Failed Movie Director Lectures About Education Reform

From the NY Post:

M. Night Shyamalan, who directed “The Sixth Sense,” focused on education for his recently published book, “I Got Schooled.”

At the apartment of former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, who founded the Parents’ Transparency Project, Shyamalan spoke to a group that included Grace Hightower, Katie Couric, Alexandra Pelosi, Gilt Groupe founder Kevin Ryan, Newark Schools chief Cami Anderson and Success Academy Charter Schools founder Eva Moskowitz.

“In America, we’re actually educating our kids very well… but just the white kids,” Shyamalan said. “If you pull out schools in which 85 percent of students qualify for a free meal, which are predominantly African-American and Hispanic, the data show that the rest of the kids are being taught better in America than anywhere else in the world. Countries like Finland teach their white kids well, and we teach our white kids better.”

These education reformers and failed directors/would-be reformers have been drawing the race card an awful lot lately to sell their corporate reforms (see here and here.)

Failed director Shyamalan doesn't seem to realize that race is not the issue, class is.

Lots of poor white kids face many of the same educational challenges poor kids of color do.

This dude should go back to making crappy films and leave education policy to people who know what they're talking about.

I covered this before in the summer, but it needs to be said again.

Bad Filmmaker Thinks He Has Solutions For Public Schools

M. Night Shyamalan is one of the worst filmmakers in contemporary movie making.

He had one successful film about 15 years ago and hasn't made a decent film since.

Ha has managed to win a "Worst Director" award in 2006 for Lady in the Water, however, and a "Worst Screenplay" award in 2010 for The Last Airbender.

Shyamalan's name is so tarnished these days that Sony didn't want to publicize his involvement in the Will Smith film, After Earth, for fear that Shyamalan's name would turn film goers off.

No fear there - the film was such a disaster that film goers avoided it even though they didn't know Shyamalan directed it.

Given all the disasters Shyamalan has been involved with over the last decade, you'd think he might turn his attention to his own film making craft and, you know, maybe learn how to make a decent film again.

But you'd be wrong.

Instead this paragon of bad film direction has decided he's going to solve the problems in the public school system.

No, seriously, he's actually written a book about education reform and the Wall Street Journal has a story about it.

He says he approached his research to education reform the same way he approaches directing a film, so you know that his solutions are just going to go over like a Shyamalan review at Rotten Tomatoes.

So what are his solutions for fixing education problems?

Fire teachers, put principals in charge of school culture rather than operations, make schools smaller, extend school time and give teachers and principals regular feedback.

Gee, we've never heard this stuff before, M. Night.

Thanks so much for deigning to give us your wisdom on schools and teaching.

Too bad you don't know any more about teaching and running a school than you do about movie making.

Apparently you are unfamiliar with a position in the school system called the assistant principal in charge of operations who actually handles the operational side of schools.

Strike one.

Apparently you also are unfamiliar with the small schools movement already tried by Bill Gates that did not bring about the seismic shift in school performance you think it's going to.

Strike two.

And apparently you don't know that teachers and principals are getting regular feedback via the new teacher evaluation systems put into place that will require administrators to observe teachers six times a year.

In fact, between the monthly learning community meetings, the monthly classroom rounds, the bi-weekly curriculum meetings, the weekly subject focus groups for every preparation, and the half dozen observations a year, we get more feedback over our teaching than you seem to over your film making.

Strike three. 

Time to go back to learning how to make movies, M. Night, and leave the education policy and teaching to people who know what they're doing.

On second thought, given how bad your movies are, it's probably time to give that up too.

Maybe you can go back to film school so you can a) learn how to make a decent film and b) study how teaching and learning really works.