On Friday, September 24th, parents and teachers participated in a demonstration outside of the premier of “Waiting for Superman”. The film, which has garnered significant publicity in recent days, has taken the lead in framing the conversation regarding education reform. A grass roots group, The Real Reformers, reject this framework and offered an alternative voice to the conversation.
Explaining the impetus for Friday night’s actions and the development of a forthcoming grassroots documentary, Julie Cavanagh, a teacher in Red Hook, Brooklyn said, “We felt compelled to demonstrate a resistance to a film that can be described only as propaganda. The film continues to propagate myths about the so-called crisis in education and further espouses false claims about supposed reforms and reformers that are garnering much of the media’s attention right now. It is time for Real Reformers to stand up, and lead the conversation on what works in our public schools, and the policies needed to improve our public schools. There are no easy answers. Viewing charter schools as a silver bullet and blaming teachers, the vast majority of whom work tirelessly for students and families every day, is part of a larger movement to privatize public education. We must be vigilant in protecting, while improving, true public education, the pillar of our democracy.”
Lisa Donlan, a public school parent and President of Community Education Council One added, “For too long now our children have been the pawns of powerful politicians and their handpicked bureaucrats who paint themselves as reformers while they reinforce the status quo, depriving our neediest children of the quality education that is their birthright. No man, not even Superman can alter the sad reality: the achievement gap persists, our schools and communities are segregated and less money is spent on students despite tripled budgets. In the words of Frederick Douglass in 1857: "If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Outside of the Loews Lincoln Square movie theater, the Real Reformers stood up and presented their vision for real education reform. The Grassroots Education Movement provided two pieces of literature including: “The Inconvenient Truth About Waiting for Superman” which outlined information regarding misleading and factually inaccurate claims in the movie and “The Truth About Charter Schools”, a brochure that outlines “myths” and “truths” about charter schools. The group also released the trailer for their upcoming documentary, “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman”, which will be shown in New York City neighborhoods, and across the country, this fall. The trailer for this film is posted at
http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org/.http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/The video is wonderful! Check it out.
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