The teacher doesn’t stick up for the students once! Neither in front of them nor in private. This is contrary to everything he had been teaching them and demonstrates him to be a hypocrite. The end of the movie, supposed to be climactic, shows a silent, ineffectual man being stared at by a bunch of disobedient boys standing on their desks. It is a good thing the movie ends there, because there was no way to salvage what comes next.