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//Watch and comment on [|Sociological Cinema: The Wire and Educational Inequality] // Word Count 536

Title: Sociological Cinema: The Wire and Educational Inequality Director: Clark Johnson Release Year: 2006

Sociological Cinema: The Wire and Educational Inequality provides the reader with two clips from the fourth season of The Wire. The central message of this season of The Wire is to highlight and bring attention to the issues surrounding American public schools, particularly the ones in poor neighborhoods, like the ones depicted in this show. Baltimore, Maryland in this television series, is a community plagued with poverty, crime, and murder. The clips of this show in this article show that public schools are understaffed, underfunded, and have under-qualified teachers in educating the youth.

The first clip, //Prez Gets Hired,// portrays the desperation many public schools in the nation face, especially ones in poor urban communities. The Principal and Vice Principal of the school is discuss scheduling teachers for lunch duty, showing the audience that this school is not adequately staffed for the amount of kids. The financial situation of the school is hinted at when Roland Pryzbylewski, typically shortened to Prez, is trying to get into the school however the door will not open upon the secretary’s press of the unlock button. Most schools you would imagine would have the means to fix it however this school doesn’t have the monetary means to fix it. When Prez introduces himself to the administrators of the school, he is immediately hired once he informs them of his background as an ex-police officer. Although he does not have a teaching license and is still enrolled in the Resident Teachers Program, due to staff shortages he is told her will be teaching classes.

The second clip shows how student are able to slip through the cracks of this public school, like many others. The student re-enrolling in school has missed three years of school, however has not been contacted by the school nor has his parents. Although he has not completed the sixth grade, he gets a ‘social promotion’ to the eighth grade due to lack of resources and teachers not being able to maintain order with older kids in their classroom. This decision is done without the student taking any sort of placement test that shows where he should be placed academically. This promotion sets him up to fail as he does not have the knowledge he should have at his age. Many public schools are set up in ways that does not support the students’ needs nor their academic level which contributes to them dropping out of school.

This season of The Wire focuses on a handful of at risk middle school students struggling academically and personally in an unsafe part of Baltimore. Although these kids have different experiences and struggles in this series, only one of them really ‘makes it’ through the help of a teacher who know exactly how to work the school and legal system. These two clips showcase two major issues with in the public school system being the administrative side of not enough qualified, ‘good teachers involved and too many children slipping out of the system unaccounted for. These two factors are a recipe for disaster for the American public school system which is plagued with a high dropout and in-completion rate.