“It’s Only a Movie”
by Robert PondiscioSeptember 29th, 2010
Like Alexander Russo, I’m quickly reaching the saturation point with commentary aboutWaiting For Superman and NBC’s Education Nation. The last, best word on WFS may belong to Dan Willingham. “It’s only a movie,” he reminds us. And in its quest for simplicity and narrrative drive, it “caricatures complex institutions and policies.”
The trope is familiar: spirited band of virtuous reformers battle unfeeling, selfish and powerful foe. Do teacher’s unions deserve to get beat up on? Sure. So do big city bureaucracies, which take a few licks in the movie. But so too do lazy parents, mountebanks hawking educational drivel, inattentive, idle, or corrupt state legislators, greedy and unprincipled textbook companies, out-of-touch professors at schools of education, and incompetent or cowardly boards of education.
You and I have been a party to this as well, Dan writes, “for letting it all happen.” Once the hoopla dies down, he concludes, ”the post-movie conversation ought to start by saying