Last night on one of my local PBS networks aired this documentary on Oxford’s Mulberry Bush School for emotionally disturbed children. I found this documentary to be a must see, but did have some problems with it.

Filmmaker Kim Longinotto spent around a year at this school of last resort where students spend three years to try to get behavioral problems in order. The young kids have major problems to deal with. One kid is dealing with a death of a parent, another one dealing with divorce, other kid dealing with a stabbing of one of his parents, and one kid had potty problems.

Students at the school act out by biting, spitting, hitting, and swearing. The workers at this school calm the unruly kids by restraining them with his or her own arms and talk to them to find out how they feel and what is troubling them. For this school the approach they used really worked and the children did change over time.

These kids are some of the worst kids I have ever seen and fully needed the specialized attention this school gave them. Michael really did change and the scenes of him learning the recorder were just nice.

The workers at this school imo really cared for the kids especially the two men that did get some time on camera. I really felt at the end of the documentary that this school can change and kid around.

One problem with the documentary was we had no background info on the kids and the staff at the start of the show. It was just straight into chaos with an unruly student. It created a different feel to the documentary. We also did not get any info on the kids if they were on drugs before coming to the school or were currently on them while filming the documentary. An important miss.

We also wound up with a censored documentary which to me took away a bit of the feel for me. I wanted a 100% uncensored and RAW feel to the emotions the kids have.

Only in parts of the documentary did they do the subtitles, a minor problem for me. Could have been used for the whole show. Closed captions saved it for me and is the best way to view the documentary. The accents of these people in the documentary can be hard to understand at times.

I would give this documentary a 4 out of 5 start rating even with the problems I have discussed, this is a solid piece of work.

For the website, with lots of extra info, to the documentary go here: http://www.pbs.org/pov/holdmetight/
They even have the full show to view as well, but no closed captions though.

The AP reports on lawmakers in Indiana that are asking Indiana University and Purdue University to rollback tuition increases for at least the next two years.

The Chicago Tribune reports on Lawrence Eppley who is a trustee at the University of Illinois. He has quit his job now and asking others to quit as well.

The AP reports on this as well.

on vocational schools in the state that are going to get 100 million bucks for renovations.

on new rules for people in the state that want to become teachers. The article says that people training to become teachers need to take more minors in subjects such as science and math and less courses in education.

on state test scores that make the state happy, but do not make the federal government happy due to the NCLB rules.

on the California School Chief reacting to U.S. criticism on teacher evaluations. He says districts in the state are allowed to tie test scores to educator assessments.