Dom was visiting Me and Ivan at LA and San Diego this past weekend. Ostensibly it was for graduate school interviewing, but really it was to watch the entire epic series called the Wire.
The Wire is about many things. Drug trade, life on the street corners, politics, media and how its all interrelated. The clip below is from the 4th season and refers to troubled students in public school.
The bald guy doing all the explaining, Bunny Colvin, is talking about how especially troublesome students in a research program fared in some fancy restaurant. The woman interrogating him is trying to gauge how effective that research program is in getting them prepared for a standardized test.
His two big points are:
1) that the testing is really stupid and very very cursory band-aid/excuse for funding, and
2) the education system particularly in West Baltimore is not really relevant to them in their world. Their environment overwhelmingly dominates their life views and education is pretty much an afterthought.
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Food for thought:
1) Any parallels, metaphors we can make from LAUSD to the university and college system?
2) How does this apply to the community college?
3) Also interesting for me is the woman's idea that the research program was "socializing" the students rather than "educating" them. Ain't that the same effing thing?
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