Movie Review: Akeelah and the bee by Frankie

The movie AKEELAH and The BEE is an exact epitome of how one struggle for the fulfillment of their dreams. Winning life’s adversities over perseverance and determination simply embraces the wholeness of this story. The movie revolves around the world of an 11 year-old girl named Akeelah from LA’s South Central, whose potentials were taken for granted. Indisputably the girl possesses extraordinary talents particularly in the realm of spelling. Akeelah , at first, is hesitant in participating for the school’s spelling bee contests. The girl had been considering a lot of factors, to be exact; (a) First is her mom, Tanya, whose only work was to focus on her job at the hospital which makes it really hard for Akeelah and her siblings to get through to it everyday, (b) Second is Akeelah’s insecurities against being the school’s most “talked-about” individual. Little by little, the girl was able to embattle all of her concerns. She was influenced by their principal letting her see that there is something more about her that she doesn’t know and that she needs to discover it while she still can. Afraid at first, she ended up with confidence that somehow there must be something to prove for herself. She was able to compete at various schools at LA and ‘twas luckily been able to make it to the regional and much further, at the National Spelling Bee Competition. This is absolutely one of the common dreams every American boy or girl ever had- that is being able to place at the bee and harbor prestige for their respective schools. Going deeper through the scenes, the movie was able to inculcate the different theories of learning. Apparent in the movie was Thorndike’s theory of “Connectionism.” The Law of Readiness was implied by the time Akeelah’s tutor, Dr. Larabee, and Akeelah primed themselves for the big competition. Engaging into rigorous practices and strenuous memorization of words, Akeelah evolved to be one of the promising young spellers of the recent time. One of Akeelah’s must-say “techniques” is the use of hand tapping. It seems that the tapping of hands serves as a stimulant for Akeelah’s successful spelling whiz. Everyday, Akeelah religiously took over the responsibility of store housing gazillions of vocabularies just to peg her way up to the top. Akeelah make good use of these words and she tries to apply it to her day to day living. Thus, the Law of Exercise is also involved in the making. Who would have thought that the girl would make a headway at the national’s? Surprisingly, the whole competition was kinda tough for Akeelah but despite her struggles in life, somewhat making it to the grand finals applauded her charms in her very own society; her family, her friends and to her school buddies. Law of Effect was observed. It really make Akeelah feel great about herself, and so the legend goes.. Shaping in my own comprehension is a technique that is used in operant conditioning in which the behavior is modified by stepwise reinforcement of behaviors that produce progressively closer approximations of the desired behavior. Shaping directly instills new skills and techniques in modification of our practiced behavior. In the movie, shaping was put into clearer picture when Dr. Larabee was injecting some sort of course obstacles, like take for an instance, Akeelah doing the “spell-the-word” thing with herself on the jumping rope. As cumbrous as it may seem on the part of Akeelah, she needs to stand by it for it is proven effective especially when you are on stage at the competition, there will absolutely be a lot of disturbances to which could highly affect your performance. The girl must be able to surpass these things in order for her to stay on the right track. The training was supposed to improve Akeelah’s concentration skills and yup, it did work out. In the movie, her mother Tanya claims to be one of her greatest obstacles. This is true when one time, her mother just pop-up from nowhere. This really affected the girl for her mother was scandalous right in her very front. Due to the training they had, Akeelah did not bother about what was happening. Instead she gained more focus. And so, Akeelah did make it to the national’s but not to worry, the little misunderstanding about her mother was settled down. She was just concerned with the child because her academics were chiefly affected. She just heard that her child is much focus on the bee rather than the school. It hurts her feelings for she was working hard at the hospital and all she wanted was for her to have quality education. That was when she doesn’t know about the school’s special offer for her daughter. The good thing about Akeelah joining the contests is that she was given a special kind of consideration. Even though she was not able to join the regular students during class days, the child was subjected to a special kind of system wherein it will enable her to cope up with her missed subjects. Not that bad after all. In totality, the movie was of great relevance with our previous topics because primarily it deals with the different types or theories which are very useful in the acquisition of knowledge. We were introduced by our dear teacher, Ms. Adan, with the theoretical basis of education. The movie in all fairness was a great spectrum allowing us to differentiate the theoretical from the real application. It’s essential for us viewing the movie because it gives way to the ideas that there are definitely lots of approaches/attacks in learning. These strategies somewhat plays an important role in shaping students; the one sole agent of knowledge.