Resisting educational privatisation on screen : a critical analysis of two activist documentaries from India and the USA

Abstract

The assault on public education in India and the USA has been facilitated by a powerful assemblage of proprivatisation corporate media. Representations of education in news and popular culture media tend to harp on two themes -– a public education system in crisis, and, relatedly, the private or corporate business sector as the only viable savior. Two recent activist documentary films present a counter-narrative to this discourse – ‘We shall Fight, We shall Win’ (India) and ‘An Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman’ (USA). This paper analyses the situated ways in which education activists use the medium of documentary film to contest dominant media representations of the benefits of educational privatisation. These activist narratives in defense of public education provide insights into how progressive education struggles are essentially cultural struggles.