The Blackboard Jungle: A Rock 'n' Roll Movie About Juvenile Delinquency

The movie, The Blackboard Jungle is a 1955 look at high-school delinquency. The movie portrays male youths as delinquents who are negative, hostile, and even abusive at times. The movie shows that the youths were looked at in a degrading way because they listened to Rock and Roll music, which their parents felt was a far stretch from the music they considered tasteful such as Jazz, Tin Pan Alley and Ragtime. To the adults, their teenagers’ Rock and Roll music seemed destructive and obscene, and not at all suitable for America’s youth. 

The movie is based in the city, during a time when the recent war veterans are returning to receive college degrees and choosing their future career paths. A few of the returning soldiers have made the decision to teach with the intentions of shaping the minds of America’s youth. These men and women are teaching, not because they are making money, but because they enjoy children and want to help them develop their minds. A few of these new teachers were unlucky and placed at an all-boy high school with a principal that did not feel the students needed any discipline and did not allow his teachers to discipline. On the first day of classes the veteran teachers advised the newly arrived teachers to turn around, leave and never look back. They were also warned that if they chose to stay, to make sure they always kept their guard up and to never turn their backs on the students. Unfortunately, Mr. Dadier, one of the new teachers, didn’t take their advice and had to learn the hard way just how rough this group of young males could be.