The Consequence of Ignorance
The whole concept of Freedom Writers springs from a shockingly broad and pervasive lapse among students in an American high school with a higher degree of diversity than most. When first year English teacher Erin Gruwell realizes that a generation of American kids have no familiarity with the Holocaust at all, she is stimulated to address both that specific issue and the much wider aspect of how ignorance fuels intolerance.
The Temperance of Intolerance
The event which leads Gruwell to this recognition of deep-seated ignorance of relatively recent history is an act of ethnic intolerance which she is able to connect to that history through her own knowledge. The connection between intolerance and ignorance is made tangible right at the beginning when a student who is admittedly a bully and discipline problem is targeted for racial stereotyping which produces perhaps an unexpectedly deep emotional response from him. Ultimately, many of the students enrolled in the Freedom Writers program go on to share personal real-life experiences in which their exposure to new information and experiences raised their level of tolerance (or, to the contrary, lowered their resistance to overlooking intolerant behavior in others) and transformed the outcome of a situation from what it would have otherwise.
The Power of Journaling
The overarching theme which unifies many of the multiple subcategories of themes explored throughout the narrative is the power of recording a journal. The actual Freedom Writers diaries are inspired primarily by two other teenagers who each attained a different sort of fame with the publication of their own private diaries: Anne Frank and survivor of the Bosnian War, Zlata Filipovic. One of those sub-themes explored is the impact of trying to be a normal teenager with the additional pressures of life during wartime added to the mix. For many students, it turns out they have much more in common with Anne and Zlata than it would seem to most outsiders: going home to neighborhoods infiltrated by gangs and where the sounds of gunshots is a nightly occurrence is itself a kind of life during wartime. Those students not quite so dramatically impacted by the social construction around them, however, face their own personal battles which a commitment to writing honestly about in their diaries often helps keep more emotionally balanced.
