This essay briefly discusses recent American films about urban public schools, citingresearch to suggest that the genre accurately captures the dysfunctions of many schools as bureaucracies. This sets up a lengthy review of the most talked about education drama of 2012, Won’t Back Down. On its artistic merits, Won’t Back Down is something of an after school special, with great acting wasted in the service of a melodramatic script. The education policy instrument portrayed, the “parent trigger” enabling parents to take over dysfunctional schools, has questionable utility. That said, the movie captures nonresponsive bureaucracies, school boards indifferent to the interests of children, how bureaucrats can make activist parents and teachers pay a heavy price, and the sort of organizing tactics that can outlast the educational establishment. Most notably, the film excels at explaining the tactics and motivations of union leaders and members. In short, while it fails as a work of art, Won’t Back Down works as work of social science, exploring dilemmas of bureaucracy and democracy.
Ethnicity, Exclusion, and Exams: Education Policy and Politics in Burundi from the Independent Republics to the Civil War (1966–1993)
