My View: The curious paradox of 'Won't Back Down'
By Sam Chaltain, Special to CNNEditor's Note: Sam Chaltain is a Washington-based writer and education advocate. He can be found on Twitter at@samchaltain.
(CNN) - "Won’t Back Down," the new Hollywood film about two mothers determined to take over their children's failing inner city school, represents everything that’s wrong with the present way we talk about school reform – and everything we need to talk about more in the future.
The film itself feels like Soviet-era propaganda. No characters are well-developed; they’re all two-dimensional mouthpieces for different constituency groups’ pet programs and policy proposals. Even when the filmmakers try to instill a bit of complexity – such as the Teach for America alum who works in a neighborhood school and was raised in a family with deep union ties – the