The Teachables

To use its own similes, The Lottery targets the UFT (the United Federation of Teachers) like a mob hit, ignoring the collateral damage. Like other movies of its kind, the Eliot Ness character (Harlem Success Academy) is portrayed as the maverick “new order”  leading an aggressive campaign to change the old ways in pursuit of the “new good”. The UFT as Al Capone maintains the status quo and thwarts the hero’s attempts to disrupt its sphere of influence.

In The Untouchables, Eliot Ness is a newly arrived Bureau of Prohibition agent tasked with stopping Al Capone and his growing sphere of influence. Capone has the whole city of Chicago under his control including the mayor and the police.  Because of this influence, Ness is forced to think outside of the box and develop techniques outside the currently employed strategies.

He accomplishes this by employing outsiders (those that are either frustrated with the status quo like Sean Connery’s character or those that have no direct relation to law enforcement like Charles Martin Smith’s character) and by drawing directly from the tap instead of the pool (the Andy Garcia character is recruited directly from the police academy instead of the pool of active officers).

At the movie’s end, Eliot Ness wins. He is successful in having Capone put on trial and convicted. However, how has the pursuit of “good” corrupted Ness? He threw a man off a roof. And has Capone’s sphere of influence been shattered with his conviction? Consequences to the judge that sentences him and the lawyer who pleads “guilty” on his behalf are not part of the plot.

Walking away from his office for the last time, a reporter tells Ness about the repeal of the Prohibition Act and asks what he might do next. Ness responds: “I think I’ll have a drink.”

Applied to the current state of education, what might this mean? That no one is incorruptible? That despite the best intentions, the ends may not justify the means?

Assume Prohibition is High Stakes Testing. The law being broken is students are scoring low or failing high stakes tests. Assume Eva Moskowitz, founder of the Harlem Success schools is Eliot Ness. Who is Al Capone? Betsy Gotbaum? Randi Weingarten (who only appears in the film via a television clip)? 

The Lottery is a good film. It moved me (someone who was a former classroom teacher, who the UFT failed to protect despite stealing a percentage of my paycheck every two weeks, who is still passionate about education, who is a parent). However, The Lottery is not a documentary film as some have deemed it. The Lottery is what the literary world would call an engaging piece of creative nonfiction. It takes the complex and controversial topic of public education and creates

factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible.

The Lottery is an engaging story about parents wanting better for their children. They’ve accepted their circumstances but struggle to improve their children’s chances for greater success by registering them in a lottery for entry into the Harlem Success Academy. Though the parents never really say what is wrong with the schools their children currently attend, it is enough that they say they want better.

Of the four families included in the movie, two make it into the Harlem Success Academy. I wonder what a school day in the lives of those who didn’t make it in look like? There is a scene in the movie, where a young boy herald’s the virtues of his school, PS 194. It is revealed that Harlem Success Academy failed to move into PS 194. What is that young boy’s school day like now? Based on the 2009 comments on Insideschools.org, it does not seem like the sort of school I would be comfortable sending my kids to; Accusations from parents of bullying and ongoing violence among students.

Most importantly, what are Ameenah’s and Greg’s lives like now? They’re the students who made it into the Academy. How are they now? Their families?

I liked The Lottery. It is a good story. As I watched I felt a kinship with the families depicted. But even with my disdain for the bullies and gangsters at the UFT, I am hesitant to call the film a good documentary. It was just too one sided. And while it makes for good drama, it’s not documentary.

More than Just a Kiss

Marita doesn’t need a brand-new school with acres of playing fields and gleaming facilities. She doesn’t need a laptop, a smaller class, a teacher with a PhD, or a bigger apartment. She doesn’t need a higher IQ or a mind as quick as Chris Langan’s. All those things would be nice, of course. But they miss the point. Marita just needed a chance. (Gladwell, Outliers. 2008)

If you were to agree with Malcolm Gladwell, success would be one part cultural legacy, one part family and support, one part perseverance, and one part chance (or opportunity).

Milton Hershey is an “outlier.” He is someone who (per Gladwell’s definition) has done something “out of the ordinary.” His parent’s only surviving child, Milton Hershey dropped out of school in the fourth grade because his family moved around a lot. With the collective resources of his mother’s family (who were not rich) an adult Milton Hershey began and ended several failed candy making businesses.

A trip to Colorado (where he learned to make caramel from milk) after another failed attempt at starting a candy making business and a trip to The Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 (where he first saw and eventually purchased chocolate-making machinery)  laid the foundation for the creation of “the largest producer of quality chocolate in North America and a global leader in chocolate and sugar confectionery.”

Building off Gladwell’s definition of “outlier,” I would like to say Milton Hershey was a  “true outlier.”  He was someone who did something “out of the ordinary” with his success. Milton Hershey used the fortune earned from his success to build a “complete community around his factory.” To discourage comparisons to the stereotypical factory town, Hershey requested architects vary the look and feel of houses as they would look like in any other town or community.

I am sure if we dug deep enough we could find evidence that would attribute his desire to build a community rather than a factory town is a result of the frequent family moves he experienced as a child and his adult understanding of the importance of strong family ties. (His mother’s family was essential in providing him with the opportunities to engage in his candy ventures.)

As a “true outlier,” someone who applies the lessons and rewards of his or her success towards the greater public good, Hershey (more specifically his wife) founded the Milton Hershey School – “the nation’s largest, cost-free, private, co-educational home and school for children from families of low income, limited resources and social need.”

To its students, the Milton Hershey School (MHS) represents that “chance” Malcolm Gladwell speaks about in Outliers.

For a century, MHS has served as a transforming environment for children in need. Boys and girls who hail from different social and ethnic backgrounds, but are connected by surroundings that threaten their ability to realize their dreams, come together as one family, under one roof, on the rolling green campus in Hershey, PA.

I was moved by Cynthia Wade’s film on MHS, Living the Legacy: The Untold Story of the Milton Hershey School. I saw it at a MWW Group event celebrating MHS’s centennial. There was a reception before the screening that included a signature dessert created by MHS culinary students and a panel of Hershey company executives and MHS alumni afterwards moderated by Phylicia Rashād and Paula Patton.

Jerrica Bechtold’s story was the most dramatic in the film. The eldest child and only daughter of a crack-addicted mother and a somewhat absent father (partially because he was serving a jail term), Jerrica had the toughest situation to contend with (beginning with the simple fact that only one of her two brothers was accepted into the school). Despite her initial desire to follow the rules and get good grades, the film documents her descent into potential expulsion. Frustrated, her counselor  asks her quite plainly to make a decision: Stay or go?

You can see the desire in her eyes for “normality” as she has defined it. And you hear about her reaction to the disappointing reality of her home life from her house parents at the school, teachers, and counselor. However, as one reviewer put it, the film seems a little “superficial.”

Somewhere someone made the decision to include the story of two boys at the school (though that story was not as developed as Jerrica’s). Instead of adding to the film, the story of the two boys is distracting. Thinking about the film, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been more effective to focus on the story of Jerrica and her family, peppering it with the “cameo-like” reflections from other students on similar circumstances?

The film had a fair amount of these reflections and they worked to bring the points being made home. However, a stronger, more focused storyline was needed to fully carry the film into greater depths. As it is now, neither the two boys or Jerrica gets enough screen time to make the movie poignant.

But regardless, the film did succeed in changing my shopping behavior. Hershey will certainly be my first choice in chocolate and candy products from now on. Until I saw the film, I never thought of Milton Hershey as a dedicated philanthropist and humanitarian.