Film making

There is one particular scene on one particular movie that I would like anyone who has ever voted Democratic to watch. The movie is a documentary about the cartel that runs the education system, specifically in New Jersey. The scene is about a lottery drawing for slots in a charter school showing the faces of children whose names have been drawn, and those who were not so lucky. Both are in tears, but are crying for different reasons. The scene focuses on a child weeping for her loss.

Jeannette Catsoulis, a movie critic for the New York Times, describes the scene as a result of the movie director’s “emotional coercion,” and goes on to saying that the weeping child as “another tiny victim of public school hell,” as if not being chosen to get a good education is something trivial.

I like to think that it would be unlikely for anyone without any personal or political stake in the cartel’s control over the education system to watch that particular scene without being moved. Although it is not something new for both students and teachers to fall victim to a system that does not allow teaching and learning to take place in many schools, the way the director presents his points seem like nobody has yet to act on the activities of the cartel. The sad fact is that these activities contribute to the increasing cases of students leaving school unprepared to work in the real world.

Since it came out, the movie has moved people to finally start leaving their mark on the process of school budgeting and keep themselves informed on where their taxes and their government’s funding are put into good use. New York Times reported that New Jersey residents rejected over half of the budgets on the ballot during school-budget elections.

As depressing as it may sound, it seems that in New Jersey, education budgets are no longer held as something sacred anymore. Driven by that fact, Governor Christopher J. Christie took on the teachers’ unions as no previous New Jersey Governor has done before. Although it may seem like his efforts in fighting the education cartel pales in comparison to his devil-may-care approach on some of the other issues he is tackling.

It is worth to note that at the beginning of the film, the director’s credibility to tackle such a powerful issue is immediately established-after all, doesn’t being a local TV reporter in New Jersey carry more reliability in exposing the truth than any other profession?

The director also makes it easy for the audience to understand the flurry of statistics concerning education funding by the government, tax revenues, comparisons of New Jersey educational outcomes with other states and other countries, and so on.

The New Jersey teachers are in a panic now, as evidenced by this movie and the countless reports about how they are berating Governor Christie. Hopefully, the movie does not inspire only the cartel on education to act, but also those who have yet to do something about alleviating it. We owe the countless children who feel exactly the same as the weeping child in the movie that much.

Youtube: The Cartel Movie documentary film reaction. A film by Bob Bowdon.