The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

Waiting for Superman

Still Separate, Still Unequal: Racism, Class and the Attack on Public Education

With Brian Jones

Still Separate, Still Unequal: Racism, Class and the Attack on Public Education, with Brian Jones from N Alexander on Vimeo.

Public education is under an unprecedented attack. The powerful people who want to privatize our schools are using many different means: charter schools, mayoral control, high stakes standardized testing, school closures, merit pay and attacking teacher unions are all a part of this assault. Often, these "reformers" claim that the sweeping changes they want will bring genuine educational justice for communities that have long been underserved -- especially for African American families. But will privatization actually create racial justice? Or will it exacerbate the problem? Will these "reforms" strengthen the educational rights of students and parents, or weaken them? Will turning education over to the free market lead to less segregated schools, or more so? Who is behind the effort to privatize education and why are they pursuing these changes? Is there an alternative way to reform our public schools?

Brian Jones is a teacher, actor, and activist in New York City. He is the co-narrator of the film, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, and a contributing author to the new book, Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation: http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Education-and-Capitalismw-C

Source:  http://wearemany.org/v/still-separate-still-unequal-racism-class-and-attack-on-public-educationda

The class / Entre les murs (2008)

French School as Democracy and Stage
Dennis Lim, The New York Times (September 26, 2008):

"The Class," a French high-school drama that emerged as the popular underdog winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year, belongs to the largely inspirational tradition of the classroom movie. Sometimes the films in this category are odes to youthful rebellion — Jean Vigo's "Zero for Conduct," Lindsay Anderson's "If ..." — but more often (and certainly in the American iterations) they are celebrations of the charismatic, inventive pedagogue, as embodied by Glenn Ford in "Blackboard Jungle," Michelle Pfeiffer in "Dangerous Minds" or Ryan Gosling in "Half Nelson."

"The Class" simultaneously revives and undermines this longstanding genre. Its director, Laurent Cantet, said he was mindful of it, not least because of one grating negative example.

"I didn't want to make a version of 'Dead Poets Society,' " Cantet said in a recent telephone interview, "a film where the teacher is brilliant and heroic and knows everything. I wanted to show a school in all its complexity, where the students don't always learn, and the teachers are not always sure of what they're doing."

The solution, although risky, was simple enough: use real students and real teachers.

Cantet, 47, is one of France's foremost practitioners of a realist, socially engaged cinema, leftist but not dogmatic, with an interest in the culture of the modern workplace and a tendency to inflect his fictional scenarios with strong elements of documentary. His first full-length feature, "Human Resources" (1999), a drama about a father-son conflict complicated by a parallel labor-management struggle, was shot in a factory in Normandy. Most of the actors were nonprofessionals, actual workers, bosses and union organizers playing versions of themselves.

"The Class," which will open the New York Film Festival on Friday (and will be released by Sony Pictures Classics on Dec. 12), is loosely based on a book by François Bégaudeau, itself a hybrid of fact and fiction, billed as an "autobiographical novel" and based on the author's experiences as a teacher. Bégaudeau is the star of "The Class," playing a character named François. The students and the other teachers are drawn from a junior high school in the 20th Arrondissement of Paris, a racially mixed neighborhood.

For some years Cantet had been toying with the idea of a film set in a high school. Both his parents were teachers, and as the father of two school-age children, he said, "I was curious about what their lives are like right now."

The concept fell into place when he read Bégaudeau's book, a best seller in France. "It give me a vision of the school from the inside," he said. He was also intrigued by Bégaudeau's description of his unorthodox and even combative teaching methods, the way he turned classroom back-and-forths into what Cantet called "an experiment in what democracy could be."

Something of a maverick, François is by no means infallible. "This teacher establishes a certain proximity with his students," Bégaudeau wrote in an e-mail message, referring to his alter-ego. "He gives them many occasions to express themselves, favors interacting over lecturing, collective thinking over a linear transmission of knowledge."

"He is the teacher that I was, that I wanted to be," he added. "A democratic teacher, with the baggage of approximation and chaos that comes with it. But in a classroom, as in society, democracy comes with a price. To be a democrat means to accept this price."

Cantet worked on the script with Robin Campillo, his regular co-writer, and Bégaudeau. "It was clear we were not doing a real adaptation of the book," Cantet said. "We would take situations and see if they could mean something to the children we found." Once a week for several months before the shoot, Cantet and Bégaudeau held open workshops that allowed the filmmakers to shape the characters to fit the actors.

The most eager students — about half of the 50 who responded to the casting call — ended up in the film. All are untrained actors, but self-consciousness was not a problem. "Many of them are already friends, and they were not embarrassed in front of one another," Cantet said. "They were also not affected by the lights and cameras. I think because of their generation the camera just felt normal for them."

"The Class" was shot on high-definition video, and to create a fly-on-the-wall effect in the classroom scenes Cantet had three cameras rolling at all times — one trained on Bégaudeau, another on the students, and a third continually on the prowl, "looking for the details that make the classroom real," Cantet said.

Bégaudeau functioned as a surrogate for Cantet, "directing the film from the inside," as Cantet put it, eliciting reactions from the students. "It was very convenient for the film," Bégaudeau said, "and it also enabled me to not focus on my acting and get tense."

The unforced verve of the performances across the board is striking, though maybe not surprising. As Cantet noted, the setting encourages theatricality. "School makes everyone an actor," he said. "The teacher is putting on a performance. The way he uses his body and his voice is an improvisation. Maybe that's why François is such a good actor." And for students the socializing aspect of school involves role playing and recognizable archetypes. "You have the tough guy, the good pupil, the bad one," he said. "Even in real life they are working with characters that have been assigned to them."

"The Class" evolves from observational scenes to a more pointed dramatic conflict, centered on the disciplinary action taken against a boy originally from Mali, but there are no obvious heroes or villains, a stance that Cantet and Bégaudeau both associated with the famous line from Jean Renoir's "Rules of the Game," "Everyone has his reasons."

Bégaudeau said: "Before judging your characters you try to understand their motivations, to understand a process rather than give grades on a moral scale. I believe that in 'The Class' everyone acts according to what they believe to be good, and what's tragic is that it still produces drama."

Bégaudeau, an occasional film critic who has written for Cahiers du Cinéma, placed Cantet within the humanist "Renoirian tradition," whose other heirs include, he said, Eric Rohmer, Maurice Pialat (the last French Palme d'Or winner, for 1987's "Under the Sun of Satan") and Abdellatif Kechiche, a contemporary of Cantet's whose films ("Games of Love and Chance" and the coming "Secret of the Grain") have an affinity with "The Class" in their attention to the lived reality of teenagers and of multicultural France.

As suggested by its French title, "Entre les Murs" ("Between the Walls"), "The Class" never ventures outside the school, but the classroom, as in all classroom movies, registers as a microcosm of society. While the riots of 2005 exposed the fissures of the new France, Cantet said he was striving for an optimistic portrait. "It was important to show the diversity in the classroom as something natural for the children and enriching for everyone," he said. But the utopia is tinged with ambiguity. "School is an integrating system, but it's also based on exclusion."

"The Class" opens in France this week and has already reignited arguments there about diversity and elitism in the education system, already a subject of public discussion in light of proposed reforms by the Nicolas Sarkozy government. Cantet said some conservative commentators have bristled at Bégaudeau's pedagogical approach: "He's not their idea of what a teacher should be."

Bégaudeau maintains he never intended to make a political point. "I did adjust the book according to certain aspects of the discourse of the school system, he said. "But above all I wanted to disarm all discourse by presenting facts too complex for any discourse to address fully. It's a way to bet on storytelling rather than ideas."

Cantet, for his part, had no interest in settling a conflict that defies resolution. "There is a very old fight in France, and I think everywhere, between the moderns and the ancients about the culture that we believe should enrich our children." he said. "The debate is much older than the film. The film provides arguments to both sides to continue this debate."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/arts/26iht-21lim.16510682.html?pagewanted=all 

Chalk (2006)

You're gonna say your name, and then I want you to tell me... what comes to your mind with history. OK? And I'd like you to start.

Anything?

OK.

Well... that's why we're here.

Great movie!

Maintaining Classroom Discipline by using Democratic Methods (1953)

Practicing Democracy in the Classroom (1953). Points out that democratic techniques are more effective in teaching good citizenship than laissez-faire and authoritarian methods. This educator instruction film advocates the use of democratic prinicples within the classroom. Even today, so many classrooms based around teacher centered, autocratic methodologies, this is a timely message. This film displays many practices that are at the heart of progressive educational thought: student centered learning, authentic tasks, collaborative work, authentic assessment. This is all couched in the framework of bolstering democracy, which ironically it does, by promoting an independantly thinking citizen that tries to gather facts and reason, rather than relying on talking head demagogues. Producer: Educational Film Service. Creative Commons license: Public Domain.

Classic Movie #1 - Up The Down Staircase (1967)

What is Historical Thinking?

Watch this introductory video for an overview of ways of thinking inherent in knowing and doing history. Historical thinking is complex and multi-faceted; we focus on five key aspects particularly relevant to the K-12 classroom. These are:

• Multiple Accounts & Perspectives
• Analysis of Primary Sources
• Sourcing
• Context
• Claim-evidence Connection

What resources are available to help with understanding these facets and teaching them to students of all ages? Below are a few of our favorite such resources at Teachinghistory.org.

http://teachinghistory.org/historical-thinking-intro

A Changing World: Education in New Brunswick

Un monde en changement : l'éducation au Nouveau-Brunswick

Peter Seixas: Introduction to Historical Thinking in Canada

What is Historical Thinking?

Public History and Engaging in the Historian's Craft

by Cynthia Wallace-Casey

PhD Student, University of New Brunswick

“We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.”      (Anaïs Nin, 1903-1977)

In the fourth season of “The Sopranos”, Anthony junior sits at the kitchen counter of the family home, reading to his parents a history book about Christopher Columbus. His father, Tony Soprano, becomes increasingly more agitated as he realizes that his son’s version of history challenges his own well-established concepts about the “great Italian hero”.

“Your teacher told you that?” he asks his son; to which A.J. replies: “It’s not just my teacher, it’s the truth! It’s in my history book.”

In this postmodernist age, historians are ever challenged in their pursuit of “the truth”. For public historians, this challenge becomes even more complicated as we engage a third dimension to our quest: trying to understand our audience and their perceptions. In the end, we find that “the truth” is nothing more than our interpretation of events and it is an ever changing, ever evading, ideal.

The Past versus History
The past is not history. The past is merely a series of random events. History is the study of these random events, and historians try to make sense of the past by adopting standardized methods of historical inquiry that strive to achieve some measure of objectivity. Like truth, objectivity is an ideal that is sought but never fully achieved. Included in this historical inquiry are basic tools that allow the historian to: establish historical significance; examine primary as well as secondary evidence; identify continuity and change; analyze cause and consequence; establish historical perspectives; and ultimately understand moral dimensions of the past. Historians interpret the past, and in so doing they realize that their interpretations are shaped by their own biases and interests – but, in the words of Margaret Conrad, a good historian strives “to examine their own motivations, take pains to understand the context of earlier efforts to write the history of their topic, and concede that exploring the past from a variety of perspectives is the closest they can come to the ideal of objectivity.” This is the historian’s craft, and it is the pursuit of an elusive objective history that (I believe) differentiates the amateur from the professional.

In New Brunswick, written history – in the European sense of the term – was first introduced to the region by early explorers. The ancestral people of this region - Mik'maq, Wolastoqiyik and Passamaquoddy - all communicated through picture-writing known as gomgwejui'gaqan (Mik'maq), wikhegan (Wolastoqiyik), and wikhikon (Passamaquoddy), although this form of written history has not been fully appreciated as a documentary source. North America’s first European historian, Marc Lescarbot, visited Saint Croix Island, as well as the river St. John, in 1607 and upon his return to France, published a three-volume Histoire de la Nouvelle-France in Paris in 1609. Four years later, Samuel de Champlain also published his journals in France, and in 1672, Nicolas Denys published a two-volume Description géographique et historique des costes de l'Amérique septentrionale avec l'histoire naturelle du paèis, which was written while he resided in Nepisiguit (present-day Bathurst). These first histories were in keeping with the genre of the time, and were (for the most part) narrative travel accounts written for the purpose of promoting the “new world” in Europe. Today, these documents (although recognized as extremely biased and ethnocentric in their perspective) are valued by historians - not as histories, but as primary resources - for their insights into the authors’ activities and encounters with First Nations culture. With the distance of time, we’re able to recognize that such history books are not guardians of the truth, but merely representations of a unique perspective on the past, presented with the ethical intent of stating the truth as seen through the authors' eyes.

Professional versus Amateur Historians
Until the end of the nineteenth century, historians in Canada were (for the most part) educated amateurs “who came to the field out of enthusiasm rather than any formal training”. Increasingly, universities began offering courses in history and the emerging new academic history emphasized archival research, document analysis, and detailed accuracy with the objective of presenting the past “exactly as it was”. The lines of professionalism became very clear, as universities established independent disciplines of history, and researchers were expected to be more accountable for their work. In New Brunswick, the work of historians such as William F. Ganong (1864-1941), John C. Webster (1863-1950) and Pascal Poirier (1852-1933), although noble in their efforts, fell within the realm of educated amateur “hobbyists”, since they did not have academic training in their field, and history was secondary to their “true” professions.

Outside the academic field, however, professional public historians were finding their niche. Perhaps Placide Gaudet (1850-1930) could be considered New Brunswick’s first public historian, when in 1898 he secured a full-time contract with the Public Archives of Canada and eventually gained a staff position there as genealogist. Likewise, Dr. Alfred G. Bailey (1905-1997) can be considered New Brunswick’s first professional academic historian. Trained at the University of Toronto, Dr. Bailey began his career in public history as a curator at the New Brunswick Museum in 1935, and then became head of the newly established department of History at the University of New Brunswick in 1938. These individuals were pioneers in their profession, and marked the rise of a trend within New Brunswick towards the pursuit of the past as more than just a hobby.

With time, many more academically trained historians found work in public history, within such institutions as the New Brunswick Museum (1842), Parks Canada (1950), Historical and Cultural Resources (1960 - present-day Heritage Branch), Musée acadien de l’Université de Moncton (1963), Centre d’études acadiennes (1968), Provincial Archives of New Brunswick (1968), Kings Landing Historical Settlement (1974), Village Historique Acadien (1977), and Metepenagiag Heritage Park (2007). Countless others have also found opportunities to volunteer their academic training to the hundreds of small museums and heritage preservation projects operating within all corners of the province.

By the late 1980’s, public history institutions were being called upon to be more accountable to their public funding sources. Pushed to operate more like a “business”, these institutions turned a great deal of their attention to public programming as a means of generating visitor revenue. In turn, the visiting public became much more discerning in their expectations, and so public historians faced new challenges in meeting the needs of their audiences.

The Role of a Public Historian

In essence, Margaret Conrad defines the difference between public and academic historians as resting in the manner of delivery and audience:

Academic historians research, write, and teach in university settings, often – but not exclusively – for each other; public historians also research, write, and teach, but they perform these tasks outside of a university milieu, often use methods other than written texts for presenting their work, and usually address a more diversified audience.

The key term in this statement is “diversified audience”. This (I believe) sets public historians apart from other professional historians. For although public historians work within the same standards of historical inquiry, there is a third dimension to their discipline – that of the recipient of the information and their perceptions about the past. It is not enough to simply present history; the public historian must know their receiving audience, know how they absorb information, and know how to deliver the information in a manner that is specific to their intellectual needs. When public history is practiced well, it is not enough to simply present an interpretation of the past; one must be able to guide the recipient through a process of valid historical inquiry – to engage them in the historian’s craft; enable them to reach their own conclusions; and (ultimately) guide them to their own understanding of what they hold as “true”.

Such an ideal is extremely difficult to achieve – and within the realm of public history, sets the professional apart from the amateur.

Re-membering the Past

(UNB - January 26, 2010)

“We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
(Anaïs Nin, 1903-1977)

Objective: To familiarize students with links between 6 concepts of Benchmarks of Historical Thinking, community-based research, and project-based learning as reflected through Heritage Fairs;To understand the dynamics of personal, collective and historical memory in action.

Target Audience: Grade 9 (Canadian Identity)

Subject Focus: Canada and New Brunswick in the 1960’s

1. Conceptual Framework:

My Canada Includes the Atlantic Provinces (Margaret Conrad, 2001)

Personal Memory/Collective Memory/Historical Memory

Canada in the 1960's:

Marshall McLuhan - Explorations - 05-18-1960 -The World is a Global Village

2. Historical Memory: Historiography
Begin with the textbook ...

"Then and Now" activity

3. Collective Memory: Community-based Project Learning:

Develop a research question
Analyze the evidence:
Analyzing the secondary sources - "Analyzing the Account"
Analyzing the documents - "Analyzing Additional Documents"
Analyzing the images - "Interpreting Images"
Analyzing the artifacts - "Analyzing Traces"
Analyzing the discourses - "Analyzing Propaganda"
Using the concepts of Historical Thinking to reach a conclusion - "Historical Inquiry Checklist"

"Re-membering" the past - creative writing activity

4. Personal Memory - Identity: Creating a Heritage Fair Project - "Finding your Place in History"

Visualizing historical thinking - "Heritage Fair Project Storyboard"Conducting oral interviews - Interviews with Our Grandparents

5. On-line Resources:

Teaching Historical Thinking:

• Benchmarks of Historical Thinking

• History Matters

• Nine Habits for Success in Teaching History

Heritage Fairs in New Brunswick:

• NB Heritage Fairs

• NB Heritage Week

Warm-up Activities:

• Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History

• The Virtual Historian

Primary and Secondary Resources:

• CBC Archives – Les Archives de Radio-Canada

• Library and Archives Canada Learning Centre

• Youtube

• Flickr

• McCord Museum - Keys to History

• Virtual Museum of Canada

• Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

• Centre d'études acadiennes

• Ancestry.ca

• This Week in NB History

6. Bibliography:
Mike Denos and Roland Case. Teaching about Historical Thinking: Tools for Historical Understanding. Vancouver: The Critical Thinking Consortium, 2006.

Mike Bowman et al. Exemplars in Historical Thinking: 20th Century Canada. Vancouver: The Critical Thinking Consortium, 2008.

Thom Markham. Project Based Learning Handbook: A Guide to Standards-Focused Project Based Learning for Middle and High School Teachers. Novato: Buck Institute for Education, 2003.

Ian Hundey. 9 Habits for Success in Teaching History. Toronto: Edmond Montgomery Publications Limited, 2007.

Avis Fitton. Canadian Identity: Teacher's Resource. Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2007

NB Heritage Fairs – Empowering Students to Re-Think History

(District 14 - Curriculum Delivery Workshop - January 4, 2010)

“We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
(Anaïs Nin, 1903-1977)

Objective: To familiarize students with links between 6 concepts of Benchmarks of Historical Thinking, community-based research, and project-based learning as reflected through Heritage Fairs;

To understand the dynamics of personal, collective and historical memory in action.

Target Audience: Grade 9 (Canadian Identity)

Subject Focus: Canada and New Brunswick in the 1960’s

1. Conceptual Framework:

• Starting points for “History” (2004)
• Personal Memory/Collective Memory/Historical Memory
• Thinking like a Historian (Benchmarks of Historical Thinking)
• Heritage Fairs in New Brunswick

Marshall McLuhan - Explorations - 05-18-1960 -
The World is a Global Village

2. Historical Memory: Historiography – the fundamentals of history research

• “Re-writing the book” activity (source: Exemplars in Historical Thinking) - "Analyzing the Account"

3. Collective Memory: Community-based Project Learning:

• Canada in the 1960’s
• Begin with the textbook
• Develop a research question
• Analyze the evidence:
• Analyzing the secondary sources - "Analyzing the Account"
• Analyzing the documents - "Analyzing Additional Documents"
• Analyzing the images - "Interpreting Images"
• Analyzing the artifacts - "Analyzing Traces"
• Analyzing the discourses - "Analyzing Propaganda"
• Using the concepts of Historical Thinking to reach a conclusion - "Historical Inquiry Checklist"
• Community heritage resource brainstorming

4. Personal Memory - Identity: Creating a Heritage Fair Project Storyboard - "PBL Designing Your Project"

• New Brunswick in the 1960’s
• Visualizing historical thinking - "Heritage Fair Project Storyboard"
• Conducting oral interviews
• Reaching conclusions @ moral judgment (teachings) and significance to the present

5. On-line Resources:

Teaching Historical Thinking:• Benchmarks of Historical Thinking
• Online Teaching Resources for Social Studies in Alberta
• History Matters
• Nine Habits for Success in Teaching History

Heritage Fairs in New Brunswick:• NB Heritage Fairs
• NB Heritage Week

Warm-up Activities:• Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History
• The Virtual Historian

Primary and Secondary Resources:• CBC Archives – Les Archives de Radio-Canada
• Library and Archives Canada Learning Centre
• Youtube
• Flickr
• McCord Museum - Keys to History
• Virtual Museum of Canada
• Provincial Archives of New Brunswick
• Centre d'études acadiennes
• Ancestry.ca


Handouts:• Presentation Overview
• Heritage Week 2010 planning kit
• Heritage Fairs funding application
• Events in New Brunswick – 1960’s (This Week in NB History)
• Self-directed Project Learning Rubric
• Exemplars in Historical Thinking blacklines
• Writing about an Artifact activity
• NB Heritage Education resource list
• Project-based storyboard outline (with Benchmark concepts)

Additional material:• Variety of discontinued textbooks
• Collective Memory suitcase (classroom artifact collection)
• 1960’s Newspaper Activity
• Posters etc.
6. Bibliography:

• Mike Denos and Roland Case. Teaching about Historical Thinking: Tools for Historical Understanding. Vancouver: The Critical Thinking Consortium, 2006.
• Mike Bowman et al. Exemplars in Historical Thinking: 20th Century Canada. Vancouver: The Critical Thinking Consortium, 2008.
• Thom Markham. Project Based Learning Handbook: A Guide to Standards-Focused Project Based Learning for Middle and High School Teachers. Novato: Buck Institute for Education, 2003.
• Ian Hundey. 9 Habits for Success in Teaching History. Toronto: Edmond Montgomery Publications Limited, 2007.
• Avis Fitton. Canadian Identity: Teacher's Resource. Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2007.