Review of The Wire on education

If you have not checked out HBO's The Wire then you must! Check out the wikipedia page HERE. Pick this show up or download it.

This review is on the parts of The Wire season 4 that deal with education. Though education could be generalized to many aspects of the show, like learning the “drug game” from starting on the corner of the inner cities of Baltimore, Maryland to other positions, I will be focusing on the public education system portrayed throughout this season. HBO's The Wire has become part of many discussions among social science publications for its illustrations of issues in inner city schooling, it has also picked up some critiques for not portraying this phenomenon realistically. I'm not debating whether the show is realistic or not because that has no relevance, the fact of the matter is that it brings up the issues and enables discussion and awareness.

There would simply be too much to cover if I were to focus on every theme within the study of education that's included in this show, for that reason I will focus on key aspects covered in course material, that being Afro-Centrism and traditional methods of teaching. It is clear that many of the

students represented in the show, like reality, need more attention than some based on problems that they face, for example exposure to addiction, family problems, income problems and so on, these create high levels of stress, distraction and even lead to dropping out. But should we enable a method that only seeks to provide more of a one-on-one teaching process for some students, the ones that face the most problems? Why not provide the method for all that gives more individual attention, I think everyone could benefit from it and enabling it for all would not single out particular students, there would most likely be ridicule if only some students were sent for more individual attention. This is why I believe, based on exposure to theorists like Foucault and Freire, that we should move away from the traditional method of teaching where one person of authority is at the front of a class teaching numerous students, too many people are lost through this process. Many other methods could be established, whether it be a peer-on-peer, group discussion, one-on-one and so whatever, but we continue to use the traditional method to pump out students like a factory.

A school built on the foundation of Afro-Centrism could really benefit the black community, not only in Baltimore where The Wire is set, but everywhere. The fictional school in the show has a large population of black youth, like the city itself that has a black population well over 50%, which would be a realistic representation of a real inner city school situated in Baltimore, yet we continue to teach these students through a lens of whiteness and therefore alienating them. North America needs to wake up and establish Afro-Centric education systems to refrain from the alienation of black youth, we need to refrain from spreading whiteness amongst people who are not white. Black youth do not get to learn the importance of their race to the world or see the contributions that have been made by say black scholars or black soldiers, not to mention rarely being exposed to teachers who are not white. This is a clear illustration of whiteness trying to maintain its superiority and control over “other” races in the education system by means of oppression. There is a high Black population as well as “other” races in Canada and the U.S, yet we have not adjusted our educational foundations based on this fact, it needs to be done.