Matt Damon: A+

Videos are surfacing from the SOS March of interviews with Matt Damon as he awaited his opportunity to speak at the rally held July 30 on the ellipse in humid, 100 degree weather.

Damon is impressive.  Apparently he has been paying close attention to the issue, no doubt in part because his mother is a successful professor of Early Childhood Education.  Regardless, he calls the current reform "punitive" and carrying an "intrinsic paternalism."

In any case, Damon is articulate, informed, concerned, and sometimes angry about what he is witnessing.  He makes it clear that he feels the children are being cheated and won't be prepared to be the problem-solvers and critical thinkers we will need to solve the next generation's problems.

Another video, created by Reason tv, has been making the rounds because of Damon's smack-down of the reporter who posted an SOS March video of a montage of guerilla-warfare interviews with a variety of participants.  In all of the interviews, the 'reporter's' bias was evident in the questioning.  Reason tv is apparently a libertarian outlet created by Drew Carey, the comedian.  I will not reproduce that video here.  It has been seen in multiple venues but drew the ire of Lawrence O'Donnell on his show Tuesday night.

In addition to understanding the issues with 'pay-for-performance' and high-stakes testing, Damon is aware that the participants in the march included the leading thinkers in education.  He argues that they should be included in reform plans and that even he, a successful businessman, has no expertise or right to create education policy.  (In another clip from this interview, not included here, Damon says that he should be paying more in taxes and neither he, nor anyone he knows, created jobs with the tax break they received.)

Thank you Matt Damon for using your star-power to help educators gain a voice in the current debate.  And thank you too, for 'getting it' and taking the risk to stand with those who stand for those who cannot speak: the children of America's tomorrow.

SOS March: Finally a voice

I did not cry during Matt Damon's impassioned speech to the teachers just before we stepped off for the march around the White House, although it was touching to see a son speak on behalf of his mother and the teachers who shaped him.


But it was overwhelming to hear, after a year of relentless teacher bashing in the media, that "millions of people have your back" and "We love you.  We support you."


I will say I almost cried.


The emotion rose not from grief but from relief.  It was kind of like hearing a doctor say "You're not crazy.  The symptoms you are describing have a real cause."


If you need this boost now, click over and watch Matt's speech for yourself.  It will recharge you for the hard work to come in behalf of children in the ensuing year.  Damon has frequently credited his public school teachers for his successes.


Yesterday's rally on the ellipse was hot, not only from the temperature but from the speakers.
Probably the biggest rouser of emotion came from John Kuhn, the superintendent of Perrin-Whitt Consolidated Independent School District.  He told the crowd to wear their badge of "failure" with dignity and pride because it meant that we were teaching the children nobody else wanted.


Jonothan Kozol also spoke with passion as he lamented the destruction of Martin Luther King's dream to provide opportunity, not test scores, to all our children--and to see them learning, working, and living in the world side-by-side. The past decade of NCLB has done more to segregate schools and kids than Plessy vs. Ferguson.


Those who feel the march is just a call to maintain the status-quo needed to be there to hear the real frustrations in living through a reform which has shifted education farther and farther from good teaching and a rich curriculum for student learning.


We do not want the status-quo.


We want reform that happens in classrooms with real children every day.


Gaining a voice in the process is the first step.  A first step that was taken yesterday.


During the actual march it was empowering to walk with teachers who were speaking with one voice.
Here are chants repeated on the march around the White House.  I was embedded in a delegation of Wisconsin teachers who have learned peaceful protest the hard way this winter.  They modeled for the rest of us:
Show me what democracy looks like.  This is what democracy looks like.
Bankers got bailed out.  Schools got sold out.
Hey, hey.  Ho, ho. Arne Duncan has got to go.
Save our Schools.
Whose schools?  Our Schools.
Whose house? Our house!  (when we were in front of Lafayette Park and the White House)


At least we knew we were heard for one day in the nation's capitol.


The march is just a start.  Please find your voice.


As Diane Ravitch has repeated over and over as she has moved across the nation to engage teachers to rise up against the corporate "billionaire boys' club:"  


"We are many.  They are few."


Begin to follow #sosmovement on your twitter.  Get active.  Speak out.  


The tide is turning.