Education and the Saratoga Film Forum

Our local jewel, the Saratoga Film Forum recently screened the controversial film “Waiting for Superman”, that has been playing to ecstatic audiences all over the country. Authored by Davis Guggenheim who directed “An inconvenient truth”, in which Al Gore displays his findings in relation to man-made climatological and environmental change, this film tackles the insufficiencies of our education system. Fiercely dogmatic, after highlighting how our present system of public education fails our children, the film proposes various forms of charter schools as the remedy.

As it became known that the film would be shown, and that discussion forums would follow the screenings, demand for seats skyrocketed, and in addition to the usual three screenings in a week, an unusual Saturday screening and an extraordinary second screening on Sunday afternoon was added.

Over 500 people crowded the Dee Sarno theater over the week-end, and the panels had to address many questions thrown at them by passionate parents with children in the Saratoga Springs schools.

But what really struck me was the generally complacent responses of the panelists, from Janice White to David Patterson. They reassured the audience that the problems outlined in the film were not our problems, but inner-city dissonances that, thank Heaven, did not apply to our panglossian reality in Saratoga Springs.

The corporate world, the film seems to say, is willing to underwrite primary and secondary education, pouring oodles of money to subsidize desired results and unburdening the taxpayer. Bill Gates himself was interviewed several times to explain how the future of this nation as a first rate power is being undermined by the poor outcomes of our public education system.

Most remarkable were the facts that the film did not mention, as they might detract from the passionate attacks on teachers’ unions, school administrators and the tenure system.

In my opinion we are losing sight of the goal that a public system of education was meant to achieve. Bismarck, in the beginnings of the German empire in the 1840’s pointed to the need of bringing together the children of different classes, ethnicities and geographical areas to forge a sense of common purpose and destiny. This, more than ever, still applies today in these United States. “E pluribus unum”, out of many, one.

As Dr. Michael Stanford, of Suny Buffalo, in the audience on Sunday evening, reminded us: “Education is a revolutionary activity.” Forging unity and a civic discourse, embracing all components of our diverse and splintered nation into a coherent and forward looking entity, seem, in the present political climate, truly revolutionary endeavors.

This vision is not served if the educators are allowed to attend only to those communities that will be high-performing, abandoning the considerable percentage of children of deprivation to inferior financing and lackadaisical methodologies.

It may well be that in order to serve all needs more money will be needed than we have been so far willing to earmark for education. But are we really willing to abandon another slice of the civic realm to corporate money and interests.?