For more than half a century, in Hollywood message movies from “Blackboard Jungle” to “Lean on Me,” Stand and Deliver” and “Dangerous Minds,” academic failure and juvenile crime have haunted the corridors of failing inner-city schools that were little better than war zones.
Docilely reflecting liberal conventional wisdom, such Hollywood films typically let the public school system itself off easy, instead tracing the “root causes” of inner-city school failure to American social injustice — poverty, inequality and underfunded schools.
But times have changed: The faceless bureaucrat and parochial union executive have replaced social injustice and neglect as the enemies du jour. A series of recent documentaries — most famously “Waiting for Superman,” but also “The Lottery” and “The Cartel” — have lambasted teachers unions for putting the demands of failed educators ahead of the needs of struggling children.
