In a truly postmodern twist, movie screenings for the film Won’t Back Down, during both the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention, are creating some buzz in advance of the film’s September 28, 2012 release. That’s great for ticket sales. The movie is described as being “much like the documentary Waiting for Superman.” Except this film is a fictionalized account “inspired by a true story.” Still it has sparked strong reactions from union leaders, activists and teachers.
Isn’t it ironic that fiction is sparking such strong reactions, when our current reality should be more than enough to inspire “we the people” to individually as well as collectively improve our schools and our communities by reclaiming public education? Perhaps some good will come out of all this (besides more movie tickets being sold). Anything that sparks or inspires people to start their own kitchen-table conversations, back-yard, neighbor-to-neighbor, authentic real-world deliberation…
Oh, wait. I forgot. These are political infomercials conventions.
We bear a lot of responsibility for this. We were focused – as unions are – on fairness and not as much on quality.
