Something Within Me

I have a natural prejudice towards this film, as I am a teacher in an arts immersion school much like the one shown in this film, though it's not in the inner-city. The philosophy of such schools is that involvement in the arts (in the case of the film, exclusively music) is extremely highly correlated to academic success.

In the case of this Catholic school in New York City, the school enrollment was way down, test scores were poor and there seemed to be no hope for the future. Then, when the school decided to become a school that emphasized music to facilitate learning, test scores increased dramatically, enrollment shot up and pride in the school and students naturally followed. It's a great recipe for the failing inner-city schools in our nation--so naturally, the lessons of this lovely film are generally ignored--which is so frustrating! The film gets high marks for presenting the program very positively--combining discipline with love and excellence. You'd have an awfully hard time finding a way to make this school look any better--a great job by the documentary makers.