A Class of Leaders

The year is 1969. Joshua Sampson, a white history teacher in a black ghetto high school in South Central Los Angeles, finds the only way to break through a brick wall of apathy is to let his students teach. Sampson's students, with his guidance, start leading discussions on Black Power, the Vietnam War, capital punishment, premarital sex, the grading system, drugs, freedom, and whether Sampson is teaching them or not. They hold trials, have weekly debates, sign petitions and drop notes and essays into the "Ideas and/or Complaints" box. It's a participatory democracy in action. The only thing wrong is, the principal doesn't like the way Sampson is running his classes.