Children of a Lesser God is a story about a young special education teacher, Jim, who works with deaf children, and his relationship with a deaf woman named Sarah. While Jim works at a boarding school for deaf children, Sarah and Jim face many struggles in their ongoing relationship, specifically between Jim’s ability to hear and Sarah’s deafness. While Jim is trained to work with the deaf and has had much experience doing so, he must learn about deaf culture and empathize with Sarah’s viewpoint and values before they can truly connect. Thus, the movie catalogues Jim’s movement towards deaf culture and Sarah’s journey out of deaf culture into the world of hearing. In the final scene, Sarah and Jim recognize their growth and make a connection somewhere between silence and speaking with their love for each other binding them together.

Jim is a gifted teacher and his craft becomes apparent in his interactions with the students. He is cognizant of students having different learning styles: some are good at speaking and sharing, while others need more space and time to develop. Using many different types of teaching techniques, from music and dance to interpersonal sharing, Jim covers all of the multiple intelligences in his learning. For instance, the students work on interpersonal skills by interacting with each other, write on the board (verbal), listen to music, use kinesthetics in a lesson by moving across the room, use intrapersonal skills by talking about their favorite things, and use spatial skills to design a dance routine. Jim works on emotional intelligence just as much as on traditional intelligence and content. He often helps students with encouragement to bolster their confidence and give them courage to practice their speaking skills. He is non-judgmental towards the students even when they use cuss words at him; in fact, Jim turns these outbursts into teachable moments to connect with the students. In many of the scenes with students, Jim is not in the classroom but is with the students doing something outside of school like playing basketball, watching movies, and attending the high school dance. These events highlight Jim’s caring for his students and involvement in the things that the students are interested in.

Children of a Lesser God illustrates how many of the same issues raised by bilingual education are similar to those found in education for the deaf. For one, bilingual and deaf students are both in the minority who are trying to learn the dominant cultures form of communication. They are forced to learn this language because the dominant culture will not learn theirs. It is recognized that for bilingual and deaf students to operate and earn money in our society, they must learn the dominant cultures style of communication and values. Second, the method of educating bilingual and deaf students is similar. Should there be immersion, where students must quickly learn to function in the dominant language, or more of a transitional approach with lessons in the native communication style gradually moving to the dominant style? Is there a way to use maintenance so that both languages, the native and dominant, can work together side by side? Finally, the deaf community has formed a unique culture for solidarity; similarly, bilingual students often have a unique culture separate from the dominant. Education for these groups must take these cultural aspects into account or the students will be turned off from education.

Since the deaf community has developed its own culture, it is important in our quest for multicultural education to include deaf culture in the curriculum. The following suggestions are based on James Bank’s four categories of multicultural education. In the contributions stage, the curriculum could speak to famous deaf people like Helen Keller and talk about her accomplishments and those of other deaf individuals. Moving into the additive stage, where special topics are included in the curriculum, a teacher might instruct students in the sign language alphabet and have students spell words using sign language. Educators could fundamentally transform the curriculum, the third stage, by having teachers give lessons in total silence and having the students respond in different ways without speaking. For instance, the teacher and students could write things out, make up hand signals, or use the sign language alphabet to communicate. In this way, both teacher and students learn to empathize with what deaf individuals experience. Finally, in the social action stage, students could learn about specific problems affecting the deaf community and analyze and brainstorm solutions to those unique problems.

In the opening of the movie, the principal of the school tells Jim, “No one is trying to change the world around here. We are only trying to help a few deaf kids get along a little better.” The principal’s statement uncovers several assumptions and attitudes towards the deaf students he works with. First, the principal assumes that deaf students do not get along on their own and need to have their lives improved by the hearing community. Second, the principal reveals fatalism about the deaf: they will never be able to contribute much to society and society will never change to incorporate the deaf. This belief resurfaces when Jim asks the principal why Sarah, one of the brightest students, is a janitor, and the principal believes Sarah is content with her position. Third, the comment implies that the deaf are unable to fit into society because it is their problem, rather than seeing the problem stemming from the larger society’s inability to include the deaf. These comments are even more striking coming from the principal, who is supposed to be the leader of this community. Teachers of students with special needs need to first recognize what unique talents their students possess, appreciate those talents, and then design curriculum around those talents so that the students will learn to achieve and gain confidence in their abilities.

If I were writing a sequel to this movie, Sarah and Jim would be married with several children, who have normal hearing. The film would center on Sarah’s and Jim’s efforts to support maintenance of their deaf background and their hearing background. Like an interracial couple, Jim and Sarah have to find ways to honor the two cultures and their values so that the children gain an appreciation for both and are enriched by experiencing the two different backgrounds. Conflict could arise from the parents dealing with the school system; Sarah and Jim want maintenance while the school system does not understand why the children need to learn about deaf culture. In response to the criticism of Jim always speaking in the original film, thus portraying deafness as weakness, the sequel will use subtitles for when sign language is being used. This will give the audience a better since of the silence of the deaf and provide a stark contrast to someone speaking and then having the silence of signing and subtitles.