MovieChat Forums > Lean on Me (1989) Discussion > fire

fire

posted 14 years ago by intofilm
4 replies | jump to latest

Having the doors chained was unconscionable. Think what that would have been like if there had in fact been a fire. It seems dishonest of the film's story to not have seriously dealt with that, but instead presenting the chained doors as if they were only a safety problem in the eyes of a few dissatisfied outsiders.
Granted, there was a drug problem, but surely there are other ways of handling it than setting up a deadly risk. For instance, he could have asked for parent volunteers to guard the doors.

[–] jarheadgco 14 years ago

Who's to say that some of the parents weren't the drug dealers he was trying to keep out in the first place?

[–] novastar_6 13 years ago

Back in the 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis when my mother was in junior high, ALL students were locked in school as soon as everybody arrived, and the doors were not unlocked until school let out for the day. That happened every day until the Cuban Missile Crisis was over, nobody cared except the kids who were actually in fear for their lives, but no adult, parent, teacher or otherwise, batted an eye at it.

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] novastar_6 13 years ago

Except people can figure out how to slip knives and other things past metal detectors so that wouldn't do much good and if they'd had the money to hire 20 more security guards than they already had, they probably wouldn't need to bring the basic reading exam scores up to keep the school's funding going. As it was they didn't have any money and no options, that's why everybody there had to work together.