Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 12, 1993 TAG: 9306170355
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By STEPHEN PRINCE SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Federal law now requires children with learning disabilities to attend regular public schools and be mainstreamed with ordinary classmates rather than be segregated in special learning facilities. The law is controversial, and although "Educating Peter" avoids taking sides, the film offers a dramatic illustration of how healthy and beneficial the interaction between elementary school children and their disabled peers can be.
We see Peter Gwazdauskas and his classmates adjusting to one another over the course of a school year, his first inside a regular, non-specialized classroom. At first, the kids are fascinated and scared by him because he looks different and is given to pushing, hitting and loud, verbal outbursts.
"I was pretty scared of him because he was pushing people, kicking people, and the class didn't know what to do,' says one boy.
"He had strangled me and already pulled my finger back, so I didn't really start off to like him," says another.
Peter's third-grade teacher, Martha Ann Stallings, confesses to being excited but also apprehensive about having him in the class with the other students because his behavior is so unpredictable.
To illustrate, the film cuts to a shot of Peter banging two boys' heads together and smiling.
This and other footage of the children's behavior has been tightly edited to reveal the dynamics of Peter's relation with the class in highly dramatic and affecting terms. The most touching moment comes just as the viewer is ready to write Peter off as hopelessly disruptive.
Told by his teacher to apologize to a boy for disrupting a group project, Peter hugs the boy warmly and without the inhibitions and self-consciousness a "normal" boy at that age might feel.
Peter kisses the boy's cheek and says "sorry" again and again. In this scene, we see Peter's complex personality, his vulnerability and his human potential and can no longer regard him as just a loud, obnoxious student.
By the second month, Peter begins to quiet down and make real strides toward becoming part of the classroom and performing academically. The key to this is the role played by the other students, who actively adopt and help socialize Peter by praising and correcting his behavior. Rather than ostracizing Peter and shunning him, they offer him their friendship and accept his. The teacher learns from seeing this resolve and responsibility among her students.
"There's times where I really have to hold myself back not to jump into a situation that basically they're about ready to take charge of," she says. "And I'm not sure that I knew third-graders were capable of doing that . . . ."
Eventually, and poignantly, Peter becomes so much a part of the classroom and his friends' lives that he begins to see and feel his difference.
Working on a picture exercise, he remarks several times, "I'm stupid." But the teacher and the students counter this by saying: "I expect you to do these things because I know you can."
At the end of the year, Peter wins a school award for making the most progress in the third grade, and he and his classmates have an emotional farewell. Through being with Peter, all have benefitted.
Said one third-grade girl: "He changed because we changed. He changed because we changed our minds about him. He changed because we helped him. You think you're teaching Peter things, but really Peter's teaching you things.
"Educating Peter" is an intelligently filmed, tightly edited, emotionally affecting documentary. Its only flaw (and one easy to overlook) is the treacly piano score, unnecessary because the film's subject is already so full of emotion.
The film gives us that most basic of cinema's pleasures - letting us get to know another human being through the camera.
"Educating Peter" airs tonight at 9:30 on HBO.
by CNB