I Know What I've Been Told
The film analyzes the failure of American public education by following several students through the educational system, hoping to be selected in a lottery for acceptance into charter schools.
My rant though isn't necessarily about the film. Not to get all Siskel & Ebert on you, but I found the movie engaging enough. I became vested in the kids trying to get into the charter schools. My heartstrings were firmly plucked when the camera lingered on those who didn't realize their dream.
Spoiler follows My irony loving side noted that the one child selected happened to be the only white child in the bunch. Spoiler ends
Not to say I loved all of it. I felt (and this is saying a lot based on how I think) the movie was very black and white. Not in a racial sense either. It was also absent of any teacher's voice. And concentrated on areas of our country that don't relate to my reality. Not that I should ignore them. What effects them, ultimately will effect me. I get that. But it's hard to wrap my head around what a black kid living in the ghetto is going through.
Today's rant is about the Q&A round-table discussion that followed the movie.
Perhaps it is my blue collar, Okie upbringing. Or impatience. But sitting through a discussion, where a select few feel the need to pontificate from their limited milieu drives me crazier than a shithouse rat.
From the guy who wanted to bring up 'the kids from the wrong side of the tracks can't make it in the real world even though they tell them they are doing good in their shitty wrong side of the tracks school' experience as an human resources employee at a company in Monroe, LA.
To the guy who tried to be all in their face, said face being the talking head panel of educators who were asked to give their thoughts and opinions on the film as well as the state of education in our anytown U.S.A.
He asked them each, point blank, did they feel that the education system is broken.
Fuck me. What an asinine, puffed up, waste of (my) time, question.
What did he think they would say? Yes!?!
Their salary (or pension) is paid by the very system he's trying to get them to recant.
The best of the worst though, for me at least, was this older guy who had a very, 'you kids get off of my lawn' attitude in his statements.
His hot button was that math and science weren't given the proper amount of love in today's educational landscape. And at some point during his point, he took a left turn, and half-ass said to the dozen or so youth in attendance, that they didn't like math or science because they were too busy with computers, rock-n-roll (I'm making that up) and the prom (he actually said that.)
But the best. Was his finish.
He declared, 'that math wasn't sexy enough.'
In the movie, Michelle Rhee, chancellor of Washington D.C. schools at the time of the film, said that if we want to fix education, it has to quit being about the adults. And start being about the kids.
I learned two things on Sunday. What 'charter' school meant. And that it is still very much about the adults who want nothing more than to pontificate from their limited milieu even when they have a dozen or more actual school age youth in their midst who could give them real answers and insight.
Until I BLOG again...I'm no Superman.
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