I reviewed the film Granito de Arena for The Uniter this week. It’s the third installment of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba’s first film series, called “Popocorn With Your Politics.” I have been wanting to get more involved with the CCPA-MB for a while now, and figured this was a good way to help out. I was at the second film last month and thought it might be a way to draw more people to a good cause. This next film is very powerful.
Granito de Arena
Jill Friedberg, 2005
60 mins.
As the old proverb goes, give a person a fish and they’ll eat for a day; teach a person to fish and they’ll eat for a lifetime. “But what if they sell the river?” asks Eduardo Galeano, well-known Uruguayan author, as he explains the plight of public education in Mexico as schoolteachers fight against privatization. In the powerful documentary, Granito de Arena (Grain of Sand), Seattle-based documentary filmmaker Jill Friedberg (This is What a Documentary Looks Like) explores – through interviews, archival footage, and at-the-scene footage of protests – the 30 year struggle for the right to public education that has seen the closing of schools and even the assassination of teachers fighting for the free education of their students.
Since the Mexican Revolution of 1910, all Mexicans have the constitutional right to a free and secular education. That right is being undermined by the Mexican government’s attempts to privatize education – a move that would render education a privilege, leaving the poor to work in sweatshops, McDonalds, or Walmart. With funding from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as their only resources, public schools are obligated to comply with the stipulations in programs that promise “quality” and “excellence” in education. Hiding behind the guise of benefiting Mexican students, these implementations, such as standardized exams, the heavily scrutinized results of which determine a school’s future funding, are in reality strategies to privatize education.
The funding provided by the Mexican government, under President Vincente Fox, is also determined by schools’ complying in the so-called “Quality Schools” program, which includes rigorous, racist, and class-biased standardized tests administered by private testing agencies. If a school manages to produce results good enough for the Fox Government, the funding they receive goes toward the very basics: text books and school repairs (such as, in one particularly eye-opening scene, functioning bathrooms), that should be provided by the state in the first place. Without any funding, schools are left to call on the parents to pay for electricity, water, and school supplies – ultimately, a tuition for public school kids.
While the film is indeed powerful, the first half covers a great deal of background information. Those without knowledge of the workings of organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund may find themselves somewhat overwhelmed. Yet, the film’s message becomes clear: without the mobilizations of the democratic teacher’s movement in Mexico, education may very well have been completely privatized by now. Interviews with leaders of the movement, as well as footage of teachers and parents protesting in mass numbers, paints a clear picture of both the aggressive political climate in Mexico and the much needed outcry against the Fox Government’s push toward privatization. The last section of the film provides some criticisms of the democratic teacher’s movement, namely that some teachers have begun to focus too heavily on the political and union issues, and have lost sight of what is truly at the heart of the matter: the communities and classrooms that are affected by the threat to a free, secular education. What must remain central to the struggle for public education is an education that supports the needs and cultural growth of the community. It is through the mobilization of social solidarity across borders that this can be best achieved.
As Eduardo Galeano puts it, education is inextricably linked to all other aspects of life, and public education must address and cater to the lives of those communities it serves. What good is it to be taught how to fish, if the river’s been sold and you aren’t allowed to cast your line?
Granito de Arena is a film for anyone interested in public education and global political solidarity. It is being shown at the Park Theatre on Wednesday, November 21st, at 7:00 p.m. as the third of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – Manitoba’s three-part film series, “Popcorn With Your Politics.” Admission is $8, or $5 with a student ID.
