Diksha Sundriyal
In 2018’s ‘Night School,’ Kevin Hart plays the role of a high-school dropout named Teddy Walker, who is forced to go back to school to get his life back on track. He had been doing fine even without a degree and was set to inherit a barbecue store from his boss. But things go really bad when the store is destroyed, and without a GED, he doesn’t get any proper job to maintain his lifestyle, as well as the lies he had told his fiancee.
Going to night school puts a lot of things in Teddy’s perspective, including clarity about why he failed the first time around. His new teacher tells him about his previously undiagnosed learning disabilities, which are portrayed by Kevin Hart very well on the screen. Does he share the disabilities with his character? SPOILERS AHEAD
Kevin Hart Doesn’t Share the Learning Disabilities With Teddy Walker
In the movie, Teddy Walker is diagnosed with dyslexia and dyscalculia, along with various processing issues. In real life, however, the actor Kevin Hart doesn’t have any of these disabilities. He has never publicly talked about living with dyslexia any other learning disability. He only takes over the persona to bring Teddy’s character to life on the screen. While Hart may not have dyslexia, the learning disabilities are an inherent part of Teddy’s life and his journey in the movie. At the beginning of the film, we see a young Teddy struggling to make sense of the things in the book. He is chided by his father for not studying hard and is compared to his sister, who is the golden child of the family.
Despite his continued struggles, no one realizes the reason behind Teddy’s continued problems with learning might be because of his disability. It isn’t until years later that his night school teacher, Carrie, suspects what might be going on. She asks Teddy to take a test, and sure enough, his many learning disabilities come to light. It is when his disabilities are brought to light that real progress begins for Teddy. Now that he knows why he had trouble learning things, especially math, he can drop the approach he took before and start anew.
Carrie agrees to help him through it, resorting to different methods to help him become more focused and remove the clutter from his brain that has been holding him back for so long. Slowly but steadily, things start to get better as Teddy starts to learn the things he never thought he could. Like anything else in life, learning takes time, especially for Teddy, who discovered his learning disabilities so late in life, but eventually, he works through it and succeeds in getting a GED.
Read More: Night School: Is Christian Chicken a Real Fast Food Joint?
