A *VERY* bad ending to an otherwise good movie

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What the first post describes as a "bad ending" is exactly what happened in the spanish civil war. It's just what an inner war means in a country, it's cities and towns... people accusing their neighbours, brothers turning their backs on their brothers just to save their backs, and all this is still alive in the spanish colective memory.
In the beautiful speech of the teacher when he gets honoured at his retirement, he says something like: "if only we could have one generation raised in freedom..." The civil war and the dictatorship afterwards killed that: the freedom of all those children and their families. If they had stood up for any of the prisioners that were being taken away, they would have been killed or imprisioned too. That's the reason of their reaction, and that's why the mother pushes them to shout "rojo, ateo": she has to protect her own family, her husband being a republican himself. But the boy will not only shout those words of shame. He has learned important lessons of life and love with his teacher, and he has learned mysterious words of science and nature that he shouts to his teacher as he is going away forever.
I guess there are certain details that can get lost in the translation, and maybe that made you feel that the end wasn't logical, but, believe me, this movie ends as the second republic ended in Spain, with pain, grief and shame. The only hope remained in those children that learned better things to be the future adults that fought with their ideals and words to get back their freedom.

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Remember the when the music teacher is showing Andres how to play; he is telling him to treat the sax like a woman and Andres immidiately thinks of the Chinese girl in Moncho's book and begins to play better. When he finally sees a real Chinese girl watching him at the festival he plays his heart out and sounds absolutely wonderful. The point of the Chinese girl was to show that Andres too learned something in the course of the movie.

The girl and the dog were meant to show loss of innocence of Moncho and the fact that the girl is his half-sister makes her presence more important; especially after her mother dies and Moncho attends the funeral. The funeral brings Don Greggorio and Moncho to talk about religion, a major factor in Spanish culture and the civil war.

If you only follow the main plot bit by bit then you will never appreciate how finely woven the the many subplots. Sure many scenes seem unneccesary in a tale about the Spanish Civil War; however, if all we saw were atrocities and bombing we would have become numb to the violence and the tragedy would have been less real.

There are many things to say about this film, but in relation to the ending...

For me, one maybe less obvious thing illustrated by the film is the contradiction at the heart of being a 'good, kind, teacher'. For all his speeches about freedom, his love of children, his kind nature, and his compassionate teaching methods, Don Gregorio, being a teacher, remains an AUTHORITY FIGURE. Before teaching any kind of content, he is teaching the kids respect for authority. Whether he does it through the cane or through standing quietly by the window, this is what he is teaching. It is a lesson Muncho learnt only too well, as painfully illustrated by the final scene, where after only a few moment's hesitation he willingly submits to the authority of his parents, and ultimately the fascists, against his own better judgement. Ultimately, this distrust of ourselves, and trust of authority figures (especially in times of chaos - where we need to rely on ourselves more than ever), is the underlying psychological disease of humanity which brought fascism to power in the past and will do so again. (Read Reich's "mass psychology of fascism" for a better explanation of this thesis).

Teachers (of all polticial persuasions and temperaments) in compulsory schools do not help to challenge this disease.