蜜桃影视

Looking through Rotten Tomatoes ratings of Matt Damon鈥檚 movies released in 2017, there have been two hits (Downsizing and Boston) and two misses (Suburbicon and The Great Wall).

Get ready to add another bomb to that list: Backpack Full of Cash, a 90-minute documentary on the school reform movement鈥檚 corrupt obsession with the 鈥減rivatization鈥� of public education. Even if the film reaches some measure of success in ticket sales, its message will remain a loser.

If you have seen the name Matt Damon coupled with the key search phrase 鈥減ublic education鈥� at any time over the past four years, then you know two things: 1) he鈥檚 been a speechifying celebrity guest at rallies paid for by teachers unions, and 2) when the time came for him to find a school for his daughters, he chose highly competitive private schools.

Beating him up for his great white hypocrisy isn鈥檛 new.

A string of Damon-is-a-hypocrite stories have run in and on . I agree with the hypocrisy angle, but I don鈥檛 see it as the primary problem with Damon鈥檚 advocacy.

The problem is the unearned social power his name and celebrity give to an issue he dabbles in, an issue where even his most lazy advocacy could move the public toward policies that prevent families without millions of dollars from having educational options they want and need.

Matt Damon is an awesome actor. He shouldn鈥檛 be a bald white hammer against school choice or charter schools for families that will never make it to Hollywood.

When cornered on his decision to choose private schooling, he says it wasn鈥檛 a choice at all (but, Matthew, it was). Private schools, he says, are now the only place remaining for a family to get the same brand of progressive education he enjoyed in alternative public schools: 鈥淚 had that chance in the public schools I attended and I want to see it given 鈥� fairly and on an even playing field 鈥� to every child in our nation.鈥�

Damon鈥檚 family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he was 10 years old specifically because there was a school his mother, an educator, wanted him to attend.

His high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, is one of America鈥檚 rare schools where whites are in the minority (39%), poverty is relatively high (46%), and the academic performance is stellar. According to Fred Fantini, a 30-year school committee member, Latin had separate 鈥渉ouses鈥� (schools within a school) that varied in quality and levels of integration.

鈥淚n the 鈥�90s鈥�we had programs like the Pilot, where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck went, which was a great program. And we had the Leadership program. They weren鈥檛 integrated, but they were great programs,鈥� Fantini said in an interview.

A article from 2003 described Damon鈥檚 home in Cambridge as 鈥渁wash with Ph.D.鈥檚 and worldly, upwardly mobile intellectuals, living together in the most cultured, highest-I.Q. municipality in all of Greater Boston.鈥�

Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Damon鈥檚 mother, is one of those highly educated 鈥渋ntellectuals鈥� who inspired him to lend his heaping social capital to public school teachers. She is also a fierce opponent of education standards, student assessments, charter schools, and accountability in the classroom.

She told magazine that school reform has made teaching unattractive by focusing so intently on student outcomes. 鈥淭he kind of language we have now of accountability, and data, and management, and evaluation, it鈥檚 so uninspiring, even scary: Who wants to go into a field where you get evaluated by your kids鈥� scores or mandated standardized tests?鈥� she asks.

In a speech, she said, 鈥淚t pains me now to see how teachers are mistreated in the public arena of this moment in history, to see teachers blamed for the gap that exists in performance between low-income and black and Hispanic students and their peers. The achievement gap exists before children ever meet their teachers.鈥�

I have found no record of her response to her grandchildren enrolling in private schools, an act that presumably conflicts with her paleoliberal worldview about public education, segregation, and inequity.

While aping all the motions his mother would have him do before throngs of aging unionized teachers who rally to keep kids without his astounding privilege trapped in schools he would never choose for his adorable youngsters, Damon is willing to pay whatever it costs to defend their advantages. He wanted his kids to attend St. Ann鈥檚, a New York private school so exclusive (with ) that it could do what few other schools would ever do: rebuff the likes of a Damon family ().

Would he support publicly financed scholarships to St. Ann鈥檚? Doubtful. Choice schools are for the uber-wealthy.

It鈥檚 a liberal cliche that connects Damon to academics like Diane Ravitch, journalists like Valerie Strauss, and even civil rights executives like Hilary Shelton from the NAACP. They all have privatized the education of their own children while attempting to put poor kids in the educational equivalent of public housing.

Strauss鈥檚 choice: , where tuition for pre-K and kindergarten is $34,724. For grades 1 through 12, the cost is close to $40,000.

That鈥檚 Shelton鈥檚 choice, too. He traveled the country last year assailing charter schools for allegedly cherry-picking students, having uncertified teachers, and not being accountable to the state, all the while having kids receiving nearly $100,000 worth of private school education.

Listen, we all can be hypocrites at times. We say things we don鈥檛 do and do things we don鈥檛 say. That鈥檚 human, in my eyes.

The problem isn鈥檛 incongruity between our words and actions. It鈥檚 when our incongruity becomes a .

Be a public school advocate who chooses private schools for your kids. Fine. But don鈥檛 use your power, privilege, and social position to mislabel those who claw their way out of the same public schools you avoid as politically motivated and socially irresponsible tools of big business.

Yes, there are people in the world who would love to get the lion鈥檚 share of the $600 billion America invests in the education of children. Unfortunately, the best-organized group with its claws in that money are the folks cheering Damon at Save Our Pension rallies.

The truth is, seeing students as a 鈥渂ackpack full of cash鈥� is more characteristic of those laboring to limit our kids to traditional schools than those spending large sums of money to emancipate us from them.

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