Newly added to the Learning Curve page, a cartoon about “Won’t Back Down” and the parent trigger option it propagandizes. The real challenge of this cartoon was rendering Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis in a cartoony fashion, less caricature, more cartoon character (subtle difference, I know.) I think the top panel is successful, Maggie reads well in the second, but Viola slowly falls apart. Not her fault, she is a great and lovely actress, despite her appearance in this POS film; but I subjected her to the narrative demands for cartoony facial expressions.

Did I see the movie I criticize here? Nooo. I watched several trailers, read several reviews and the comments by people who said YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE on its Facebook page. The dramatic merits aside (pretty well excoriated by film critics universally), the movie’s argument for the parent trigger — reenforced by its promotional website and the school reform advocates who exhort you to see it — rests upon a lot of wishful thinking combined with bashing of teacher unions and public schools. Conveniently left out of the discussion: the failure of the two California test cases to get past the litigation phase; said phase brought on by buyer’s remorse among parents who signed the trigger petition when they saw what kind of schools they were getting; the heavy financing of trigger efforts by unaccountable school boards full of ties to education materials companies; the lack of interest by charter schools to serve special needs and the TAG designated student populations; and the uniform curricula imposed on teachers who thought they were getting more freedom to teach.

But, hey, this kinda crap gets bipartisan support, so expect it to proceed without much hinderance.

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