What "The Wire" Teaches Us About Education
Published April 30, 2009 @ 09:12AM PT
I'm one of those non-TV-watchers who discovers great shows years later than most people. Case in point: The Simpsons. I didn't discover that show's brilliance until around 2003. It took word of mouth through trusted friends to lead me to those waters.
I'd never watched HBO's The Wire, either, until last week. This time the word of mouth was not through a friend, but through a post by change.org contributor Sharon Higgins on her always-excellent Perimeter Primate blog. On "Oligarchs, Crime, the Underclass, Neglected Schools, and more," Sharon wrote:
Watch a new interview with David Simon, former Baltimore Sun journalist and creator-producer-writer of The Wire, on Bill Moyer's Journal. He discusses a variety of things such as America’s abandoned underclass, our current oligarchy, and the high level of national apathy. In the mix, he talks about inner-city education issues and crime.
Let’s just say...he gets it.
I followed Sharon's post to the Moyers (must-watch) interview, and followed that with a week-long marathon watching every season of The Wire. The short version: not only do Simon and his co-writer Ed Burns, a former Baltimore police detective and Baltimore city public school teacher, "get it." They deliver it. In my dreams, I'd teach an entire semester-long course using The Wire as the leaping-off point to explore politics and government, poverty, the war on drugs and criminal justice, white-collar crime, the contemporary labor movement, education politics, human trafficking, LGBT issues, mainstream journalism, and more. For my money, it would be time as well-spent as spending the same number of hours reading War and Peace in an English course. The entire five seasons form more of a novel than a series of short stories, unfolding and complicating the plot through over 50 hour-long episodes. Walking students through it would lead them, I'm convinced, to wanting to understand the complexity of all these issues more.
Here's what it has to say about the politics of high-stakes state achievement tests (it's in Season 4, I think). As you watch/read the fictional Baltimore mayor meeting with his campaign managers, tell me which mayors or other edu-politicians come to mind:
You can buy individual episodes of The Wire for $1.99 on iTunes. What a world.
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Comments (17)
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Clay is an American high school Humanities teacher, technology coach, and Apple Distinguished Educator who has taught for the last eight years in Asian international schools. According to law, he's married to his wife. According to his wife, he's married to his Mac.
See, I knew there was a reason I like you, Clay. I'm also a recent convert to The Wire, having just recently wrapped up Season 4. The only adjective I can apply is Dickensian. It's extraordinarily layered and textured, with nary a false note. If Dickens were alive today, I suspect he'd be writing this show or one very like it.
David Simon gets it indeed.
Posted by Robert Pondiscio on 04/30/2009 @ 10:09AM PT
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My eyes are still wet from one of the later episodes of Season 5, my BFF ;-)
Posted by Clay Burell on 04/30/2009 @ 10:37AM PT
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Forget about individual episodes. You have to see the complete thing from beginning to end, and you can rent or buy the complete series. The season on school is particularly of interest to teachers, but the entire series is incredible. It's really better than anything I've ever seen on TV.
Posted by NYC Educator on 04/30/2009 @ 01:02PM PT
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I agree, NYC. I literally watched a season per day over the last five days. My wife is super-pissed, needless to say, but hey, I invited her to join me.
It really is a novel. The implications for post-Gutenberg learning possibilities are deep and wide, too, if you think about it. iPod as textbook?
And that the series was written by a journalist and a cop-turned-teacher says volumes about its veracity. It's Olympian, really. A gods'-eye view.
Posted by Clay Burell on 04/30/2009 @ 01:08PM PT
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My fiancee and I were turned on to the Wire by a good friend in January, and are just now finishing season 5. In other words, Clay, it took you a week to do what four months worth of our TV viewing. I don't know whether to feel good or bad about this.
The haunting power of Season 4 is that the kids are all surrounded by people who want to help -- not just from their teachers. The mayor wants to help. Cutty at the boxing gym wants to help. Prez, the new teacher who's a complete stranger wants to help. Carver, the super-sergeant, wants to help. Bunny Colvin and the project staff want to help. But they all completely fail, in part because of the complexity of the problem and in part because all of their efforts combined simply can't overcome how broken each of the kids' families are.
Beyond daunting -- and it gets to the heart of the matter much more convincingly than most depictions of urban-based education systems.
Posted by Timothy Foley on 04/30/2009 @ 04:15PM PT
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Well-put, Timothy. FWIW, you should probably feel good about it (though there's something to be said for ramming through each episode in order not to forget the plot twists noodling through each one) - I'm experiencing the sabbatical doldrums and have far too much time on my hands. If the economy weren't in the toilet and my wife not mourning her mother's passing, I might feel different. But as things are, I so look forward to being back in the classroom next autumn in Singapore.
Posted by Clay Burell on 05/01/2009 @ 04:29AM PT
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Thanks forwarded to educator friend.
Posted by Lee Dorsey on 04/30/2009 @ 01:04PM PT
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If only I could erase my mind and watch the whole thing over again...
I can't think of another show that portrays as well the challenges facing millions of kids in the U.S. just to show up in school everyday and learn something, and the challenges facing those schools to keep teachers and students engaged.
Posted by Matt Kelley on 04/30/2009 @ 05:37PM PT
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At Guilford College in Greensboro, NC, several first-year writing instructors use season four of The Wire as the major text when we teach ENG 102: College Reading & Writing.
The students love it, of course, and it is exhilarating to discuss the episodes & storylines with them. They get so into scene-by-scene "close readings," and their analyses of how various social institutions intersect/connect are sharp & engaged.
I teach s4 alongside Freire's famous Pedagogy of the Oppressed ch. 2, and with Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk about how schools kill creativity. Our rhetoric text is "They Say/I Say: Moves that Matter in Academic Writing" by Graff & Birkenstein. This is the most fun I've had teaching first year writing in awhile!
Posted by Cynthia Nearman on 04/30/2009 @ 07:55PM PT
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My god, where do I sign up?
Posted by Clay Burell on 05/01/2009 @ 04:12AM PT
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I wish everyone could see The Wire. My partner and I got into it last summer and we watched every episode. And you are absolutely right: they get it. Most episodes left me speechless. Thanks for this article, Clay. I hope more people, particularly educators of all kinds, seek out this superb series.
Great idea incorporating The Wire into an English course, Cynthia, I wish more universities did that.
Posted by D W on 04/30/2009 @ 09:59PM PT
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Of course, any teacher trying to include this in a high school course would be run out of town, because the show includes taboo vowel-consonant combinations and scenes showing taboo body parts that all high school students only see (copiously) on the sly, outside of school. Never mind the learning potential; the show's just not Victorian enough to pass muster in a 21st century classroom.
Posted by Clay Burell on 05/01/2009 @ 04:32AM PT
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Clay, I'm so glad to hear you love The Wire, too. My only reservation about the show comes from the respect I have for the views of Dr. Elijah Anderson, a Yale sociologist, who has studied inner-city communities for decades. He is quoted in an article about David Simon (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/bowden-wire):
"I am struck by how dark the show is," says Elijah Anderson, the Yale sociologist whose classic works Code of the Streets, Streetwise, and A Place on the Corner document black inner-city life with noted clarity and sympathy. Anderson would be the last person to gloss over the severe problems of the urban poor, but in The Wire he sees "a bottom-line cynicism" that is at odds with his own perception of real life. "The show is very good," he says. "It resonates. It is powerful in its depiction of the codes of the streets, but it is an exaggeration. I get frustrated watching it, because it gives such a powerful appearance of reality, but it always seems to leave something important out. What they have left out are the decent people. Even in the worst drug-infested projects, there are many, many God-fearing, churchgoing, brave people who set themselves against the gangs and the addicts, often with remarkable heroism."
Anderson got a lot of grief for criticizing the show, but I see his points. He's concerned about one group in the inner-city being sensationalized, but another larger group being ignored, and how more negative stereotyping is produced as a result.
I urge everyone to read Anderson's work, particularly "Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City." His newest book is "Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male" (http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14430.html.) My observations about the connections between Anderson's insights and what is going on in urban school districts, as well as two brief exchanges we have had, one being about The Wire, are @ http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/search/label/Elijah%20Anderson.
Posted by Sharon Higgins on 05/01/2009 @ 09:35AM PT
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Hi Sharon,
I've read your posts about Anderson, and respect his authority and objection on the issue, but as I watched the show, I also had Moyers' similar charge of cynicism in the back of my mind. Simon countered something along the lines of "it's dark, but it's also a love poem to the city."
So as I watched, I looked for excesses, and while the show does drip with cynicism, thought it did least so in its depiction of the poor (black and white). It seemed to me we saw representations of the "decent" and the "street" members in these communities.
I don't want to be a spoiler, so I'll stop there....
Posted by Clay Burell on 05/01/2009 @ 10:05AM PT
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I know what you mean.
Seeing the Moyers/Simon conversation added a great deal to The Wire experience for me. I'm so grateful for Simon's work and sensitive point of view. I did send the link of that interview to Anderson, and feel like he would appreciate that conversation, too.
Posted by Sharon Higgins on 05/01/2009 @ 10:41AM PT
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I bid a fond farewell to The Wire last summer. The season that had Prez in the classroom resonated especially with me when the "man" turned Prez into a "Test Preparation Agent for the State." That is what NCLB has brought us. So many people continue to hammer teachers and public schools about why there is an achievement gap. In my mind, the achievement gap will be closed when the poverty gap is closed.
Posted by Sean Black on 05/03/2009 @ 06:44PM PT
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the wire taught me that we should end the prohibition on cannabis and hemp.
it was such a great show. i learned other things too no doubt ;)
Posted by jeffrey C oldman on 05/08/2009 @ 01:21AM PT
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