Teachers on the Defensive

Frank Bruni:

RANDI WEINGARTEN, the powerful president of the American Federation of Teachers, took a rare vacation last week, but tweeting knows no holidays, nor does frustration with what can sometimes seem like constant assaults on the men and women at the nation's blackboards. So her Twitter account remained active, and on Wednesday it took on a soon-to-open Hollywood movie, "Won't Back Down."

In one tweet she expressed her wish that it "didn't vilify teachers as so uncaring." In another she noted that the main financing for the movie came from a school-privatization advocate who is no fan of teachers' unions.

"Won't Back Down" tells the David-versus-Goliath story of a single mother, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who leads a rebellion to wrest control of her daughter's persistently abysmal public elementary school from local officials. It's scheduled for release next month, although it was shown to Weingarten a few weeks ago. I saw it on Wednesday.

And it actually takes pains to portray many teachers as impassioned do-gooders who are as exasperated as parents are by the education system's failures -- and by uncaring colleagues in their midst. But I understand Weingarten's upset. The union that represents one of those do-gooders (Viola Davis) has lost its way, resisting change, resorting to smear tactics and alienating the idealists in its ranks. What's more, some of the people who are assertively promoting "Won't Back Down" are those who cast teachers' unions as a titanic impediment to the improvement of public education. So "Won't Back Down" is emerging as the latest front in the continuing war between those unions and their legions of critics, and it has become yet another example of how negatively those unions are viewed.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 19, 2012 2:28 PM
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