Other People's Children

Hello Michael Moore and Matt Damon! I have a title for a new movie we would like you to make about the corporate school reform movement. We could call it "Other People's Children" because no school reformer would DREAM of sending their child to a school which had as much testing and drilling as the public schools and charter schools reformers have “transformed” to conform to No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. You can juxtapose images of enthusiastic children of many nationalities doing art and science projects in groups of 15 under the aegis of a smiling teacher ( think Dalton or Sidwell Friends) with groups of 30 Black and Brown children sitting in rows memorizing material for tests under the direction of a grim faced teacher who looks as stressed out as the children in from of her. This will show the real life consequences of corporate education reform- schooling for the children of the wealthy that emphasizes creativity and student agency; schooling for everyone else that emphasizes drilling and regimentation. You won’t have to do much research to make this film- you can find both kinds of schools in every city in the United States, though there are probably 10 times as many schools that fit into the second category as into the first.