The Address

Amazing!  What an amazing documentary.  I've had it on PVR for the longest time finally took a moment to watch it.  The Address (PBS) takes us to Putney, Vermont and introduces us to the Greenwood School.  Greenwood is a boarding school for boys with various learning challenges.  Every student has some form of learning disability, ADD/ADHD, behaviour issue or speech impediment.  Greenwood only houses 50 students (ages 11-17) and each of those students come with not only challenges to how they learn, but the emotional baggage that comes with years of suffering.  Each year starting in November, the teachers use The Gettysburg Address as a teaching tool.  The students commit The Gettysburg Address to memory and participate in a competition in February where they recite The Gettysburg Address in front of their peers and family.  Through exploring the students at Greenwood, Ken Burns also examines the history and context of one President Lincoln's most important speeches.

Its amazing to see the impact that this 2 minute speech has on the lives of the students and teachers at Greenwood.  The 90 minute documentary follows the students around for the weeks leading up to the performance.  It shows how the teachers use the speech as a teaching tool and how it permeates each of the student's curriculum classes such as History (kind of obviously) and Literacy but it's also used in speech therapy and occupational therapy classes.  Students had highs and lows as they each prepared to share their final version of the speech.  We saw students meltdown and rise back up to the challenge to not only complete The Gettysburg Address but to actually excel at public speaking and become impassioned by the ideology behind the original Address.

This is truly a remarkable documentary and well worth watching.