How could the director of this film not know that he was promoting an idea dear to the agendas of rightwing think tanks and ALEC?
How could the director of this film not know that he was promoting an idea dear to the agendas of rightwing think tanks and ALEC?
From the article: “The character played by Maggie Gyllenhaal is poor and lives in a neighborhood with a *failing public school*. She can’t afford to move or send her daughter somewhere else, which means like many Americans, her daughter is *doomed, educationally-speaking*. That’s fundamentally unfair — as in *civil rights* unfair.” [Emphasis added.]
Look at the marked phrases. Classic rheeform speak. He’s not naive. He’s mendacious, just like the rest of them.
Naive director? I don’t think so. If this film was never intended to bash teacher unions, why was this question asked of a test audience before the film was released?
“During this discussion (and only because I requested it), the moderator asked the audience how they felt about the representation of the fictional teachers union.”
Last February, the NY Times reported that Barnz introduced the parent-trigger mechanism when he started working on the earlier script by Brin Hill. And yesterday, President Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform revealed that her organization advised the filmmakers of “Won’t Back Down.” My suspicion is that he took CER’s “advice.”
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I believe this filmmmaker was fairly naïve about the ed reform movement and its ties to ALEC, never bothered to vet the people who were sent to “advise” him, and ended up getting punked by the privatizers.