Radical (2023) is a film based on the true story of Sergio Juárez Correa, a grade school teacher in the border town of Matamoros in Northeastern Mexico. Known by the locals as a “school of punishment,” the students live in poverty amid drug cartel violence. After losing faith in the education system, Sergio arrives with a plan to try a radical new way of teaching. He challenges the power structure between teacher and student and encourages his students to take charge of their own learning.
One student, Paloma, is a young genius who excels at science and math. She lives with her sick father next to a dumpster, where they earn a living scavenging for scrap. Although Paloma is brilliant, capable of building her own telescope, and dreams of becoming an astronaut, she is overlooked as just another “quiet” student who is too poor to ever achieve anything. A pivotal scene between Sergio and the principal, Chucho, wrestles with the core question of why they see the education system failing and when they lost hope. “Kids today have changed,” argues Chucho. He suggests kids are too traumatized, forced to grow up too fast, and then rebel and become bad students. “No. Kids will always be kids”, responds Sergio. Just then, they hear a car chase and bottles breaking down the street. “The world has changed, Mr. Juárez,” continues Chucho. “Yes”, says Sergio, “and we have not. Nothing in education has changed in the last 100 years.”
The film does a good job of showing how the students are villainized for being poor. Teachers and students are forced to work under impossible conditions and then blamed when they fail standardized tests, as if they created their own misery. Radical ultimately sends a hopeful message: that one dedicated person can impact many when they believe in their community. Though the film fictionalizes many aspects of teaching, it remains honest by not shying away from the reality of the abject poverty the characters live in. For every Paloma, there are several other students with as much potential who were ultimately discarded by the system, in some cases leading to tragic outcomes.
Even with excellent student-centered education as in Sergio’s classroom, students and teachers are still trapped by a system beyond their individual control. Radical provokes us to radically re-imagine the education system. But it leaves us with the lingering question: is it enough to change how or what we teach without radically reimagining the entire society this education system supports? Sergio’s story is an example of someone taking individual responsibility for the failures of this system. His story also reminds us that it’s this society that has failed students and educators, not the other way around.
You can stream Radical on Vix.
