rana-attalla Review of Why Shoot the Teacher?

Why Shoot the Teacher? (1977)

A Canadian teacher by the name of Max Brown takes a train to the prairies where he begins his hard life as a teacher.

[8/10 · 19 October 2005]

"Why Shoot the Teacher" was a very interesting movie that I believe gave a very accurate depiction of the different ways Canadian citizens were affected by the Great Depression. It showed the difficulties people had to go through both physically and emotionally in order to survive during the 1930s. In this movie, we meet a young teacher who has finally been able to find himself a job as a teacher, but he must move to the prairies. We learn that in those days, unemployment was a major problem as many people were losing their jobs and not being able to find new ones. Single men traveled the country in search of work since they had no families to support and keep them home. We see in this case, the main character is very lucky to be able to find a job, however we soon see how poor the working conditions and the pay are. He only earns $20 dollars a month and much teach a very rowdy and disobedient group of students. He lives in a small room underneath the school house and seems to be treated rather unkindly by most of the people surrounding him. This seems somewhat understandable since they must be under a lot of stress and pressure as well because of the hard times they must go through at the time being. At times, Max Brown wishes he could simply hop a train back home so that he doesn't have to endure anymore of these problems which he doesn't feel he can cope with anymore, although I sometimes think he feels grateful that he at least has board and a steady salary while others have neither and are living on the streets. It's interesting to see how the movie ends, with whether or not Max will be able to survive the harsh times.