purpose of having enough kids in the same place to provide advanced courses.
The professor at Steinmetz who helped his students cheat, basically tried to cheat kids at another school who worked VERY hard to earn their spot, and that stinks. This film did a very good job at desensitizing the audience about the injustice done to the kids who actually EARNED the win, in order to help add sympathy to the Steinmetz students who were NOT underprivileged, but simply chose either NOT to apply to Whitney Young, or simply did not work for the grades to get into Whitney Young in the first place.
The movie tries to make you feel sympathy for the cheaters, rather than the victims of the cheating. What a wonderful message for America.
Had it not been for the misrepresentations in this movie, I probably would have given it a much better rating.
For those outside of the Chicago area, basically Whitney Young AND Steinmetz are BOTH Chicago Public high schools. The difference is that Whitney Young is a magnet school, where you apply and get accepted on the basis of merit of your grades in elementary school, whereas Steinmetz is a district school which accepts anybody who lives in the neighborhood. Whitney Young is NOT a privileged school filled with rich kids (some of the people making comments, after seeing this movie, even had the impression that it might be private and/or suburban.) The overwhelming majority of my classmates were minorities, with nearly 70% black. As a matter of fact, there were probably more minorities at Whitney Young than Steinmetz, which is located in a white neighborhood on the north side of the city. I was disgusted by the Jeff Daniels' rant implying that rich suburbans were sending their kids into the city to attend a public high school; some line about this school being a "fortress in the city" -- The majority of kids who attend Whitney Young are from middle class and poor families. I just could not believe that Hollywood could stoop so low, to portray high achieving public inner city public school city kids as privileged snobs, for the apparent purpose of getting the audience to sympathize more with the Steinmetz kids .. to make us feel that the kids being cheated deserved to be cheated.
And Whitney Young having cheerleaders at this event .. PLEASE .. that's just insulting the intelligence of the viewers.
The reason that Whitney Young would consistently beat out other Chicago schools year after year is very simple: There is a system in place in Chicago with centralized magnet schools such as Young, Lane Tech, where all of the A students from grade schools across the city can attend and be in classes with each other ... for the purpose of having enough kids in the same place to provide advanced courses.
The professor at Steinmetz who helped his students cheat, basically tried to cheat kids at another school who worked VERY hard to earn their spot, and that stinks. This film did a very good job at desensitizing the audience about the injustice done to the kids who actually EARNED the win, in order to help add sympathy to the Steinmetz students who were NOT underprivileged, but simply chose either NOT to apply to Whitney Young, or simply did not work for the grades to get into Whitney Young in the first place.
The movie tries to make you feel sympathy for the cheaters, rather than the victims of the cheating. What a wonderful message for America.