What "The Wire" Teaches Us About Education

by Clay Burell · 2009-04-30 09:12:00 UTC
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I'm one of those non-TV-watchers who discovers great shows years later than most people. Case in point: The Simpsons. I didn't discover that show's brilliance until around 2003. It took word of mouth through trusted friends to lead me to those waters.

I'd never watched HBO's The Wire, either, until last week. This time the word of mouth was not through a friend, but through a post by change.org contributor Sharon Higgins on her always-excellent Perimeter Primate blog. On "Oligarchs, Crime, the Underclass, Neglected Schools, and more," Sharon wrote:

Watch a new interview with David Simon, former Baltimore Sun journalist and creator-producer-writer of The Wire, on Bill Moyer's Journal. He discusses a variety of things such as America’s abandoned underclass, our current oligarchy, and the high level of national apathy. In the mix, he talks about inner-city education issues and crime.

Let’s just say...he gets it.

I followed Sharon's post to the Moyers (must-watch) interview, and followed that with a week-long marathon watching every season of The Wire. The short version: not only do Simon and his co-writer Ed Burns, a former Baltimore police detective and Baltimore city public school teacher, "get it." They deliver it. In my dreams, I'd teach an entire semester-long course using The Wire as the leaping-off point to explore politics and government, poverty, the war on drugs and criminal justice, white-collar crime, the contemporary labor movement, education politics, human trafficking, LGBT issues, mainstream journalism, and more. For my money, it would be time as well-spent as spending the same number of hours reading War and Peace in an English course. The entire five seasons form more of a novel than a series of short stories, unfolding and complicating the plot through over 50 hour-long episodes. Walking students through it would lead them, I'm convinced, to wanting to understand the complexity of all these issues more.

Here's what it has to say about the politics of high-stakes state achievement tests (it's in Season 4, I think). As you watch/read the fictional Baltimore mayor meeting with his campaign managers, tell me which mayors or other edu-politicians come to mind:

The Wire 1

The Wire Tests 2

The Wire Tests 3

The Wire Tests 4

The Wire Tests 5

The Wire Tests 6

The Wire Tests 7

You can buy individual episodes of The Wire for $1.99 on iTunes. What a world.

Clay Burell
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