Stand and Deliver

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"How do I reach these keeeds?"
Cartman, imitating Jaime Escalante to teach an inner city high school, in an episode of South Park.

Stand and Deliver is a 1988 film starring Edward James Olmos based on the true story of Jaime Escalante, a computer technician who became a math teacher in an Inner-City School to save the students from gang violence, drugs, and the like.

Not to be confused with the catch-phrase of English highwaymen.

This page Needs More Love and a little of The Wiki Magic.


Tropes used in Stand and Deliver include:
  • Chekhov's Gun: The mistake 0 to pi over 2,
  • Cool Teacher / Stern Teacher: Jaime Escalante embodies both of these tropes. While what he does is cool, he's harsh and demanding enough to be a Stern Teacher, and probably wouldn't be very fun to actually have. This is Truth in Television according to many of his former real-life students.
  • Covers Always Lie: The DVD cover of the film might lead you to think that Angel Guzman, Lou Diamond Phillips's character is the protagonist of the movie, when he's only part of an ensemble of students taught by Escalante.
  • Five-Token Band: Subverted; all of the students are Latino.
  • Inner-City School
  • Los Angeles
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Lou Diamond Philips's character pretends to be less intelligent than he is so that his friends will still think he's cool. He refuses to be seen bringing books to class.
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat: Raquel Ortega.
  • Precision F-Strike: Escalante swears exactly once during the movie, to Ramirez (Andy Garcia), an Educational Testing Service investigator who thinks the students cheated.

Escalante: I'm gonna prove you guys wrong!
Ramirez: I hope you do, because this is not between you and me.
Escalante: Maybe not, but if I catch you on the street, I'm gonna kick the shit out of you.