Dan Wilder, a public school teacher dedicated to overseeing merit and achievement in his language arts students, increasingly finds himself fighting forces he believes are bent on destroying excellence in schools. From ever-increasing regulations and mandates to opponents of public school funding to rigid administrators and indulgent parents, Wilder faces a mounting battle against a relentless bureaucracy that he believes he fights alone, especially as he deals with his disintegrating marriage to Mary Elizabeth, a third grade teacher. Wilder challenges the rigid views of the likes of Hollings Tipton, a wealthy and influential restaurant mogul who has consistently opposed all taxes for education, and principal Richard King, the rigidity of bureaucracy in human form. Seizing much-needed inspiration from his own heroes from literature he once read and then taught to his students, Wilder's final enlightenment originates from an incident his deceased brother witnessed decades earlier. As Dan Wilder senses the education he loves is vanishing and may be a symptom of the inevitability of change, he revisits his hometown, where he realizes the futility of his situation, leading him to commit his final symbolic act of defiance.