“Be the change you want to see!” Jamie crows to a throng
of cheering parents—but democracy is the enemy. Getting rid of
representative government and calling in a private entity to handle
things, in our current Opposite Day political moment, represents a
glorious triumph of people power. The “parent trigger” invites parents
to use their vote to give up their vote—that is, to be enormously
powerful for one short moment of direct democracy, which they will use
to dispose, in the long run, with the “public” part of public school,
and thus with any actual power over their children’s education.----Liza Featherstone, a real, not fictional, NYC public school parent.
according to data from National Center for
Education Statistics, there is no correlation between teacher dismissal
rates and union membership. In Massachusetts, where almost all public
school teachers belong to a union, the firing rate for experienced
teachers is nearly twice that in North Carolina, where just 2.3 percent
of the teaching force is unionized.
Oh Liza, those pesky facts just get in the way of the message.
Liza Featherstone - September 26, 2012
“You know those mothers who lift one-ton trucks off their babies?”
says Jamie Fitzpatrick, a working-class mom (played Maggie Gyllenhall),
in a confrontation with a corrupt union rep in Daniel Barnz’s edu-drama,
Won’t Back Down. “They’re nothing compared to me.”
It’s a “you-go-girl” moment. But real moms can’t lift trucks. And
just about everything in this movie is as wildly fantastical as that
image.
Fed up with her daughter’s horrible public school, Jamie learns about
a law that allows parents and teachers to “take over” a failing school.
Against the odds, she organizes the powerless and wins over the
naysayers. The movie is inspired by real-life “parent trigger” laws,
which are pushed by right-wing groups like ALEC, but backed with equal
enthusiasm by progressive urban mayors nationwide. The laws allow a
charter takeover if 50 percent of the parents agree to it. Charter
schools are mostly non-union, and democratically elected officials have
little control over them.
Won’t Back Down is liberal Hollywood’s second blast of gas on
what was once a bugbear of the Right: the badness of public schools and
teachers’ unions, and the magic bullet of hope offered by privatization.
The first was Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for Superman.
Barnz’s movie, featuring great actresses Viola Davis and Gyllenhall, is
far more watchable than Guggenheim’s, but the fantasy world it inhabits
is exactly the same. Its release, just on the heels of the Chicago
teachers’ strike, feels eerily timely, as its anti-union talking points
are just the same as those of Rahm Emanuel and the monied interests of
Chicago.
The film’s presentation of the social context is heartbreakingly
accurate—poor kids like Jamie’s daughter, Malia, don’t get the education
they deserve. But otherwise, the movie presents a Mad Tea Party view of
urban education, and of social change itself. In Won’t Back Down,
and in the bipartisan neoliberal fairytale that passes for education
reform, teachers and parents are good, but the institutions that
represent them—unions, the state—are bad. “Empowerment” is desirable,
even ecstatic—“Be the change you want to see!” Jamie crows to a throng
of cheering parents—but democracy is the enemy. Getting rid of
representative government and calling in a private entity to handle
things, in our current Opposite Day political moment, represents a
glorious triumph of people power. The “parent trigger” invites parents
to use their vote to give up their vote—that is, to be enormously
powerful for one short moment of direct democracy, which they will use
to dispose, in the long run, with the “public” part of public school,
and thus with any actual power over their children’s education.
Jamie leads the fictional takeover because her daughter, who is
dyslexic, can’t read. Yet not a word is said in the movie about the need
for more services and teachers for special needs kids. The school is
depicted as depressing and shabby—what about the need for more
resources? What about all the extra support poor children need? We see
kids acting out and falling asleep in class—where are the social workers
to help those kids?
Never mind those wonky details. The problem, we’re repeatedly led to
believe, is the teachers’ union. But if unions were to blame for failing
schools, wouldn’t unionized public schools in Princeton or Scarsdale
also suck?
Hollywood hasn’t been known to let logic get in the way of a good
story, and neither do education reformers. Facts are similarly
irrelevant. In the movie, Malia’s teacher—a repellent timeserver who
locks the little girl in a closet as punishment—can’t be fired because
of the union. There are more than a few problems with this scenario.
Outside of Tinseltown and the corporate reform imaginary, union members
do get fired. In fact, according to data from National Center for
Education Statistics, there is no correlation between teacher dismissal
rates and union membership. In Massachusetts, where almost all public
school teachers belong to a union, the firing rate for experienced
teachers is nearly twice that in North Carolina, where just 2.3 percent
of the teaching force is unionized.
Despite scapegoating teachers’ unions, Won’t Back Down is not
an anti-teacher movie. Most of the teacher characters—especially Nona,
played by Viola Davis—are heroic. That’s because one of the film’s
messages is that busting teachers’ unions is better for teachers.
In one scene, a meeting to discuss the possible takeover, Nona argues
that losing the union will be worth it, “because we’ll be able to teach
the way we want.” (The movie is vague on Nona’s pedagogy and why the
union prevents it. In real life, charter teachers certainly don’t have
any more control over curriculum than public school teachers do.) It is a
ruling-class wet dream: workers who are happy to help destroy their own
institutions. By giving up the organization through which they wield
power, the fictional teachers reason, they will gain more power.
We have wandered deep into the swamp of Upsidedownlandia. Yet the
same paradox colors the film’s view of parent power. The movie
celebrates parents rising up and taking control of their children’s
education—in order to rid themselves of all representation. Though the
film does not discuss such pesky governance matters, a “takeover,” in
real life, usually means that the school is run by a private
organization with limited accountability to the public. While the state
does decide ultimately which charters to shut down, there is no
oversight by the school board, nor the city government, and certainly
not the parents.
Of course, democracy and its institutions are horribly flawed. But to
conclude that, therefore, dictatorship would be empowering is just
weird. It’s not the first time that idea has been presented in film.
Daniel Barnz is no Leni Riefenstahl, of course—he’s not as skilled a
filmmaker, and there’s nothing racist or hateful in this movie—but the
emotional experience of Won’t Back Down is, for the viewer, not
unlike that of the best propaganda. As we cheer for Jamie and Nona, we
are rooting against ourselves, against our own capacity for
self-governance.
Liza Featherstone is a contributing writer to the Nation. She also writes about education for Al Jazeera English and Newsday, as well as the Brooklyn Rail, where she is the author of the “Report Card” column.
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