Teacher as An Agent of Literacy Culture: A Sociological Study on Freedom Writers Movie

Abstract

This paper aims at analysing a teacher figure as an agent of literacy culture in Freedom Writers movie. Erin Gruwell as the major character can be an ideal teacher to motivate her students to grow a culture of literacy. As teacher, Gruwell had been aware of her students’ needs to read a selected book and write a journal for a better quality of life.The study belongs to qualitative study. There are two kinds of data; the primary data taken from the movie scripts and the secondary data supporting to the analysis. Technique of the data collection is carried out as follows; watching the movie, selecting the scripts and events that correlate to the problem, and limiting the data. Technique of the data analysis is done through library research and to use a descriptive method and to apply theoretical framework of Sociology of Literature by Laurenson and Swingewood. The result shows role of teacher to grow culture of literacy is very important. Teacher should have passion to motivate students to read and write in order to get many benefits from it. Finally the culture of literacy can be grown or not, it depends on the quality of teacher’ awareness to the importance of literacy culture for them.