Judith Tannenbaum

Went with Aracely (WritersCorps teaching artist), Annie (amazing artist and long-time WritersCorps student), and my 20-year old nephew, Gus. We spent an hour or so talking (some of us ranting) after watching the movie. Here's some of what we said:

1. Yep, Guggenheim knows how to make a movie;
2. The children who provide the basic story line of the movie are wonderful, as are their parents;
3. The movie is already getting such a conversation going and that’s a good thing. And also a dangerous thing because Guggenheim misrepresents so much;
4. He does say that only 20% of charter schools get better results than public schools (“better results” means test scores), but that line is in passing while the story arc of the movie (as Gail Collins put it in her piece in NY Times) makes charter schools seem like the answer to the problem;
5. The movie basically says money isn’t the problem, but doesn’t mention the huge amount of money the charter schools he features have been given (by Gates, Broad, etc etc);
6. The movie talks a lot about the negative consequences of public schools as large bureaucracies beholden -- as institutions in a democracy are -- to diverse participants, but doesn’t raise any negative consequences of the “corporate” approach of many charter schools and being beholden to funder, etc;
7. Doesn’t show kids whose parents can’t or don’t advocate for them, immigrant parents who don't speak English, parents working three jobs, etc. Uses language of equity, but doesn’t exhibit awareness of what equity means in any real, on-the-ground sense;
8. Nothing at all about the value of public institutions in a democracy, or about why due process might be important and why we might not want teachers' jobs not to be at whim of each random supervisor or group of politicians or parents or anyone with a particular axe to grind. Nothing about what negative consequences of attaching teacher pay to student test scores might be;
9. A teacher in one of the charter schools featured wrote a wonderful blog about, right, this is WHY we’re so good. Nothing in the movie remotely about “what it takes”;
10. Geoffrey Canada and Harlem Children’s Zone are featured prominently, but there’s very little description of the entire program, only the school. The entire program of course began by saturating one square block with every single service residents needed, then moving out and out and out until a larger part of the community was covered. Mentioned but in such a way as if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t get it that even their middle school is one education venue in a whole line, beginning with Baby College for pregnant women and their partners. What HCZ is doing is way beyond the school. As many are saying about this:  "Well, at least we now know what real change costs!"
11. Every time Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, is on screen she's accompanied by devil dramatic music playing. The music alone makes her come across as a monster;
12. Unions are definitely the Bad Guy in the movie, but there's no mention for example, that in the states where students have highest test scores, the teachers' unions are strong, as they are in the countries lauded as successful (Finland, Japan);
13. Basically no teachers speak in the movie, give their sense of the problems and what they’ve seen work in their classrooms, schools, and communities;
14. Michelle Rhee is presented as a hero and there’s nothing in the movie about her actions that led to Fenty being voted out (which of course happened after the movie). Nothing about how, as DC has gentrified, the children taking tests there are not the same children who took them a few years ago;
15. We talked of those we know teaching in charter schools who tell us about the high percentage of children "counseled out." The movie said nothing about this;
16. The movie states that things have gotten worse in schools in the past decade, but doesn't make the connection that these are the years No Child Left Behind -- and emphasis on test scores -- has reigned;
    
17. The movie uses words like “working” or “success” without definition. Seems like the measure is improved test scores. There were many things our group discussed about this — including:

• The audience reacts so warmly to the children whose stories are being told because these children are bright, curious, articulate, adorable, etc NOT because they answer questions right or do anything related to testing. We love them because of their natures and how they express themselves.
• When asked why they want to get into the “better” school they’re entering the lotteries for, these children speak of having a better life, getting out of their neighborhoods. Their comments recognize that the problems are shared ones — economic, social — and because those problems aren’t being addressed, they want a way out.
• One of the boys, when asked how he feels about the boarding school charter school his grandma is trying to get him into, says his feelings are “bittersweet.” He wants to have the best chance for himself, but he doesn’t want to leave his family and friends.
• In her op/ed piece linked to above, Gail Collins writes that her own narrow wrath arose at the lottery system shown — how it’s made a piece of performance art and how children are made to feel that this one moment will make or break them. Of course the quality of school one attends is major, but our little group talked about how we want children to feel confident in making the best of even bad outcomes.
• We spoke about the movie’s assumptions (as Obama and Duncan also say) that the point of education is future jobs so that the USA can remain #1. We wondered if we really want our children to give up childhood (play, individual exploration, unstructured time to be curious, etc) for capitalist intentions.
  

Dear President Obama:

There are so many ways in which I am deeply grateful that you are our president. I could write you a long ode with many stanzas of praise. Such an ode would be heartfelt, but also heartfelt is this note that raises my deep concerns about much of the Arne Duncan education policy, a policy you seem to whole-heartedly support.

I write as someone who has been a community artist working in public schools and state prisons for over thirty five years. I know the consequences of the “achievement gap” much more intimately than my heart can bear. I feel no need to defend the “education status quo” (though that label often means “teachers,” and decades of observation have put public school teachers near the top of my list of heroes). I agree with you and Secretary Duncan that the nation needs a sincere, open conversation about how best to educate all of our children.

But some of the terms and assumptions underlying this conversation need more precise definition. It is taken as a given by “school reform” advocates that improved test scores equal better education, but I have seen nothing that proves this assumption. When I read most “school reformers,” I feel that I’m reading the equivalent of reasoning that goes something like: “teacher accountability will be tied to an increase in the number of students who wear purple” or “school improvement will be measured by how many students have good posture.” I see no evidence – on paper or in the real lives of young people I know – that improved test scores equal knowledge, the ability to think critically, or to a greater connection between oneself and the wider world. Whereas I see a great deal of evidence – in these same young people and in the people I know well in prison – that doing more of what hasn’t worked (more focus on testing, a greater reliance on measurement) will lead to even more children who feel separated from the possibilities we want to be theirs.

A primary reason I worked so hard for your election is that you place such a high value on moving beyond rigid positions. You have urged us to look for what we share (as human beings, as citizens); you’ve encouraged us to build policy from this shared ground. But we can’t do that – in education or in any other sphere – unless we have a real conversation about what we mean by words like “education,” “success,” and “equity.”

Prayers for you, your family, and the decisions you have to make on so many crucial matters.

I’m glad no one took my blood pressure as I watched “The Class,” for it would have been soaring. The movie – which takes place almost completely inside a high school on the edge of Paris  – is great (as nearly all reviewers agree). So it wasn’t the quality of the film that nearly gave me a stroke.

I’d done two site visits that day, watching WritersCorps teaching artists share poetry with San Francisco teen-agers – kids who had a lot in common with those in the movie – and at first I felt I was on another site visit. Most of the teens in the movie (or their parents) had come from elsewhere – Morocco, Mali, China, the Caribbean. Most were lively, bright, curious and insistent. They probably had more skills, and were more willing to get down to work, than many of our students, but the two groups of young people shared a lot.

There’s much to be said about the adults in the movie, the ways they speak to each other in the teachers’ lounge, and about school policies and how these were implemented. One of the particulars that was so great about the film was getting to witness all this, as though in a Frederick Wiseman documentary (another observation made by many reviewers).

But what did my blood pressure in was the teacher whose class was “The Class.” This teacher was played by François Bégaudeau, who wrote the autobiographical novel on which the movie is based and who himself had been a teacher in a school similar to the one portrayed. The good news is that François wasn’t a “white savior teacher” – this wasn’t that kind of movie. The bad news is how profoundly he let his students down.

I could go on and on about the details of this “let down” – all the ways the teacher did not listen to what the teen-agers tried (generously, it seemed to me) to tell him about what was important to them, about their cultures, about himself, and about power. Instead I’ll let you see the movie for yourself.

But please watch the climax scene closely. Please note how François, embarrassed by his students calling him out, lets one of those students (who, aware of his anger, wisely tries to leave the classroom) take the fall.

Please watch carefully, too, the penultimate scene. Notice how that student speaks so deeply from her heart, and how the teacher replies with platitudes.

I ask you to watch closely because I’ve been shocked – in reading reviews – how many threw up their hands at the kids, or the multicultural reality, or the Failure of the Education System.

We at WritersCorps loved the French students, though, so much like our students. And we were angry, sad, or disappointed at all the ways their teacher failed them.

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