{"id":1217,"date":"2011-04-19T10:59:29","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T15:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2011-04-19T12:59:05","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T17:59:05","slug":"debating-education-the-narrative-is-the-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=1217","title":{"rendered":"Debating Education: The Narrative is the Message"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Think back to the 2008 presidential campaigns.\u00a0 Between the candidates and their running mates, there were four compelling and uniquely <em>American <\/em>narratives to capture the public&#8217;s imagination:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>John McCain, who as a callow young soldier learned the true meaning of courage during his imprisonment behind enemy lines.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Sarah Palin, the soccer-mom plucked from near obscurity with an uncanny ability to connect with small town voters.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Joe Biden, the senator whose destiny changed in an instant when a tragic accident took his wife and daughter and almost killed his son.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Barak Obama, the culmination of our hopes and dreams.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One of these narratives was of course stronger and more compelling than the others.\u00a0 It involved race, class, immigration, American dreamers who couldn&#8217;t be stopped by an ocean, and the idea that Americans could rise above and overcome the tragedy of history.<\/p>\n<p>Back during that campaign, before the Citizens United decision, before the word &#8220;tea-party&#8221; became associated with elderly white people in comical hats demanding the government get it&#8217;s paws off Medicare, it wasn&#8217;t always clear what the ideological differences were between the parties.\u00a0 Many on the left and right would argue there wasn&#8217;t much difference. If you listened to the rhetoric of both sides, both would tell you the same things:\u00a0 they love their country, war is not a good thing, people need money to live, systems are broken, things used to better once upon a time . . .<\/p>\n<p>We are now in the midst of a debate about the nature and future of public education in which the word &#8220;reform&#8221; is used by both sides.\u00a0 Both argue that they have only the best interests of children in mind and both want to wear the mantle of &#8220;progress.&#8221;\u00a0 But which side is the right side?\u00a0 Or for that matter the left?<\/p>\n<p>In the popular film <em>Waiting for Superman,<\/em> we are told that &#8220;reformers&#8221; are people like Geoffrey Canada or Michelle Rhee who want to push past the entrenched and all powerful teacher&#8217;s unions that are acting out of their own self-interest and not the interests of children.\u00a0 Reformers are billionaires like Bill Gates and Mike Bloomberg, people who would never consider sending their own children to a public school.\u00a0 We are told that the problem with education is that bad teachers can&#8217;t be fired, and the only hope is a charter school system where schools aren&#8217;t tied to neighborhoods, but parents, even poor parents, can choose the best schools to send their kids to.\u00a0 Questions about the charter schools aren&#8217;t discussed; they aren&#8217;t even raised.\u00a0 The film is an uncritical love letter to those who bravely fight the power:\u00a0 teacher unions.<\/p>\n<p>While the filmmakers did give one union leader a chance to speak, it didn&#8217;t allow her to directly answer the particular charges leveled against unions by the filmmakers.\u00a0 It didn&#8217;t talk about resources being taken away from good public schools in order to support the growth of these semi-private institutions, or about public education success stories, the advantages of building strong <em>community-based<\/em> schools and the way that innovative public schools are working in collaboration with\u00a0 neighborhood organizations\u00a0 to strengthen entire communities and engage young people.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, by focusing on the lottery for spots at a few particular charters, and telling the story of a small group of kids going through the selection process, the film presents a simplistic, but compelling narrative.\u00a0 It builds a story around the idea that if these individual youngsters &#8220;win,&#8221; they will get into a charter school and have a positive future.\u00a0 If they &#8220;lose&#8221; and wind up in public school, they will not.\u00a0 We can&#8217;t help but get caught up in the story and the myth it creates, to the point where even an alert viewer doesn&#8217;t have much time to formulate the unasked questions: <em>What are the attrition rates for these schools? What happens to kids who can&#8217;t make it in a charter?\u00a0 What about parental involvement and input?\u00a0 Are the teachers actually better trained?\u00a0 What&#8217;s teacher attrition like?\u00a0 What are the procedures and protections if a parent has a concern?\u00a0 How does allocating resources for these schools impact on local public schools in the districts in which they are located?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A new film is coming which does examine these issues.\u00a0 The <em>Grassroots Education Movement <\/em>a group of public school parents and teachers, has put together its own film which is still in its final editing stages, but has already been screened at some community gatherings, and is called, called, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.waitingforsupermantruth.org\/\">The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman<\/a>.<\/em> The film takes a clear stand in discussing &#8220;real&#8221; reform versus the corporate idea of reform (the privatization of the school system).\u00a0 It shows the ways in which resources have been taken from community public schools and given over to charters.\u00a0 The filmmakers hammer home their main points about what encompasses true reform and what has actually been shown to make a difference for kids.\u00a0 They point out that the two &#8220;reforms&#8221; consistently shown to increase student achievement are smaller class size and more experienced teachers.\u00a0 These are reforms that unions push for.\u00a0 They\u00a0 inform us that the states with the lowest public school achievement happen to be the ones that don&#8217;t allow collective bargaining for teachers.\u00a0\u00a0 They point out that Finland, often lauded by the corporate reformers as an example of a working school system, is a <em>unionized<\/em> one.<\/p>\n<p>Ideologically, the film is not simply &#8220;pro-union,&#8221; but pro-child, community and parent as well, defining true reform as an equitable system in which parents don&#8217;t need to arrange hour or longer commutes for their young children in order to secure a good education for them.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a short film, and one devoted to answering the attack on public schools, rather than showing examples of the best ones, or the many ways in which &#8220;community&#8221; schools not only educate children, but help revitalize communities. (For a decent article about the difficulties of trying to run a great school under the a regime that has been consistently working to undermine and politicize public education, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/04\/10\/magazine\/mag-10School-t.html?_r=1&amp;scp=1&amp;sq=Bronx%20middle%20school&amp;st=cse\">this article<\/a> on a Bronx middle school.)<\/p>\n<p>Both <em>Waiting for Superman<\/em> and <em>The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman<\/em> are polemics.\u00a0\u00a0 The difference is that <em>Waiting for Superman<\/em> is a slick Hollywood production that manages downplay its bias, while <em>The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman<\/em> is an impassioned answer to some of the questions the first film doesn&#8217;t even raise. In <em>Waiting<\/em> the narrative is front and center, the ideology covert.\u00a0 It doesn&#8217;t <em>seem<\/em> like its attacking public school, but the only alternative it offers is a charter system.\u00a0 <em>Truth<\/em> is much less narrative driven.\u00a0 In answering the charges against teachers and unions, the tone can&#8217;t help being defensive.\u00a0 It&#8217;s pro-union, pro-grassroots rhetoric while stirring to its constituency, at times feels anachronistic, as though one is listening to a special on the <em>Pacifica Radio<\/em> network.\u00a0 Many people tune out when they hear the words &#8220;corporate interests&#8221; even if, in fact, the battle <em>is<\/em> about corporate versus public needs.<\/p>\n<p>What <em>Truth<\/em>, which was not made by a Hollywood director, or even a professional one, fails to do is create the kind of narrative suspense of <em>Waiting<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 I watched <em>Waiting<\/em> at home.\u00a0 My better-half got bored about half way through and went to sleep.\u00a0 The next morning he asked, &#8220;Who won the lottery?&#8221;\u00a0 He remembered the individual stories and how much seemed to be at stake.\u00a0 What&#8217;s needed is an answer to <em>Superman<\/em>, that doesn&#8217;t just lay out the case and the facts, but tells us a <em>story<\/em> equally as powerful.\u00a0 Sometimes the narrative <em>is<\/em> the message, and in this case, <em>The Truth Behind Waiting for Superman<\/em>, though valiant in its attempt, fails to capture the narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Think back to the 2008 presidential campaigns.\u00a0 Between the candidates and their running mates, there were four compelling and uniquely American narratives to capture the public&#8217;s imagination: John McCain, who as a callow young soldier learned the true meaning of courage during his imprisonment behind enemy lines. Sarah Palin, the soccer-mom plucked from near obscurity &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=1217\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Debating Education: The Narrative is the Message<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[55,105],"tags":[302,198,200,303,304],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1217"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1220,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions\/1220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}