Welcome to the Philadelphia area's Rock School, run by Paul Green, a self-described frustrated rocker and enthusiastic and talented teacher. Don Argott's documentary about Green and his students, called, appropriately, "Rock School," takes us inside this unusual instructional atmosphere and into the minds of Green and some of his students.

A no nonsense film -- there are virtually no bells and whistles here -- "Rock School" is a testament to the abilities of kids and something of an expose of Green's unorthodox teaching methods.

From his deadpan glorification of Satan to his hot-headed berating of the students -- much of which he claims is an act to get the kids to respond -- Green isn't like your grammar school teachers.

His conversations with the kids reference pot, violence and the devil and is littered with swearing. He is, after all, teaching them about rock and the rock and roll lifestyle. The kids, however, range from 9 to 17 and whether or not you think this is the right way to teach them, Green gets results.

He's got some other instructors, too, who do the day-to-day business of explaining barre chords and how to hold drum sticks. Green appears to be more of a guru, assigning difficult Zappa tunes to challenge the kids' skills and notions of what they can do, raging from practice room to practice room, telling the kids that audiences deserve a real show and deriding almost any music that doesn't fit his classic rock upbringing.

Green appears to especially abhor simplicity. He loves the late Frank Zappa's baroque compositions for huge bands with unusual instrumentation and has determined that any three-chord song is garbage (tell it to Dylan, fella). How he rectifies that with the fact that simplicity has always been the real essence of rock and roll ... well, we don't ever really find out and, we suspect, in his world of "Guitar Gods" there simply is no room for anything other than showmanship and technique.

With an ego the size of Pennsylvania -- although to his credit, he's the first to admit it -- Green comes across like a mad musical instructor, but it's hard to argue that some of his kids have made amazing strides; especially someone like C.J., who not yet into his teens, is capable of lightning fast fretwork.

But there are others that, according to one of those who struggled, get lost in the background and simply fade away from lack of attention. Will, for example, struggles to learn his bass parts and doesn't respond to Green's rampages. The result is that he becomes a whipping boy for Green, who even makes fun of the fact that Will attempted suicide in the past.

As we see from concert footage, Green's kids, of all ages, overcome the difficulties of learning an instrument and come to understand the value of dedicated practice. They also learn not to fear what initially appears too difficult and, in the end, they master some incredibly complex tunes.

Now, if he can teach them to write good songs and do it with the clarity, passion and simplicity of the legends of rock and roll, he'll have turned the kids into real musicians instead than a bunch of talented technicians capable only of recreating the art of others.

"Rock School" is out now on DVD.