Hate Crime Committed Against LeBron James – A Teachable Moment for Us All

On the basketball court he is king – LeBron James is arguably the best player in the history of the National Basketball Association. While some people will talk about the accomplishments of Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, LeBron rises above them and the rest in his ability to guide a team to victory through the power of his performance and personality. Currently, he is perhaps the greatest athlete in American sports and one of the most recognizable persons in the world.

Sadly, despite all his success and fame, there are some who will not appreciate him because of his race. The vandalism of LeBron’s Los Angeles home was bad enough, but the perpetrators also painted the N-word on his front gate. This reprehensible act rises to the level of a hate crime, and the LAPD is investigating it as such. This may seem inconceivable to some in 2017, but many people realize that race is a factor in their daily lives and that prejudice is something that has not gone away.

For the sports fans who idolize LeBron, this may seem impossible to rationalize or understand. More importantly, for the children who are basketball fans and follow their favorite basketball player, they are left wondering what is wrong with the world. That is why this situation cannot be allowed to be just let go – it is a teachable moment for us all, but especially for the kids.

LeBron has reacted with the dignity and honesty to what happened to his home, which is not his primary residence. While explaining that his family is safe and that is most important, LeBron said, “But it just goes to show that racism will always be a part of the world, a part of America. Hate in America, especially for African-Americans is living every day. Even though that it's concealed most of the time, even though people hide their faces and will say things about you, and then when they see you they smile in your face. It's alive every single day."

Coming from one of the greatest sports figures this country has ever known, this is a powerful indictment of a society that has not evolved as much as many of us wanted to believe. With all the efforts of educators to teach the darkness of slavery and its ugly legacy, we have still not done enough. The lessons of the Civil Rights Movement and the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. echo across the decades, but they are still not enough. Even the election of an African-American as President of the United States has not been enough – and Barack Obama was certainly also a target of hate due to the color of his skin. Racism keeps rearing its hideous head, and this time as we witness it once again in the attack on LeBron James’s home.

LeBron went on to say, “No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough. And we've got a long way to go for us as a society and for us as African-Americans until we feel equal in America.”

Although he spoke eloquently, LeBron’s words will not be enough, but they should be heeded. By speaking out before the NBA Finals, LeBron is using one of the biggest sporting events of the year to highlight the disparity that still exists in our country. The social inequity that he has cited must be condemned and all Americans must rise to the challenge to make every effort to bring about necessary and compelling change to our nation.

So, yes, this is a teachable moment for us all – teachers, parents, and their children. Instead of ignoring the matter as it often has been ignored because it makes people uncomfortable, we must address the issue of race in America and maybe experience a good deal of discomfort along the way until significant progress is achieved.

Dr. King once said he looked forward to the day when his children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. 54 years after he uttered those words on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, it is obvious we have not reached that place Dr. King sought – at least not yet. We owe it to our children and our children’s children to make Dr. King’s dream a reality, and we can only procure such a world for them through a concerted effort that does not begin tomorrow or next week but today!

TV Review: Twin Peaks: The Return – Is It Future or Is It Past?

The past is not dead; it’s not even past.

-William Faulkner

* There are some spoilers in this review.

As I watched and re-watched the first two episodes of series creators Mark Frost and David Lynch’s surreal, stunning, and sensational Showtime reboot of Twin Peaks, I kept thinking of Faulkner’s words and the feeling of being between two (or more worlds). In a telling moment in the Red Room the One-Armed Man (Al Strobel) asks “Is it future or is it past?” and we have no idea what the answer could be. There is a sense of familiarity that is jarred by the reality that time and space have taken us far but never away from this narrative and these wonderfully odd, strange, and grim characters that inhabit it.

Twin Peaks: The Return is more than a reboot and beyond a season three, so much so that it is hard to categorize it other than it seems to be an extension of a story that needed to still be told – Lynch himself has said as much. And for we fans of the original series who savored the two seasons we were given (yes, the end of season two took its toll and only we truly loyal fans hung in there), we knew there had to be more than that horrific ending when Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) smashed his head against the mirror and saw the image of the savage killer Bob (the late Frank Silva) in the shattered glass.

We have been waiting all these years, and now the story unwinds slowly, like jagged yet beautiful bloody shards of that mirror floating across the years and coming back together gradually to fit together like razor-sharp puzzle pieces that may finally give us the answers we have been long awaiting.

There is so much going on in these first two episodes (which really just run together as one whole) that much of what happens seems like spoiler territory; however, the events that happen are just seedlings that are being sown masterfully by Lynch (who directed these two and all 18 episodes of the series) in his chaotic, gradual, procedural, and surreal style that is so jarring and yet so welcome. Damn, I missed feeling this overwhelmed, intrigued, and frustrated watching TV for too long (26 years to be exact).

Hearing people talk about the series since the premier on Sunday, the watercooler buzz has been that Frost and Lynch borrowed from Lost, Stranger Things, Fargo, and True Detective, but I was quick to point out the truth is that those series borrowed from what Lynch had done so long ago in the original series, which was more than ground-breaking and as I recall a game changer for television shows. People were like “You can’t do that on television” and Frost and Lynch just said, “Oh, yes we can.”

I must note that I was hooked from the very first episode of Twin Peaks back in season one. I recall never being so intrigued, disturbed, confused, and delighted while watching a TV show. The dismal beauty that Lynch brought to life had the amazing ability to make me feel totally lost but to a point that I somehow felt powerfully found. Happily, I have all the same feelings again as I am watching this new incarnation, and the nostalgic factor is compelling but subsumed by the notion that Lynch is making something old new again.

Many interesting choices are made to get us back into the world of Agent Cooper, and we begin with one of the most essential characters – the one around whom the first two seasons revolved – Laura Palmer (the still stunningly beautiful Sheryl Lee). First, we see the young Laura with Cooper at the Black Lodge in the Red Room – this is an alternate reality – and she tells Cooper that she will see him in 25 years.

Amazingly that scene is from the original series, and now just around 25 years later we are here again. An older Laura enters the Red Room wearing a long black dress and walking stiffly to the sound of what seems like a record being pushed backwards. This odd effect is appropriately unsettling. Cooper stares at her in disbelief because he (and we) know she was murdered more than a quarter of a century ago. Laura tells him, “I am dead, yet I live.” After a brief kiss, Laura is sucked out of the room screaming all the way, lost to Cooper once more, and later an image of her father Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) appears and tells Cooper, “Find Laura.” And I’m thinking, “Is it all going to revolve around Laura again?”

We also get a black and white scene with the Giant (Carel Struycken) who seems even more ominous aged; he still is offering Cooper information that we need subtitles to understand, but we still cannot be sure about what it all actually means. Later in color we see Cooper in the Red Room again, and the One-Armed Man is there and shows him that the dancing dwarf (Michael J. Anderson) has somehow become a brain stuck on a bare-limbed tree. The Brain reminds Cooper of his doppelgänger (the Evil Cooper possessed by Bob) and that Good Cooper can only leave the Red Room if Evil Cooper comes back in.

Evil Cooper is not quite a sight for sore eyes. Complete with long hair, spray suntan, a menacing expression, and clad in leather, EC looks like he escaped from an ‘80s rock band video. Now EC is driving hot cars, sleeping with hot girls like Darya (Nicole LaLiberte) and Chantal (Jennifer Jason Leigh) while also killing people in cold blood. Evil Cooper has a plan and seems to be on an inevitable collision course with Good Cooper as he embarks upon a trip with sinister intentions.

We do get glimpses of old characters we are happy to see back, even if it seems that they appear so briefly. While it is good to see these Twin Peak residents – Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn), Ben Horne (Richard Beymer), his brother Jerry (David Patrick Kelly), ditzy Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) and her Andy (Harry Goaz), waitress Shelly (Mädchen Amick), Laura’s mother Sarah (Grace Zabriske), James Hurley (James Marshall), and Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) – the most welcome face is the Log Lady (deceased Catherine E. Coulson) who is now depicted as quite frail and using an oxygen tank but still holding her trusty log.

Log Lady’s interaction (so far) is only with Hawk over the phone and it has to do with Agent Cooper. She tells Hawk “Something is missing” and then Hawk proceeds to go deep into the dark forest in an nerve-wracking scene that turns up something that may or may not be a way to get Cooper home.

Besides these familiar faces, there are other narratives interwoven into the episodes that are intriguing and haunting. One involves Scream star Matthew Lillard who plays respected high school principal Bill Hastings who lives in Buckhorn, South Dakota, and is being accused of murdering the school’s librarian Ruth (Emily Stofle) because his fingerprints are all over her apartment. He claims to be innocent and tells his wife Phyllis (Cornelia Guest) he “dreamed” it, just like Leland Palmer who didn’t know he was possessed by Bob and killed his daughter Laura; I have a feeling old Bill is in for a rude awakening.

Another of these new narratives involves a seemingly unoccupied luxury apartment in a New York City skyscraper where a glass cube is affixed to the wall with a portal that opens up to a view of the city. In this room on a comfortable sofa a young man (Ben Rosenfield) sits and watches the empty cube as he records it on cameras. A pretty young woman named Tracey (Madeline Zima) comes baring lattes but wants to get romantic on that sofa. When something dark and foreboding enters that cube, it looks like their erotic interlude is over and then some.

How all these seedlings will grow and intertwine cannot be determined yet, but that has always been the awesome draw of Twin Peaks – we don't know where we are going, we don’t know how we’re getting there, and we don’t know if we will even arrive, but we joyfully take the trip anyway.

Along with Frost and Lynch putting all their touches on the narrative and the visuals (now greatly enhanced with CGI especially in the Red Room scenes), we get Angelo Badalamenti’s music, including the haunting score that accompanies the opening credits – its deceptively simple but evocative strains still make me shiver as I feel myself entering a place I’m not supposed to be but have no choice but to enter.

The first two hours end with us back in The Bang Bang Bar where Shelly and her friends are partying just like it’s 1991. We go out with the slightly eerie and dreamlike song “Shadow” performed by The Chromatics, with lyrics like “I took your picture from the frame/And now you are nothing how you seemed” reminding me of that chilling photo of murdered homecoming queen Laura Palmer, whose death started this narrative 27 years ago.

Twin Peaks: The Return has me hooked just as the original did, so I am in all the way to the end. I may not know what is happening at times, but I am enjoying the hell out of this series, and ignorance has never felt more like bliss.

Movie Review: Alien: Covenant – Ripley’s Believe It Or Not

What Ridley Scott’s new film Alien: Covenant sorely needs more than anything is another Ripley, or better yet, the original (Sigourney Weaver), who gave those old movies a pulse and a protagonist that we not only cared about but also who could take care of business. No human character comes close to matching her in this outing, and interestingly enough the androids Walter/David (played by an amazing Michael Fassbender) are actually the protagonists Scott cares about most – believe it or not!

While watching the last two Alien films, Mr. Scott has hinted at some kind of connection to origins of the human race as well as a possible future for it, but there is a sense of grim and utterly hopeless inevitabilities. As David, the android from Prometheus who in that film liked to spike martinis with biological poison, views the human race as all weakness and eventual death; he has no respect for it and wants to undermine it. Despite his being created by human Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce), his disdain for the frailties of humans knows no bounds.

The ship Covenant is part cargo vessel and also Noah’s Ark for humans – 2000 colonists in cryo-sleep and drawers of frozen embryos. It is headed for a seemingly perfect planet Origae-6, where Daniels (a solid performance by Katherine Waterston) and husband and ship captain Branson (James Franco) plan to build a log cabin by a lake (wood and nails are part of the cargo). While the crew is also in cryo-sleep, Walter monitors the passengers in stasis and oversees the ship along with the main computer called Mother (an unseen voice that sounds like a Siri variant).

Covenant hits a space storm that damages it and causes the deaths of some colonists and Branson. A devastated Daniels hangs one building nail around her neck, which is sort of a nod to Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in Prometheus hanging a cross around her neck. In that film Shaw’s faith in spite of everything going wrong around her is a source of contention with android David, and this dynamic is echoed in this film as David eschews the notion of a higher power but worships “creation” and seeks answers that his own creator Weyland was unable to give him.

A distress signal from a previously uncharted planet catches the crew’s attention, and all readings seem to indicate it is a better candidate for colonization than Origae-6. Against Daniels protestations, new captain Oram (Billy Crudup) decides that the team will go investigate and try to help the person who has sent the distress call – incongruously John Denver’s song “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” If that is not a clear sign that something’s wrong on that planet, I don’t know what is.

Needless to say, once the away team lands on the planet, the excrement quickly hits the fan. Without giving away too much (like the trailers do not do that already), the team encounters a variant of the “alien” Xenomorph that is fast and just as deadly as its cinematic cousin. When all seems lost along comes David, the android from Prometheus who along with Shaw survived the conflict of the first film and set out to find the Engineers – the humanoids that apparently used technology to create the human race and then didn’t like how it turned out.

The rest is spoiler territory, but Scott borrows much from the other films, especially the original Alien which still remains the best entry in the series – and fans will be happy to see the Xenomorph back in action. What is missing, as noted before, is the heart and soul that Ripley provided to those previous films. Waterston does her best here, and we do want to see her overcome in Ripley fashion, but Walter/David are really the story that Scott seems most interested in exploring at the expense the human characters.

We never really get to know the other crew members all that well, except for Danny McBride’s Tennessee (apparently Scott’s idea for comic relief which is sorely needed) and he does the best he can wearing a cowboy hat but has limited screen time, and as the other characters get picked off one by one, as is always the case in these films, we are really not very invested in any of them.

The interplay between the androids is the core of what Scott wants to highlight, and Fassbender has a delightful edge as David while his Walter has a subtle benevolence and obvious dedication to duty and cares for Daniels. Walter is intrigued by David’s “work” in the ten years spent on the planet, and he is not too shocked to discover that the Engineers designed the aliens to destroy their human creations or by how David, now taking their place as creator and caretaker, wants the aliens to flourish and eliminate the human race including this crew and their colonist and embryo cargo.

While Scott takes us down the road to get some answers, the film still leaves us with many more questions. One of the most glaring is how can this crew and Captain Oram be so careless when landing on a planet that has not been fully vetted as was the case of their original destination? Without being aware of indigenous organisms and the atmosphere, these people jump off the transport with no helmets or protection from anything airborne or on the ground. It seems too obvious but still is bothersome. Back here on earth we would wear more protection against mosquitoes and other pests, but they walk out of the ship onto an alien world with no precautions.

Many other decisions made by the characters can come under similar scrutiny – most notable is how anyone could look down into a big slimy egg that just opened and not expect something bad to happen. Oh, yes, of course, this is a prequel you will say, so they haven’t learned from Ripley and company’s experience yet. No matter – it stretches the credibility way too far in my point of view.

Overall, while I am not totally thrilled with Alien: Covenant, it is still an Alien film (Yes, I said that about the Star Wars prequels too), and so attention must be paid. I can say I enjoyed it enough but it didn’t blow me out of the theater the way Scott’s original did, but how could any sequel/prequel match that intensity?

One interesting thing is that the last preview before the film started was for Mr. Scott’s eagerly anticipated Blade Runner sequel – Blade Runner 2049. Happily, Harrison Ford is reprising his role as Rick Deckard, which bodes well for it because at least we can be confident about that film having its Ripley – the element that would have made Covenant a great film instead of just a good one.

Free Time Is More Than Just Me Time

In a world where it feels as if we are expected to be on the go 24/7, it seems no one is stopping to smell the roses or enjoy a few quiet moments on a park bench. These people so fervently committed to their jobs or their careers – who eat two or more meals at their desks each day and come to work in darkness and leave the same way – seem to look disparagingly down on those of us who dare to hit the pause button and, if we are really daring, press stop.

The problem is that, despite all the protestations to the contrary, we do need down time. We cannot compete with robots or Artificial Intelligence that can indeed do 24/7 work; human units crave some unstructured sequences where we are not expected to punch a time clock, process information, turn a wheel, or do anything at all. The problem is it seems the world now denigrates free time as if it is the worst of guilty pleasures. If we are not doing something tangible – in other words work related – we are condemned as being unproductive or even worse: wasters of the most essential commodity of all – time!

Or course, these naysayers of leisurely pursuits and unstructured hours miss the whole point about free time. Free time is more than just me time – it is a way to connect with yourself in ways that are impossible during structured working time. Free time can mean many things to people but it is in essence moments when a person does what he or she wants to do rather than what someone else wants him or her to do.

Enjoying free time is a great gift that should be pursued whenever possible and cherished forever. Being able to sit down and read that book, listen to music, stare at the sky, or just close one’s eyes and breathe deeply are priceless opportunities. When I tell people I like to meditate, I get responses like “That’s great if you can find the time.”

Of course, my answer is always the same: “You have to find the time.”

This is when I get the incredulous expressions and loud breathing followed by, “How do you find time for anything these days?” The answer is that, if it means something to you, you will find the time.

Free time is good for your health because you can relax, breathe deeply, and think. In an office or work environment, I have often heard people say, “I don’t have the time” and they truly perceive this to be true, but even during a busy work day anyone can structure at least five minutes to close the eyes and practice deep breathing.

How did we get here? How did we go from Thoreau and Whitman to this overwhelming place called planet Earth in 2017? We have allowed the inconsequential to subsume the essential. Technology and social media have opened so many new doors that we are never truly done with knocking on them. Our pursuit of the semblance of society has been undone by social media, making a mockery of friendships and relationships that ought to be meaningful but have become virtual.

The most overwhelming of all elements is that pernicious perception that time is no longer ours. Bosses and colleagues expect what was once unthinkable – you to be instantly available at any moment of the day or night, and god help anyone who does not respond to that ping at 3 a.m. The saddest truth is this – we have allowed the rat race to not only happen 24/7 but set it up so that the rat is always winning.

Children especially need unstructured time which is why, despite all the push to take away their summer, kids need summer vacation (and adults do as well). They need time to run, jump, play, swim, watch a sunset, or just do nothing at all. Nothing is frightening for kids as well as adults because adults have done everything they can to fill up their children’s free time with sports teams, dance lessons, music lessons, extra tutoring, karate classes, and play dates. Kids assume that they have to be busy all the time because their parents are busy all the time. How truly sad is that?

Free time is bad in this world because it signifies something not getting done, but the reality is that we do not always have to be building or making or doing something. Doing nothing is not scary at all – it is the ultimate exercise of freedom. Nothing has no expectations, no strategies, and no end results. Nothing is liberating and not timed and in that way its nothingness and timelessness is priceless.

This weekend when someone says, “What should we do?” why not respond with “Let’s do nothing”? You might get some strange reactions, but you could also hear some sighs of relief too. Oh, the opportunity to do nothing – it just like doing something, but it sounds so much prettier.

TV Review: 24: Legacy – A Mostly Satisfying Season Concludes

*This review contains spoilers.

From the very first episode, comparisons have been made between 24: Legacy and the original series starring Kiefer Sutherland as the iconic Jack Bauer. Fair or not, it is understandable because the original 24 was an undeniable juggernaut that shook up TV dramas on broadcast and cable networks with its innovative split screens, a timely terrorist threat, and a real-time scenario that included the pounding beat of that clock that kept everything at a fast pace.

Despite negative hubbub generated by some critics and fans, 24: Legacy held things together for the most part, largely due to executive producers from the original show staying on board (Howard Gordon, Manny Coto, Brian Grazer) and also thanks to a solid performance by new leading man Corey Hawkins portraying hero Eric Carter.

The original format of 24 one-hour episodes has been subsumed this time by 12 episodes that still unfold in real time – until the last one which features a 12-hour time jump to encompass the 24 hours indicated in the title. For 24  purists this has been an issue, but that also was a case in the last bad day Bauer experienced in 24: Live Another Day, so the side stories that seemed to enhance characterizations and the office intrigue at CTU that pleased many fans were no longer possible.

As I was watching this series, I kept telling myself that this is 24 despite feeling like something was off at times, which reminded me of watching the Star Wars prequels during which I kept thinking, “Come on, this is Star Wars.”

Depending on to whom you are speaking, the many similarities to the first season – a senator running for president, a hero whose wife was in danger, a possible mole at CTU, a nefarious plot that is not what it seems to be, and a bad guy who was supposed to be dead and is not – were either annoyingly repetitive or just what the doctor ordered.

The season kicked off with a great first episode and then sort of sputtered along the way, and it seemed like the producers knew this and turned over a big rock and dug up Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) to save the day. As it turns out, Tony has a past with presidential candidate and Senator John Donovan’s (Jimmy Smits) wife and former CTU Director Rebecca Ingram (Miranda Otto), who brings him into the picture as a problem solver. They take Donovan’s father Henry (a terrific Gerald McRaney) to an abandoned warehouse (a 24 staple) where they interrogate him the old fashioned and painful way (another staple of the old show). When this produces no results and causes friction between John and Rebecca, Henry is released and we figure maybe Tony is done here (though I was hoping he might give Jack a call for old time’s sake).

Tony doesn’t get much more to do until the last two episodes when he is called by Director of National Intelligence Donald Simms (James Moses Black), who wants him to do a dirty job that is right up Tony’s dark alley. Those who remember Tony fondly from the past might have forgotten that Bauer’s old buddy turned to the dark side and then some.

The back story here is that DNI Simms and Rebecca hatched a plot just as sinister as anything the terrorists could imagine. They targeted terrorist families, and managed to kidnap Sidra Naseri (an excellent Moran Atias), the young daughter of Asim Naseri (Oded Fehr). Naseri had been helping Carter in Afghanistan but turned on him after his daughter’s abduction thinking that she had been killed. He joined the terrorist Sheik Bin-Khalid (Eli Danker) whose men were sent to wipe out Carter’s team as payback.

Carter learns that Sidra is still alive, and because Naseri is holding Rebecca hostage, he hopes to trade Sidra for Rebecca. Of course, Tony and his team have been sent by Simms to kill the girl creating a collision course between Carter and Tony. The best moments of the finale involve Carter and Tony’s fight – sort of like old 24 against new 24 – and it is a brutal battle until Carter breaks Tony’s arm, and then Tony receives a call from John Donovan telling him that Carter is there to try to save Rebecca. Did you get all that?

Yes, it is a bit of the old winding and intertwining conflicts of interest, but Tony reveals his inner goodness by telling Carter that he would go with him to save Rebecca if he didn’t have the broken arm. Carter gets the girl onto a helicopter to the Egyptian embassy and then goes to meet Naseri, and once he knows that his daughter is safe he is willing to cooperate. The exchange does not go well because Bin-Khalid is angry at Carter for killing his son Jadalla (Raphael Acloque) and starts shooting. He kills Naseri and wounds Rebecca before Carter takes him out, and then Carter makes a desperate attempt to save Rebecca.

Unfortunately, Rebecca makes it to the hospital but passes away. Her husband is devastated, and when his father comes into the room where Donovan is sitting with her body, Smits does a great job of conveying the man’s pain and also his anger with Henry. The old man admits his mistake and is willing to go to prison, but he thinks John should still run for the presidency because the country needs him.

Donovan knows that his father Henry was in cahoots with Bin-Khalid (Henry was being blackmailed because he had business dealings with ISIS) and yet, because of Rebecca’s dirty deal with Simms (who blows his brains out when he realizes that he will be exposed in the kidnapping of Sidra) she was also connected with Henry, and John wants to protect her reputation more than maintain his bid for the White House.

While loyal viewers would figure that one main character had to die in keeping with the show’s tradition, it was very surprising that it would be Rebecca – I was thinking it would be Carter’s wife Nicole (Anna Diop) – but then that would be entirely too much like the first season when Jack lost his wife, so the impact here is a bit different but has major implications if there will be a second season.

While the series had a mostly good run, the ratings weren’t terrific, but based on Hawkins’s strong performance and the show’s pedigree, Fox should give this series at least one more season to try to build its fan base and gain more viewers.

There are many possibilities with the remaining characters including Donovan becoming president, fallout from the program Simms and Rebecca put in place, and Carter becoming a CTU agent. During a touching scene with his wife, Carter promises her no more lies (he had been secretly applying to CTU), and Nicole accepts that.

As Carter goes into a debriefing with CTU Director Mullins (Teddy Sears), we get a last shot of Nicole’s face, but from her expression we cannot be sure whether she is just afraid for her husband or unhappy about his decision to join CTU. Let’s hope we get a second season so that we can find out!

What Happens in Schools With No Report Card Grades – True Learning Begins!

When thinking of Socrates – one of the greatest teachers who ever lived – it is hard to imagine him assigning A’s and B’s or worrying about students Plato and Xenophan’s grade point averages. Socrates knew that greater knowledge brought greater happiness, but the first and foremost assignment would be to know oneself in relation to the world – only then through reasoning and logic could true knowledge be attained.

Flash forward to our current abysmal education system where everything revolves around grading and standardized testing. In order to get students to do well on these assessments, so-called “knowledge” is shoved down their throats with intensity in order to have them perform well and prop up test scores for their districts. In this meaningless annual cycle, teaching to the test amounts to little or no teaching at all, but rather a concerted effort to make the grade.

Parents across the country have rebelled against state assessments and standardized testing. They have realized that students are not truly learning content – which means mastery – but rather are being put through repetitive drills with sample tests in order to succeed on the examinations. Once the exam periods are over, there is no retention of information and thus the next school year the exasperating cycle will have to begin again.

One school district in Connecticut has done away with grades. In Windsor Locks students in the middle and high school there are involved in a new system that requires them to “master” skills in every subject area in order to be promoted. School superintendent Susan Bell notes that a D- (the old passing grade) is no longer a pass to the next grade or to graduation. Of course, this makes sense because no one is ready to move up to the next grade with a D- average.

The model in Windsor Locks should not only be applauded by other educators – it should be initiated in some form or other in their districts. The idea of mastery means progress – gone is the formality of number or letter grades that do little to tell anyone what a student knows. In this school district, a student must fully learn skills and, if he or she needs more time, is not penalized but rather supported until mastery is achieved.

Yes, this is a unique model, but it also fits into a vision I have had for schools for a long time. In my ideal school, every student would have an IEP – an Individualized Education Program – not just those enrolled as special education students. By giving each student a plan designed for his or her abilities, schools would be enabled to structure a course of instruction that is reasonable and personal.

In this system grading would be obsolete. Students will compile semester portfolios which will show their progress and, as in the Windsor Locks system, they will have to demonstrate more than a simple understanding of each subject area – but each student will have his or her own level of tasks needed to be completed. In this way mastery is in no way a one size fits all expectation just as A’s and B’s used to be.

Opposition to these kinds of innovate education plans is to be expected. Many parents and teachers who came through antiquated A’s and B’s school systems feel semesters and report cards are normal parts of their children’s scholastic experience. They have been conditioned to accept the status quo because they know nothing else.

Why should any child not have an optimal educational experience in school? What has been going on in classrooms for many decades is far from optimal. A teacher who is in a classroom with 25 students must face the facts – that  in some ways he or she is failing to reach each one of them in a given day  because he or she is expecting them to conform – to all get the same understanding through instruction and then to get the same grades on tests which should result in the same grades on their report cards.

How could any teacher possibly believe that he or she could reach 25 students who are all unique individuals in the same way every day? It is a cookie-cutter approach that has been going on for far too long, but the problem is that kids are not uniform cookies – they come in all shapes and sizes and have different learning needs. The education system continues to fail students because of this folly of expectation that has resulted in reliance on standardized test scores that have no meaning in relation to what a child knows and retains.

I praise Windsor Locks school district for its innovative approach and hope that more school districts will begin to embrace this kind of instruction and assessment. It should be the wave of the future, but administrators will have to be brave and bold and do something that has not been done for so long – what is best for the children and not their budgets and the vested interests like testing companies.

Instead of a child bringing home a report card with grades on it, he or she should come home with a multi-page document – I  label it a "Learning Narrative" which sounds a good deal less intimidating than "report card" – that covers all skills learned, ones yet to be learned, and realistic goals to be reached in the following period of instruction based on his or her IEP. As it always should be, parental involvement and support would be encouraged and welcome – as it is now many parents are kept at arm’s length from the school building and do not feel like partners with their children’s teachers. This has to change.

The most important thing to parents besides their children’s health and well-being is their education. As a parent, I want my kids to come away from school with the skills they need to succeed in life, but I also want them to be able to retain knowledge and have an understanding about subject matter that is deep and not just cursory in order to pass state and standardized tests.

As parents, it is our duty to do everything we can to advocate for this kind of change that will create a more meaningful and memorable school experience for all students. We owe it to our children because they deserve so much better than what they are getting now.

TV Review: Big Little Lies – Satisfying Finale Leaves Us Wanting More

*This review contains spoilers.

From the first dreamlike strains of the opening credits (featuring Michael Kiwanuka’s amazing “Cold Little Heart”), we get sucked into a stream of consciousness sequence of beautiful images of Monterey, our main characters Madeline (Reese Witherspoon), Celeste (Nicole Kidman), and Jane (Shailene Woodley) driving their kids to school, the wild ocean, a gun held in the sunshine, children dancing, the female leads mugging for the camera in Audrey Hepburn costumes, and silhouettes of lovers – and the show hasn’t even started yet. But just like HBO’s other recent hit mini-series Westworld (they really have cornered the market on making opening credits an art form), we come to understand what Big Little Lies will be about and it’s quite compelling.

The (hopefully season and not the series) finale answers the questions everyone wanted to know – who got murdered and who did it, but the way we get there is not how we have believed we would. The fact that Jane has a gun and fears the rapist who impregnated her has hung over the series (that is the  gun seen in the opening credits), and if we subscribe to Anton Chekhov’s theory about guns (if one is shown in a story it has to eventually go off), the way the murder takes place is a shove instead of a shot, and the person doing the shoving is the least likely character to do it.

The series would have been compelling enough if the murder was not in the mix. We have Madeline cheating on her husband Ed (Adam Scott) with Joseph (Santiago Cabrera), the director of the local theatre company, and also dealing with her teenage daughter Abigail (Kathryn Newton) wanting to auction her virginity for charity. Former lawyer Celeste is trying to raise twin sons while engaging in an increasingly violent and abusive relationship with her husband Perry (Alexander Skarsgård). New in town Jane gets into a battle with powerful executive Renata (Laura Dern) who accuses her son Ziggy (Ian Armitage) of bullying Renata’s daughter Amabella (Ivy George), so there is plenty of conflict and also numerous potential aggressors and victims, which makes the murder mystery all the more interesting.

Writer David E. Kelley and director Jean-Marc Vallée have taken the story from Liane Moriarty’s novel and adapted it deftly (while also leaving out a number of details from the book) for television. The arc of seven episodes gives ample time to develop these compelling characters, show the tensions in their interactions, and question who would have enough animosity to cross the line and become a killer.

During this time, we identify with each of the three main female characters, even the less sympathetic Madeline grows on the viewer as we see how she is torn by her actions and understands that her marriage could be unraveling and, when her daughter announces that she is moving in with Madeline’s ex-husband Nathan (James Tupper) and his new, younger wife Bonnie (Zoē Kravitz), she begins questioning her parenting skills.

As the abuse escalates we connect with Celeste’s quiet but incongruous battle to stay with Perry, who one minute is gentle and loving and the next minute is smashing her head against a wall. While Perry maintains he is fighting demons and needs help, he also suggests that their twin sons Max and Josh (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) have no idea that he is using her as a punching bag; however, Celeste believes that the boys are not only aware but that it is affecting them.

Perhaps we empathize with Jane most of all as she fights the good fight for her son, knowing in her heart that Ziggy is a gentle soul and confirming it with testing and evaluation. Her flashbacks of the rape by a man she cannot remember as well as her chasing him along the beach after the rape are upsetting, but not any more than when she dreams about the rapist trying to break into her home and she reaches for the gun to stop him.

The series culminates with the big Trivia Night fundraiser for the children’s school where it is Audrey and Elvis Night – all attendees are dressed in various incarnations of the iconic figures Audrey Hepburn or Elvis Presley. Some of the main characters take a turn at the microphone to sing, and none is more moving and hypnotic than Bonnie. She is probably the least developed of the five female characters, but her opportunities in scenes are memorable and she brings a subtle strength to the table literally when Ed and Madeline visit with Bonnie and Nathan to discuss the raising of Abigail and handling her virginity auction. Amidst all the bickering, Bonnie is the only one who makes sense.

The most misunderstood of the five is Dern’s Renata, who comes off as the hard as nails CEO who wants Ziggy expelled from school for messing with her child, but to Dern’s credit she gives Renata a vulnerability that redeems her for the viewer, especially when she and Jane meet and try to at least come to an understanding, even after Jane has attacked her and given her a black eye.

At the Trivia Night the lies of the title start to unravel one by one. Joseph’s wife Tori (Sarah Sokolovic), who has confronted Madeline previously about her suspicions of an affair, now glares angrily at her. Celeste, who has been hiding a beachfront apartment as part of an escape plan, is confronted by Perry about it in their car, but she manages to get out and run to the party. Celeste confesses to Renata that Max is the one abusing Amabella, and Madeline overwhelmed with guilt (and more than a little drunk) runs off to the edge of the property where yellow caution tape is stretched across a dangerous staircase. Jane follows her and Madeline confesses that she had an affair.

This is when Renata seeks out Jane to let her know that she is sorry about wrongly accusing Ziggy, and then Celeste comes toward them as she is trying to escape Perry. In horror Jane stares at Perry and realizes that he is the man who raped her – and Perry recognizes Jane too. He still wants Celeste to come home with him and, when she refuses, he begins to get physical and pushes away the other women who are trying to help Celeste. Bonnie, who has followed Perry because she saw him and Celeste bickering, comes running forward after Perry has knocked the other women to the ground. As he prepares to punish Celeste, Bonnie rushes him and pushes him through the yellow tape and down the staircase, killing him.

If this seems way too coincidental, perhaps it sounds that way, but Kelley and Vallée pull it off, thanks in large part due to the cast’s incredible talent to make this moment actually work when we see it. In the end the police arrive and Detective Quinlan (Merrin Dungey), whom we have seen throughout the series conducting the investigation, doubts the story that the five women have obviously agreed upon telling – it was an accident. She suspects that they are covering up something and asks her partner, “Why lie?” Of course, that has been the context of the whole series, so ending the series with one last big lie that is far from little seems apropos.

The last scene shows the mothers and their children frolicking on the beach, all laughing and enjoying each other’s company. Gloriously adult male free, they throw their cares (and the plot’s many other loose ends) to the wind. It is a fitting final moment but the last shot is seen from the perspective of Detective Quinlan looking through a pair of binoculars watching the women on the beach, letting us know that she is still not satisfied and leaving the door open for season number two. 

There are many situations yet to be resolved, including the detective’s lingering doubts about the case. A second season will have to rely on something vastly different than just the continued murder investigation, but there are more than enough stories yet to be told for these characters.

We should hope for season number two to eventually happen, but getting this dream cast back together may be harder than reuniting the Beatles and ultimately just as unsuccessful. What a shame that would be!