MONDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2012 13:33
By David William.
The movie “Won’t Back Down” is a movie promoted by “Students First” with ulterior political, social and financial motives. The “Students First” web site (www.studentsfirst.org) is pushing the movie hard and sending out email blast such as the following one from Michelle Rhee the CEO of “Students First” in which she says: “I’ll be honest”…(whenever somebody starts off like that the first reaction should be to check for your wallet). She then goes on to say: “I am not a big moviegoer. Between work and my kids, it can be hard to find the time. But if more films were like "Won't Back Down," I'd find myself dragging my husband, Kevin, to the movies all the time.”
Michelle Rhee then makes no secret in this email of the agenda of “Students First” and the ulterior political, financial and social motive of the movie “Won’t Back Down” by stating: “We've taken this film to both the Republican and Democratic conventions and been blown away by the response we've gotten. I believe this film has the power to inspire millions of people to bring education reform to their communities — and that is why I want you to see it.”
Once on gets past all the buzz words like “Support Good Teachers”, it is clear from the “Students First” web site that “education reform” means privatized charter schools funded by the taxpayers. Their web site makes no secret that their agenda is to push politicians, parents and students to support privatized schools, which then becomes just a small leap to a school voucher program on a state-by-state basis or even on a national level. Their strategies and the theme of “Won’t Back Down” are to convince politicians, parents and children that public schools are failures. Their villains are teacher unions, regulations, bureaucracies and bad tenured teachers that they say are destroying public schools. They portray most unionized public school teachers as incompetent, lazy and over paid. The message is that privatized schools can fix all the problems and provide a better education for all children in grades k-12, than can our current public school system. All they say that is needed is to get rid of teacher unions, fire tenured teachers, eliminate bureaucracy and just hire “good teachers” instead.
The movie “Won’t Back Down” had a production budget of $19 million. According to Maggie Gullenhall of Salon.com the movie was financed by conservative Christian billionaire Phil Anschutz, who also financed “Waiting for Superman” which had a similar theme of bashing public schools and pushing privatized schools. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and un-named private foundations have spent $2 million promoting the movie in newsprint and TV ads according to Stephanie Simon of the Chicago Tribune.