save the ghetto child(ren) movies

We spent Saturday with Kaitlin and my younger sister. She started telling us about the movie 1408, which she apparently watched in class. (Ah, OUSD. How I so do not miss you. Yes I support teachers and everything, but some of them were seriously lazy fucks.) Anyway, it got us reminiscing about all the different movies we watched in school - stuff like Congo in one of my science classes to movies based on Shakespeare plays which at least had some educational justification. One of my English teachers considered showing us A Clockwork Orange, but thought better of it. Given what I remember of high school, though, she shouldn't have been so worried.

But there's a certain genre of movies that my teachers loved airing. I think of them as "Save the Ghetto Child(ren)" movies because well, they don't really have anything in common except that at least one kid needs saving by an adult figure. By the time I left elementary school I had practically memorized every word of Stand and Deliver (which I need to rent again to see Edward James Olmos in a non-BSG capacity) and watched The Girl Who Spelled Freedom numerous times. Oh, and Lean on Me - with Morgan Freeman before he was God in every single movie.

I guess I can see why my teachers loved these movies so very much. I wonder if the movies would hold up today. I'm pretty sure I would find The Girl Who Spelled Freedom to be unbearably cheesy. If I watch Stand and Deliver would I be able to watch it without thinking about his role on BSG? I think Stand and Deliver might be the best one of the bunch of movies. From what I remember of the plot, it was definitely the most interesting.