Wire Preview: Sara's Take (No Spoilers)

Last night Erin and I went to an advance screening of the upcoming Wire episode, which was hosted by Campus Progress and followed by a Q&A with Wire producers David Simon and Ed Burns. Obviously, I'm not going to say anything about the content of the episode, but I will say two things about the show generally: First, I now get Kevin, Craig and other folks' fascination with it. I'd only seen part of a Wire episode before at the gym, so I knew bupkus about it, but I was totally entralled to the point that it was like a shock when the episode ended. Good stuff. Second, the kids and the performances they're getting from them are pretty amazing--in particular the work three of the kids were doing in the last several minutes. I'm seriously bummed I don't have access to watch the show continue to unfold, although I guess that means I have plenty of time to catch up the last three seasons on DVD.

Like Matthew Yglesias, I was not all that impressed with the Q&A that followed the showing. Simon and Burns are trying to show that the deeply troubling behavior of some of their characters is actually a rational response to the dysfunction and limited opportunities in the world around them. That's worth pointing out. But the "rational response to circumstances" bit can be taken beyond the point of usefulness--to a place where it lets people off the hook for things they could do something about. The lead story Matthew relates is one example of this. And it occurs all the time in education: We say that kids' decisions to drop out or put in little effort are a rational response to diminished economic opportunities they see awaiting them, so there's little schools can do to improve achievement or graduation rates until we improve urban economies. But for too many kids, these choices also look reasonable because they know they aren't going to learn anything in the lousy schools they're offered. The quality of schools and how they treat kids does impact their perceptions of the options available and their relative attractiveness.