Personality is a toolbox that underlies individual potential to be productive in the world. What happens when that toolbox is abandoned to the elements and left to rust, with no choice but to adapt for the sole purpose of surviving a deadly environment?
College Behind Bars: a Film by Lynn Novick (produced for PBS and available on Netflix and Amazon) offers an elegant glimpse at the inherent potential of quality education to change the world.
Highlights of the four-part inspiring film include a case of form driving home content when the Bard College prison-campus team wins a debate against Harvard on the question of school districts’ right to turn away undocumented children. As successfully argued by the incarcerated college students, no one wins when a dysfunctional and obscenely overtaxed system is forced to shoulder yet another load. Rather, that load must be carried by those in charge of resources, with urgent efforts to reverse the greater crisis in progress and avert the ever escalating damage.
Untying the controversial question of school districts bearing the burden of sole accountability for serving undocumented minors, the winning Bard debate team demonstrates to the world the power behind its hard-earned vision of the leading role that quality education must take in our quest for a healthy society.
If Personality is the toolbox for surviving and thriving in our human condition, then Education Reform that recognizes the humanity of every child is the non-negotiable condition for building a fundamentally safe world.
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