DanaK September 16 Share September 16 Quote Peacock documentary that is available today September 16 2024 About the epidemic of childhood illiteracy and told through the stories of people who never learned to read. Produced by NBA star Stephen Curry and his wife Article on the doc https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/steph-curry-peacock-documentary-sentenced-1236003017/ Link to comment
DanaK September 16 Author Share September 16 (edited) Full press release http://www.thefutoncritic.com/video/2024/09/16/video-official-trailer-for-new-documentary-narrated-by-stephen-curry-sentenced-123511/20240916peacock01/ Trailer Edited September 16 by DanaK added press release Link to comment
Bastet September 17 Share September 17 (edited) Oh, man, I'm glad they ended with testimonials from all the people who've volunteered to teach kids how to read, because everything up until then was depressing af. I have no hope for any of the kids featured. Ruben's chance of becoming an architect is exactly the same as my chance of becoming president of the universe. He has been forced into being his mother's caretaker, and she's just going to keep dragging him down. Fugi's kid, especially now with him gone? That image of him staring at his reflection in the window and thinking he doesn't want to be sweeping floors his whole life is haunting, because that indeed sums up his future. The four kids in the projects, with a mom who loves them but has zero idea how to be a parent because she lost both of hers, are screwed because school isn't a safety net for them, it's an overcrowded inner city mess whose enormous cracks they will fall through. This shit is bleak. My dad grew up in abject poverty in a very small town, and watching this made me realize how the size of the town (and thus of the school) saved him. He's one of eight kids, so I'm sure no one was getting one-on-one time reading with their parents. He struggled with reading in first grade (it turns out he's dyslexic, but of course no one knew that back in the late '40s), so his teacher spent oodles of time helping him, I think even after he was in the next grade; to this day he talks about how he can read only because of her. If she had 35 other kids to manage, she'd have never been able to give him that kind of time. My dad wound up going to college (the only one in the family), becoming an engineer, and ultimately a program manager. His brother, on the other hand, bore out every statistic this documentary raised about the life poor kids are sentenced to if they are not reading at grade level by the time they finish third grade. He couldn't read for shit, either, and no one stepped up to give him extra help, so he never progressed. Dropped out, worked shitty jobs, had shitty health, died prematurely. I wish I liked kids even just a little bit, because if I did I would heed the call to volunteer. Edited to add: I liked the segment on childhood trauma, and it was heartbreaking to hear that woman describe her abusive stepfather and then say but that's not trauma, because nothing dramatic happened. He made them sit in their rooms silently for DAYS, but to her warped perception that's nothing big. It was also sad when she said she can't get fast food jobs because their buttons have words rather than pictures, and it doesn't work to tell managers "I'm a hard worker, so if you just teach me what the buttons are for, I can do it" because they just write her off as stupid. Edited September 17 by Bastet 1 Link to comment
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