The Opportunities and Challenges Presented by the American School

Jeremy Abend

Professor Elmesky

The American School

10/20/2015

The Opportunities and Challenges Presented by the American School

        Finding Forrester depicts the life of Jamal Wallace, a Bronx-bred African American high-schooler who excels on the basketball court and has a secret gift for reading and writing.  His life trajectory suddenly changes when his outstanding test scores are recognized and he is afforded the rare opportunity to attend New York’s preeminent preparatory school, Mailor-Callow.  During this time, he forms a friendship with the Pulitzer Prize winning author, William Forrester, a hermit resembling Hemingway with his quick temper and propensity to imbibe spirits while he writes.  While Jamal struggles socially at Mailor, he is able to receive attention for his basketball and writing skills.  Through daily work on his writing with Forrester, Jamal’s writing improves greatly.  Professor Crawford considers this improvement inauthentic given Jamal’s background.  Through his hard work and the relationship he builds with Forrester, Jamal is able to rise above his social standing and acquire greater social and cultural capital, while eliciting attention from college recruiters.  The film depicts the challenges and opportunities that American schools provide in interrupting and reinforcing the socially reproductive cycle.  With these examples in mind, it is clear that Jamal in fact raises both his social and cultural capital through attending Mailor and utilizing his writing and basketball skills, thus breaking out of his socially reproductive cycle.

        Schools have always been breeding grounds for discrepancies in social and cultural capital, whereby the end goal is achieving a high level of economic capital. However in many instances, schools help the already economically well-endowed stay in this position, and do little by way of helping those who have a lower economic standing in society, no matter how much embodied cultural capital they may possess.  Embodied capital is grounded in the ‘habitus’ of a person and cannot be quickly transmitted.  With this in mind, in Finding Forrester, Jamal was born into a low socio-economic standing and had no plans to break out of the socially reproductive cycle. With very little economic capital or objectified capital (physical objects that one can own), Jamal lives among people who have few aspirations for the future.  The main way in which he raises his cultural capital is through his gift in reading and writing and his natural intelligence.  This embodied cultural capital is frowned upon among Jamal’s peers, forcing him to keep his multitude of books hidden in his locker at school and to tell his brother, “Don’t say nothing about those test scores” when he is notified that he tested exceptionally well.  He sees this rise in embodied cultural capital, which many would link with success, as something which will elicit ridicule in his social circle.