TV REVIEWS : PBS’ ‘America’s Schools’ a Sea of Talking Heads

If you can stay with it, PBS’ two-night co-production with Columbia University’s Seminars on Media and Society, “America’s Schools: Who Gives a Damn?” (at 10 tonight and Tuesday on Channels 28 and 15) generates urgency about an issue seemingly beyond the country’s ability to cope.

That is, if you can stay with it. The now-familiar Columbia seminar format--a round-table of experts in role-playing discussion--has lost some of the vitality of earlier editions (such as “The Constitution: That Delicate Balance” and “Ethics in America”). With nearly two dozen, mostly white, men opining, the program’s serious intentions are compromised by a staid tone and a muddy sea of talking heads.

To be sure, tonight’s debate on the burdens of teaching (including mediocre teachers) draws some clear political lines in the sand. Adam Urbanski, a teacher union leader in Rochester, N.Y., explains how his district has a peer review process to get rid of incompetents (he also provocatively states that “it’s virtually impossible to be a good teacher in America today without practicing creative insubordination”).

This doesn’t cut it with educational establishment critics like Vanderbilt University’s Chester Finn Jr. and ex-Labor Secretary William Brock, who argue that teachers and schools, like any business, should be axed if they don’t make the grade.

Part of the dilemma, though, is that there is no national standard by which to measure school excellence. A child’s school is as good (meaning revenue-rich) as the neighborhood in which he or she lives. Tuesday’s discussion asks if equity can be realized without sacrificing quality, but not before moderator Charles Ogeltree Jr. role-plays “Sam,” an African-American inner city student about to quit school. Suddenly, previously liberal voices like Urbanski and 1989 Teacher of the Year Mary Bicouvaris deliver some tough talk to “Sam” about hard work and how learning black studies isn’t enough.

If this round-table proves anything--other than that the social crisis of schooling is beyond TV’s ken--it’s that labels of “left” and “right” often break down in the crazy-quilt world of education.