Student-Written Play About Education Reform BANNED

The Washington Post:

Fourteen students from two New York City schools -- Jamaica High and Queens Collegiate -- wrote an impressive play about school reform under Superintendent Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, based on the classic play "Antigone." They were rehearsing to perform the play -- complete with music, visual projections and lights -- when they were told that their principals had decided not to allow them stage it. The play, titled "Declassified: Struggle for Existence (We Used to Eat Lunch Together," was banned.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post

Comments

[poeticjustice4all]

02:28 PM on 12/28/2010

Copyright infringement is against the law. Seamus Heaney's translatio­n is not in the public domain. You may not scavenge through another writer's work like a buzzard, picking and choosing which lines to steal and then claim it as your original play.

[GlennWatson]

08:50 AM on 01/02/2011

Are you suggesting plagiarism. I read the play. I think not. Its fair use.

[DeweyJ]

03:27 PM on 12/26/2010

This should be national news.

[DeweyJ]

03:26 PM on 12/26/2010

I view this as an example of student learning. Reading a classic piece of literature, gleaning its themes and finding those themes relevant today is a superior example of education in progress. Now, please show me the prepackaged, multiple-choice standards test that can perform this function equally well. Finally, which activity that can be used to assess learning has more in common with "real world" endeavors: selecting the correct answer from a field of 5 choices, or making connections between learning and life.

[Lake Saganaga]

01:44 AM on 12/26/2010

Hey, we are becoming like China. yippeeee.......

[Retrofuturistic]

12:07 AM on 12/26/2010

Unfortunately, the students will learn that dissent is wrong and that they must be politically correct instead of saying what they really think.

[mc53]

08:00 PM on 12/25/2010

How about this? How about parents teaching their kids some manners and correct behaivour for the classroom. Teachers aren't there to raise your kids. They are there to teach them. Stop thinking of teachers as baby sitters.

[MohammedAbbasi]

05:33 PM on 12/25/2010

Tea Party infestation of the American mindset increases

[understandthis]

05:07 PM on 12/25/2010

NO Free thinkers please

[SangZe]

02:19 PM on 12/25/2010

American education at its best.

[xansam]

12:42 PM on 12/25/2010

somebody on broadway should let these kids preform as a "preshow".

[KaAp]

01:45 AM on 12/25/2010

I am so totally in love with the students ... How can anyone talk about our children failing when you see such a wonderful critique of what is happening to the world (which is so wrapped up in schools).
I want President Obama (as someone said below) to have these young people to the White House and perform it in front of Duncan, Rhee, Jeb Bush, Canada, Black, Bloomberg etc ... and I would also make sure the corporate foundational stooges: Gates, Broad etc are in the audience ... as well as Oprah who will feature the play also on her show (giving these children not just each a car but a free ride to college) ...
The lesson in "civics" as Ms. Strauss mentioned is quite clear: fascism (wrapped in neoliberalism) has come to the US.

[qthedancer]

05:17 PM on 12/24/2010

I would like to petition the First Lady to invite these kids to perform at the White House.

[RealistBC]

02:52 PM on 12/24/2010

Of course this student uprising had to be quelled! How will you keep law and order if kids grow up thinking it's OK to question authority? Why, one day, one of these students might see fit to release secret documents revealing how our government says one thing while doing another!

[understandthis]

04:22 PM on 12/25/2010

so so true

[teacher39years]

02:32 PM on 12/24/2010

Valerie Strauss worked for the Washington Post during Michelle Rhee's tenure as Education Chancellor in Washington D.C.

[teacher39years]

02:04 PM on 12/24/2010

I am so happy that the Huffington Post is covering articles written by Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post. I consider her to be to Education what Woodward and Bernstein were to Watergate. She has boundless energy and often writes several columns a day. I remember one of your bloggers mentioning in the Article that "Valerie Strauss probably knows more about Education than anyone else on the planet." Thanks again.