Cinematography is, first and foremost, an artform. That being said, I’d like to also emphasize the caveat that it is a technical artform, and requires a certain degree of skill and/or technical proficiency to be able to consistently create artful work.

It could be argued that no, this isn’t the case, based solely on the promulgation of iDevice and consumer-grade video device footage. This type of footage does not require a modicum of skill, or even practice. In the same way that it is possible to take a fantastic picture with an Android or iOS device, it is possible to film usable content with a consumer grade device – but not only is it technically limiting (based on the sensors, alone), but it offers virtually no control over the footage, other than some basic focus and exposure controls. I would argue that the resulting footage could result in decent quality output if either a) the operator had an artistic eye, and was able to use their technology with some skill/proficiency, or b) they were extremely lucky. However, I digress.

One of the most consistently over-used (and misused, incidentally) is “cinéma vérité”. In modern cinematographer parlance, it has come to mean any footage which resembles that of an unskilled operator, which theoretically lends an air of realism and observationalism (see any first year film school book on observational cinema if you’re unfamiliar with the concept) to a piece. It’s easier, for example, to immerse a viewer in the world of a Zombie Apocalypse if they feel as though they could be the one sitting behind the camera.

This concept has been expanded, partially through the over-saturation of “reality television” and “found footage” genre pieces. Far from being necessitated by the artistic content of those genres, it is rather much more profitable, and can be executed with far crummier equipment and with a lower technical skill (and ostensibly artistic skill) element. I’m not going to argue that there is no artistic or technical skill involved in making either of those genres of television or film, as that would be foolhardy – and there are always exceptions to the general rule.

Cinéma vérité is a bit more troubling when used as an excuse for technical incompetence, lack of technique, or lack of foresight and caring. Most recently, I’ve heard shaky and unstabilized footage “explained away” as being necessitated by the genre of cinéma vérité – and I’m not buying that excuse. The majority of footage in film can and should be stabilized, as well as planned out and executed in a thoughtful manner. That’s where the “art” of cinematography lies; otherwise, you’re just a camera jockey, no matter how fancy your equipment may be. As I’ve said before, the most important piece of equipment you own is your eye; everything else just helps your execution.

There is no excuse for shaky footage in this age of image stabilization systems and inexpensive stabilizers which you can build for a few dollars worth of parts from your local home improvement store. It adds a lot of cinematographic value and apparent production value to have more stable shots. I’d prefer not to experience vertigo when watching a simple walking tracking shot, when possible. One of my favorite “why the hell did that guy do that” moments was in G.I. Jane (of which I’m not a fan), where the combat scenes are filmed with what appears to be intentional camera shake. Far from transporting the viewer into the middle of the morass, it only conveys confusion and vertigo. Used in more moderate amounts, it could have proved much more effective, in my opinion.

Even if you’re dead-set on the idea of making your next film project using the “cinéma vérité” genre, there are a few things you should consider before proceeding unstabilized:

1. Does this somehow add to the feel of the film? If you are introducing camera shake into your cinematography, it should be adding something tangible, like a certain feeling, to a scene.
2. Am I overusing this? If you’re shooting every shot this way, you might want to reconsider your methodology, unless you’re shooting a guerilla documentary.
3. Am I doing this due to a technical limitation? If you are using “cinéma vérité” as an excuse for being unable to stabilize your footage, invest in a cheap stabilization system, IS lenses, a tripod, or any of the other ways of creating less shaky footage. They’re too inexpensive to let shake stand in the way of otherwise great footage.

Good luck!

I remember a conversation I had with my brother, a few years back. He was talking about the amount of photographic equipment which he had been dumping money into purchasing, in the hopes of improving the output from his camera. After months, if not years, of ordering and collecting equipment, he thought that one more thing would make some difference. He then had an epiphany, after viewing a photo of a sunset taken with a $12 disposable camera. The full comment was:

It’s even more impressive that such a sweet shot was taken with that cheapass Dakota. Every time I get the fool notion into my head that some new and expensive piece of equipment will make me a better photographer, I look at this picture and think, “ah, yes. Right.”

I’ve been thinking about this, as I acquire more cinematography gear. At which point does it become less about the gear, and more about the wetware? (Wetware, for those who are unaware, refers to your biological “meat equipment”.)

I’m divided on this point. I do feel that there are certain limitations inherent in not possessing the proper tool for the job. To put a concrete example together: if you’re using a Canon EOS T2i, your image quality isn’t going to be the same as using a much higher quality camera and sensor (sticking to the DSLR for this point), but it’s theoretically possible to clean up footage in post-production to approach the type of output which you could achieve with a higher-grade sensor and optics. However, if you’re using a standard kit lens on that camera (which probably tops out at an f/3.5 if you’re really, really lucky), you’re not going to be able to get the narrow depth-of-field which is associated with most “cinematic” shots. A Canon 50mm f/1.8 “plastic fantastic” lens (on which I’ve seen far too many budding cinematographers rely exclusively) is an interesting start, but can’t completely replace a series of really wide open glass primes (sub-f/2.0).

The flip side of the coin is the point which my brother had made; if your eye sucks, your footage sucks. A lot of the cinematographers (and just plain old camera operators) with which I’ve come in contact have bemoaned not owning a RED ONE, or even a higher grade DSLR camera body – and assuming that any decent footage I can pull has everything to do with the equipment I’m using, and nothing to do with my ability to use said equipment.

Years ago, I remember a gig I had, as a bass player. At the time, I had brought a Washburn MB-6 (a strange Mercury series instrument with fantastic action, scored on eBay for very little money), and had finished a really heart-felt set. Some jackass came up to me and complimented the instrument. I figured, from that point on, I would just assume that if someone commented on my instrument, they were implicitly insulting me, by implying that the instrument provided the quality which they admired, and that anyone would have been able to do the same, given the chance to play that instrument.

To sum up, you need a good eye – more than anything else – but it’s also important to have the right equipment for the right purpose. Oh, and don’t forget to stabilize your shots …

I’m heading off to the 2013 Boston International Film Festival opening ceremonies this evening, where the first short film which I directed, edited, and shot is being screened/premiered. It’s called “Heroin; A Love Story”, and centers around a friendship in the midst of addiction in South Boston, and was written by my partner in filmmaking/crime, Brian Farmer.

I’m planning on posting some photos and information about the opening night and film screening as soon as I have them available.

I hope to focus some of my upcoming entries on cinematography and filmmaking topics, rather than my usual fare of semi-coherent rants about miscellaneous topics, punctuated by obscure technical postings.

After much hemming, hawing, and gnashing of teeth, I’m migrating my years of sporadic blogging from Wordpress to Octopress. It seems to integrate a little bit better with both my “command line ethos” and my workflow. I’m sure (for anyone keeping track) that there are probably going to be some weird formatting issues, potentially broken pages, and other incidences of oddness in some places. Please excuse the mess, we’re remodeling.

In addition to the move, I’m trying to move away from blog entries regarding political events – not because I should be worried about potential ramifications for my professional/public life – but rather because there’s only a certain amount of pissing into the wind that a man can do before he gets tired of having a mouthful of piss. That’s not to say that there won’t be any political stuff here, but there’s going to be far less.

It’s the day before the 2012 Presidental Election. I’m disappointed, as usual, by the choice of far right and center right “choices” that we have. I again am forced into the decision of either voting for the preferable third party candidate, with whom I share views on the vast majority of issues (Dr. Jill Stein, for anyone wondering — I still think Ron Paul is a complete crankcase, and Gary Johnson is way too “fuck Federalism” for my taste) and effectively helping to elect an out-of-touch sociopathic plutocrat butt-munch, or vote the “lesser of two evils” and probably end up with a Democrat who is going to “Grand Bargain” away the Great Society programs. All of that being said, I have a few serious issues with this election cycle.

Throwing bullshit at the wall to see what sticks / low information idiots destroy America. Don’t bother reading Politifact. Their attempt to be “non partisan” by rating the attempt to replace Medicare with a privatized program (effectively ending the program as we know it) as “half true” (and then upgrading to “mostly true“, after rounds of pounding), simply because the word “voucher” was used to describe the festering husk of Medicare after it had been dessicated by years of crap like “Medicare Advantage” and Governor Rick Scott’s side ventures into fraud, then given out as coupons/vouchers to purchase overpriced and underregulated private insurance. You know, after “Obamacare is repealed” and the jackholes in the insurance industry can go back to fucking people in any way they see fit — government regulation and oversight is apparently for places like Europe, Canada — hell, anywhere but here. But I digress.

The whole idea that Romney had been running a campaign which has profited greatly by effectively lying about the other guy — wholesale, mind you, not the usual half-truths we see from Presidental campaigns in the United States — is pretty sickening. A friend who works in the Connecticut prison system recently mentioned that he was going to vote for Romney because “Obamacare is going to make me pay more for my health insurance; and I have to look out for myself”. Some jackasses at work told him this, and he believed it — even though it’s patently and demonstrably false. As I saw somewhere on the interwebs “Obama isn’t a brown skinned guy who gives out free healthcare and hates rich people — you’re thinking of Jesus.” People apparently will follow their rampant self-interest, Grover-Norquist-style, even if it means screwing the shit out of everyone else. Not cool, America, not cool.

Voting for a third party candidate isn’t going to change squat, even if they won. I can’t stress this enough. Enough of the country lives in some weird mix of medieval England and the 1950s, and votes as a bloc for the loudest, crassest bible-thumper in any election cycle (think of Dubya, who shouldn’t have been able to win an election cycle against a warm jar of Russian piss, had the contest been set up that way). Look, we’re going to have tea-hadist, teanderthals, whatever you want to call them, in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Low information, Dunning-Kruger-Effect proving, “self made” government haters, who don’t believe in science, and sure as hell don’t believe in the government to which they have been elected. Nothing is going to go well that way — and it’s a pretty good indictment of why both direct and representative democracy do not function well in a country full of ill informed voters. Voters, to which “intellectualism” is an anathema to their way of life. I don’t want a President or Representative with whom I can drink a can of local alcoholic swill — I want someone who is smarter than I am; someone who is intellectually invested in leading. I want someone who actually gives a half a fuck about *everyone*, not just the guys with money or the guys who are the loudest at the moment. A Green Party president, however nice, is only one leg of the trifecta of United States government. They might be able to stop some wars, and perhaps appoint less awful corporatists to the Supreme Court — but they don’t make the laws around here. Educate, educate, educate — that’s the only way out of this shit-hole. (Also, don’t even think about “Charter Schools”. They’re not only *not* a panacea, but by effectively removing the top tier of students and privatizing education, we’re removing the only trappings of equality which the lower end of the socioeconomic chain has…)

Voter disenfranchisement under the guise of “voter fraud”. I don’t even need to really go into this, since so many other people have done it so well. I’ll lazy link to Bob Cesca, the ACLU, Salon, and Mother Jones. I would find something a bit more right-leaning, but they’re still bitching about a statistically irrelevant excuse for disenfranchising primarily minority voters — which apparently those same asshats have been perpetrating. Stay classy, conservatives.

Military industrial complex leg-humping time. We need to find out who is going to bomb more dark people into pits in the sand, and fast! Candidates are now trying to rack up military endorsements as fast as they can. This does not bode well for not killing people unnecessarily, as you can probably guess. I mean, when you frame the “debate” (which there really isn’t, at this point) as “keeping us safe”, you already know what the outcome is going to be, since both major political parties are completely in the tank for The Long War. We haven’t been attacked by another country since Pearl Harbor, guys. And, in case you didn’t notice, the terrorists who flew planes into our buildings did so primarily because we’ve been dicking with their countries for years. Noam Chomsky got his ass chewed out by Chris Hitchens for saying just that (not that I agree with Chris Hitchens’s views on the Iraq War, it’s just interesting that he thought it worthy of a piece in Slate). Honestly, I think Chomsky is a bit more knowledgeable and trustworthy on the subject than Hitchens — but again, I digress.

Trying to discredit math. I wish I were kidding about this, since it is vaguely reminiscent of the same anti-intellectualism sentiment portrayed by Dick Nixon, and shows that the vast majority of people like to live in some sort of weird bubble. You know, the kind where “you’re for us, or you’re a fucking idiot”. Nate Silver, who has been vilified by Romney bootlickers for giving the answers straight from the math demonstrates the bizarre “bubble world” that the GOP candidate has around him, reminiscent of the same “information bubble” of the less-than-venerable George W Bush.

Redefining what it means to be a “businessman”. Have you ever seen the movie “Other People’s Money“? Take away the empathy and life lessons learned, and you’ve got Willard Romney. “Leveraged buyouts”, especially when accomplished with a few million dollars of seed capital from your old man, have squat to do with the Conservative ideal of the job creator wunderkind. Seriously. Leveraged buyouts involve using other people’s money to purchase a controlling instance in a functional company, and saddle it with the burden of paying not only the original capital for its own takeover back, but also sucking the marrow of the company out to pay yourself a hefty sum for the pleasure of having downsized and screwed the hell out of that same company. It may be business (vulture capitalism at its very “best”), but it’s certainly not “business experience” in any relevant context to a nation’s economy, assuming that you were willing to accept the framing that a government should be run like a business, which it shouldn’t. (Quick rundown of that logic: Business’s primary motive is profit, whereas governments have to serve the populace without regard to financial status or profit. Governments also print their own money. It’s not the same thing, guys. It’s like saying that you can be the best train conductor *evar* because you have a driver’s license or learner’s permit.)

Rampant self-interest trumping rational societal decisions. Norquist proved this years ago in California; people simply will not vote for things that cost them money, even if it makes society better and enriches the country. I’m not sure if this is a “Boomer generation” thing, or if we’re just turning into selfish, ignorant, navel-gazing fuckwads through cultural inundation. I’ve seen people use the specter of “tax increases” as a reason for voting the GOP party line, even when those supposed “tax increases” aren’t born out by reality. Jeez, if you get your news from a crazy idiot like Glenn Beck (theblaze.com, anyone?), do you really think it’s going to somehow shape your decisions in some sort of informed and non-navel-gazing context?

I’ll end this with a George Carlin quote: “If you’ve got selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish ignorant leaders.” I don’t think I could have said it better, George.

So, the 2012 United States Presidental Election is effectively between Barack Obama and Willard “Mitt” Romney. I don’t think I can stress how little this registers on my “give-a-fuck-o-meter”, although I have been inundated by dire prognostications regarding the end of our “American Way of Life ™” (whatever that is) and a lot of scare-tactic advertising campaigns unleashed by the virtually unlimited flow of corporate money (or as Constitutional Originalist fuckwads like Antonin Scalia would say, “free speech”) into the current election cycle.

The problem is, there isn’t really a horse race to be had. When FiveThirtyEight is pushing a 70 percent chance of a fairly popular incumbent president retaining a seat, one could wonder how the news media cycle could possibly make anything of it. As of this weekend, the Budgetary Wunderkind Paul Ryan has joined Mitt Romney’s unexciting ticket — and it doesn’t make any damn difference. Mittens ain’t winning this election, folks. We can show as many “real ‘muricans” as we can cram on the television, spitting opinions out of both sides of their figurative asses, but it’s not going to affect the outcome of this election. Well, unless the entire point of this chest-beating is going to be making a Mitt Romney victory seem plausible enough so that, if the need arises, disenfranchising voters can be made to seem to more naturally produce a victory for a statistical underdog. You know, if I were into conspiracy theories.

As far as policies go, I don’t agree with any of the Republican candidates’ policies. That’s my general disclosure: I don’t believe dry humping stacks of Atlas Shrugged is going to magically cure the economy, and I don’t believe that dropping government involvement in economics and allowing self regulation will somehow stimulate anything other than the same massive greed and theft we’ve seen already. However, for the most part, both parties are pretty closely aligned on most of the substantial issues.

Both parties are going to continue stacking bodies in other countries in wars we don’t belong in, and are going to continue funding the military at bank-busting levels.

Both parties are going to eschew any audit of the Federal Reserve (yeah, yeah, I know, Ron Paul and I coincide on something — even a broken crackpot is right once a day) or any prosecution of the fuckers who blew up the global economy for their own person gain. (If you don’t believe me on that one, check out Bill Black’s take on it. They’ve done bad, criminally prosecutable things. Obama won’t prosecute because he’s scared that he’ll appear to be discouraging “business”, and Mittens won’t touch them because his business ethics and interests are pretty closely aligned with those jackals.)

Both parties are going to continue pushing “tax cuts” as economic stimulus. They aren’t, at least not *lasting* economic stimulus. If we gave a shit about decreasing unemployment or “job creation”, we would be pushing another WPA, not giving handjobs to banksters.

Both parties will get rid of Medicare and Social Security. They may not talk about it, but both are going to do it, eventually. Simpson-Bowles was commissioned by the *Obama* administration, and Mittens has made the Paul Ryan budgetary plan of voucher-izing (read: privatizing) Social Security and Medicare a major plank of his campaign. Apparently, “very serious” people want you to fucking do everything on your own, because they don’t believe you’re anything but a Randian moocher….

All they have for differences, at least in the running of their campaigns, are wedge issues. One supports abortion rights, another doesn’t. One is into allowing religious exemptions to health coverage, another isn’t. One is into the DREAM Act, one has a “nuanced” position (or whatever he’s decided his position is today — I don’t think the polls from “real ‘muricans” have come in yet today).

We’re getting the Status Quo, folks. We never had a damn chance, either; both establishment parties are owned by the same basic money sources, and you’d better believe that they’re getting their money’s worth.

Before anyone accuses me of leaving out Senator Ron Paul: he’s a fucking crank. Libertarianism is a fucking crank “philosophy”, and his bullshit disregard for other people, in the guise of individualism, is going to hurt more people than it helps. Government isn’t the only coercive force, people. More importantly, if you’re fine with state government but hate the federal government — we tried that “exceptionally limited Federal Government” thing with the Articles of Confederation. It failed pretty spectacularly, so stop asking for a do-over, please.

The current paradigm, being pushed by the so-called “right” and “centrist right”, is that people don’t deserve anything other than what they “earn”. It’s an interesting wet-dream, which pays homage to the fraudulent concept of the meritocracy. If you’ve been paying attention for the last 20 years, we don’t have a meritocracy. Those who do well by others and play by the rules do *not* finish first, but those willing to loot, pillage, and burn — they are our new *Gods*. We deify CEOs, in the vain hope that we, too, may ascend to the Olympian summits with them, to enjoy the fruits of our Job Creator mojo. Honestly, I’m not sure whether the people pushing this fanticrap (a mixture of fantasy and crap, for the uninitiated) believe it, making them fools, or are using it to get ahead, making them scoundrels; regardless, if you hear someone trying to spread this particular Gospel of Supply Side Economics, try to make sure they end up on the outer side of your front door.

I was listening to an FM talk-radio host (I know, I know, when will I ever learn…) this afternoon, and caught a peculiar rant. He was complaining about how terrible the public sector (and government in general) was compared to the private sector, based on two events.

The first was that he had bought a large amount of classical music using Amazon’s “one click” service, which he had “downloaded to a cloud driver [sic]“. He was able to listen to this music almost immediately following his purchase.

The second was that he had received a call from a local town tax collector, saying that he owed excise tax on a car. He had told the woman that he had sold it already, and she told him that he would have to bring paperwork from the RMV (in Massachusetts they tend to call the “Department of Motor Vehicles” the “Registrar of Motor Vehicles”) indicating that he had, indeed, sold the car. When he questioned why she couldn’t do it herself because “you have a computer in front of you”, the woman told him that it “isn’t my job to help you.”

At face value, these stories seem to confirm the free-market world viewpoint that private enterprise is more efficient than public institutions. However, there are a few problems with this story — namely that we’re really not comparing apples to apples, unless you’re living in the world of The Matrix or (ugh) Hackers, which have about as much to do with modern computing technology as a rock tends to resemble a Star Trek phaser, or a phone booth has the same abilities as the TARDIS (if you prefer a Doctor Who reference instead of a Star Trek reference).

Amazon is a commercial company. They own every part of what they’re doing, and the only “standards” to which they conform (in this instance) is using HTTPS and MPEG Layer 3 audio encoding to deliver content. Everything else is part of their infrastructure. They own the entire thing — and more importantly, they’re just a reseller. They essentially produce nothing — just tack a profit on top for delivering something in an accessible way.

The RMV is a public institution, which means that they most likely have purchased a suite of software to manage their data (and it’s probably ten or twenty years old). If it resembles the software used in other states, it’s pretty useless for anything other than its primary functions, because it was designed by a lowest-bid contractor to conform to a particular set of RFP standards. It probably does what it’s supposed to do pretty well. Interfacing with other software suites, particularly those not written by the same software vendor — not so much. I cut my teeth in the IT industry writing conversion software (back when I was 11 or 12 years old), and believe me, *nothing* speaks to anything easily without a particular set of standards to do so. Most town tax collectors receive a data dump from their motor vehicle registry/department (and vice versa), which is imported into their local software. There isn’t some Hackers-like ability for the two systems to talk to each other. Leave that crap for bad movies and bad TV shows (Horatio from CSI, anyone?) — computers simply don’t work that way.

I’m sure most people with little or no interest in the intricacies of data import/export probably tuned out half-way through that last paragraph. It’s not particularly exciting stuff — yet it’s very important to understand in the context of the initial narrative.

This vaguely resembles the traditional right-wing meme that “poor people caused the economic collapse” which occurred in 2008. It has been debunked repeatedly — and yet the meme lives on. In a recent poll, 42% of Southerners still cling to the notion that the “Civil War” was fought to preserve “States’ Rights” rather than simply being a way to exploit human labor, even though it’s very easy to demonstrably show that the primary motivation, both economic and social/political, was maintaining the status quo of a slave-owning set of states. You can’t simplify a complicated argument, unless you want to lose the meaning which is meant to be present in that argument.

Or, you could argue that this is all the end-result of cognitive bias. Maybe people see the government as broken because they *expect* to see it that way, and ignore evidence which is contradictory to their preconceived notions.

I caught a piece on NPR this morning, regarding Governor Dannel Malloy’s proposed educational budget for Connecticut. Most of it was the normal policy discussion, but there was a part of it where they discussed increasing funding in some of the neediest municipalities in Connecticut. There, it was revealed that Litchfield had expressed concern with the governor’s plan to deallocate money which was designed to bring their students together with other kids for the purposes of “racial diversity”, citing that it wouldn’t foster “racial understanding”. The total program budget was around 11 million dollars, of which the governor had wanted to deallocate 5 million. (For those who don’t know about Litchfield County, it’s 95 % white, and pretty damn conservative and well off. It was the only county in Southern New England that went to Bush the Younger in the 2004 presidential contest.)

So, just to make sure that I’ve got this down properly: a bunch of overprivileged, racially segregated rich people want their overprivileged, racially segregated children to meet poor non-white people, and want to deprive those same poor non-white people and their communities of much-needed educational funds to do so. (To understand that last part, Connecticut derives the majority of the money to fund its municipal school programs from property taxes — which means that schools are generally funded in proportion to the affluence of their communities.)

I don’t even know what to say about that. If you can’t see something wrong with it, there’s probably something wrong with you.

(Note: Please don’t read this as an endorsement of Governor Malloy. After the Adamowski debacle, I don’t think I’m going to be liking him very much, thank you.)

This is an argument I had with someone publicly a little while ago. I was fighting the concept that the entire educational system was a complete failure, and should be replaced with Michelle-Rhee-style charter schools.

Jeff I’m sorry, I don’t care what is going on outside the school.

That’s pretty myopic. Teaching isn’t a daycare, nor is it a panacea — if you have external positive or negative influences outside of school, it’s going to affect their educational outcome.

If you have a group of 30 kids in your class for say American History and 20 of those kids can’t tell you when the American Revolution took place, then that is a failing teacher. If you think that has anything to do with anything other than a teacher failing to teach the material your fooling yourself.

You picked a purposefully simplistic data point, which doesn’t really reflect the actual situation. Most kids know that 1776 is the year of the American revolution, just like most kids can identify Mickey Mouse — it’s a cultural thing. It probably would have been more effective for you to present an actual situation, rather than a pretty unrealistic hypothetical one.

I’ve talked to kids from Uconn who didn’t know where Canada was on a map. Canada Jeff.

And I know kids who can name the capitals of every country in the world. See, we both can present anecdotal evidence which proves nothing!

That’s a failure and who ever was supposed to be teaching that failed that student. That teacher should be accountable for that. It’s that simple.

So, if students misbehave, skip class, or just don’t care, we should fire the teacher? There is no simple accountability method for teachers, bud. If it were that easy, there wouldn’t be gaming of the system — and the NCLB law, which was supposed to grant merit-based benefits, only further disadvantages poor schools and increases class stratification.

Don’t misunderstand me. I think the majority of teachers are good teachers.

That doesn’t follow from any of your arguments, nor the arguments of the film. If teachers are largely effectual, we wouldn’t require large systemic changes (as the movie suggests) to alter the educational system. If teachers are *not* largely effectual, we would require large system changes (as the movie suggests), which would put your position in line with supporting the movie.

There’s a standard distribution of teaching skills and aptitude, much like with everything else. You’re going to have a large number of “average” teachers (by definition), with diminishing levels of less and more competent teachers as you move away from the average. The movie tries to imply that public schools maintain largely ineffectual and incompetent teachers, which isn’t supported by the data.

I believe they like kids and want to do right by them. They shouldn’t have a problem with accountability. The ones that aren’t teaching I’m sure do.

This smacks of surveillance and diminishing civil liberties under the guise of “they don’t have anything to worry about if they’re not doing anything wrong”.

It only takes one or two bad teachers to ruin a kids education.

Anecdotal, at best. As a counter-example, I had several lousy teachers during my school career, and still did just fine. I would argue that educational outcome is a combination of learning potential, curriculum, teaching skill, and class size / attention per student.

As I said earlier. I didn’t do well in school, because I was never challenged. I can’t be the only person who thinks that.

Define “didn’t do well in school”. My grades were fine, though I was also never challenged in school. I’m a white-collar, decently successful, fairly well-rounded adult. If that’s not the purpose of an educational system, what is?

When my son did poorly in class I talked to his teachers. I told them he is bored give him something more challenging. I was fortunate enough to know many of my sons teachers, because many of them where my teachers and so most where on board with that plan. The ones that didn’t soon got the message as I can be a real bastard especially when dealing with my kid. He did well. Much better than I did.

Are you defining success by scoring well on standardized tests, or by turning out to be a well rounded individual? I would argue that, if your son is not “challenged”, he would be able to easily breeze through the curriculum, with extra time for other activities. Getting bad grades in that case is rather an attention issue.

I think when we classify someone as a slow or average learner we are doing that kid an injustice. We are saying your not as good as these other kids.

No, you’re saying that they learn at a slower rate. Believe it or not, children do not all learn at the same rate. There’s rather a “bell curve” type distribution of learning aptitude and speed. You can’t molly-coddle children and tell them that they all possess equal learning abilities any more than you can tell them that they can all be ballerinas or rock stars.

What’s worse is that the ones that really want to learn are slowed by classes that cater to that attitude.

We have skill level classes in high school (basic, advanced, honors, AP, etc) in most school systems, which separate mostly by learning abilities. It has been that way for a while.

*So what do we do. Instead of elevating those kids to the level we expect we lower the standards to make sure they pass. And if nothing else your statement above proves my point that if things like money where regulated that would only help to improve the system. that way they wouldn’t be “robbed” of funding. And regulating the testing to make it uniform is required. Are you telling me that it’s ok for us to test a kid from Ohio differently than a kid from Alabama. There needs to be a standard to which all schools nation wide apply themselves.

We aren’t allowed to set nationwide curriculum, due to the “states rights” wonks, otherwise we might actually allow the Department of Education to set a nationwide curriculum. I don’t think we can blame that on the public school system, but rather anti-Federalism.

I’ve been trying to keep up with the education reform battle in Connecticut, since it’s my home state. The people pushing for reform (along with such “luminaries” as Michelle Rhee and The Walton Foundation, who incidentally would privatize everything up to and including the ocean) are pushing for publicly subsidized yet privatized “charter schools” and the breaking of teachers’ union protections.

One of the first things you read in the wikipedia article about charter schools is that:

Charter schools are primary or secondary schools that receive public money (and like other schools, may also receive private donations) but are not subject to some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school’s charter.

Now, why would such notorious religious privatization and religiously discriminatory asshats such as the Walton family be interested in charter schools? I think the key words are “but are not subject to some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools“. I would venture a guess that religious charter schools, funded on the public dime, are next up in the “public education debate” — not to mention the ability to perform just about any form of political or ideological indoctrination which they would see fit to offer. Don’t forget, we already have a fair amount of dogma injected into our children, for the sake of maintaining a steady stream of money and human bodies to feed into the grist mill of our sprawling Military-Industrial Complex.

Let’s break it down: some of the major factors involved in the quality of a child’s education are — you guessed it — money (some have systemically more than others) and not simply teaching for targeted tests. NCLB had some serious issues, notably with ESL students, and tended to have incentives which hurt rather than helped students. Sweeping educational reform has been shown, through that particular piece of legislation, to have the capability to hurt our most disadvantaged students, even under the guise of helping them. Unfortunately, in the race to keep school funding, many schools have turned to teaching *for* the NCLB testing guidelines, rather than teaching a well-rounded educational curriculum.

Our education system isn’t very good, but dismantling the “great social equalizer” of public education in favor of selling off yet another piece of the country to privatization interests isn’t going to solve anything, at least not for the least fortunate among us. It only drives the wealth divide deeper, as those in poverty are less likely to follow the Horatio Algers myth out of the prison of their socioeconomic class. Besides, charter schools seem to resemble the logical extension of the “school voucher” programs, designed to funnel public education funds into narrow-minded religious education. (I mean narrow-minded in that religious education is tainted with non-scientific dogma and institutionalized indoctrination in a way that makes the raising of free-thinking adults more and more difficult. “Intelligent design” is a farce, not a valid scientific theory.)