Education Law

Connecting with The Wire

Let’s start out with full disclosure.  BoardBuzz has been a fan HBO’s now canceled show, The Wire, for quite some time.  Sure, like many of you, we were late to the party, but we caught up (thanks to re-runs and Netflix) and found the show to be a compelling and contagious mix of characters, plot lines, and chemistry that brought a city to life.  Sure, the setting is Baltimore, but it really could take place in any urban center in the U.S.

That’s why we were happily surprised when we noticed in The Washington Post an opinion piece by two Harvard professors describing the class they are conducting on urban inequality and using The Wire as a backdrop to the topics being discussed.

The professors note:

We think it is more than just excellent television. Impressed by its treatment of complex issues, we developed a course at Harvard drawing on the show’s portrayal of fundamental sociological principles connected to urban inequality. Our seminar was designed for 30 students; four times that many showed up for the first class last week.

Even though a TV show being used for a class may suggest an easy A, we’re pretty sure nothing is a given at Harvard.  The professors point out the need for a better understanding about urban schools in particular.  What many of the students taking the class may or may not know is their future could be in one of the urban classrooms depicted on the show.  A large percentage of those students working for Teach for America come from the Ivy League schools, and the competition is tough to get a slot as a teacher through the program.

So if you haven’t tuned into The Wire at any point, it’s worth a look.  All of season four is set around the schools, and it is sometimes difficult to watch the reality TV that occurs around urban education.  The issues they address haven’t disappeared in our urban districts.  We can only hope those students at Harvard start coming up with ways of addressing urban issues as a whole, instead of in compartmented TV seasons.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on September 13, 2010 (boomark / email).