The American Dream In The Wire

Title The Wire is one of the rarest yet most intriguing shows I have ever seen. It captures real life issues that many people tend to push to the side. Ed Burns and David Simon, creators of The Wire, cover a wide area of problems that vary from police institutions, the school system, politics and the corner. No matter which side an individual is on or which institution they are involved with, only one side can overcome the other. Many people believe that the American dream is one hundred percent attainable and obtaining that dream means that they have overcome everything else. This dream that many people want is just a farce in reality. The people do not overcome the institutions, the institutions overcome the people. One of the most corrupt
systems in this season is the school system which leads to the downfall of some main characters. It is more convenient for the system to take the easy way out and The Wire shows every aspect of this. David Simon and Ed Burns intend to represent the school system in this light in order to uncover the truth behind those closed doors, which include people who are ruining the children through social promotion, and few people who want to help. Social promotion is amongst one of the biggest debatable topics in The Wire Season Four. It is simply the act of promoting a student despite their bad grades in order to keep them with their age group and peers. It might seem as if it is such a small topic, but it impacts many students in positive and negative ways. According to Simon and Burns in The Corner, "There can be no right decision here, nothing that can later be justified to anyone who actually cares why Johnny can 't read--not that there 's much hue and cry from any quarter" (282). This emphasizes the fact that the system and idea of social promotion has corrupted the teachers. They no longer focus on actually teaching material; they plan on teaching tests and passing any student with the slightest ability shown. This also affects the students who begin to show effort and then realize it is not needed, because no matter what the circumstances are they will be moving on into the next grade. Instead of motivating students, the school system is taking away any incentives they have left to accomplish any goals. One of the negative results from social promotion was clearly shown in the plot line of Duquan, one of the main characters. Out of the four main boys in The Wire, Duquan suffers the harshest conditions. He has an unstable family and is extremely poor, but rather intelligent. Duquan never had any positive role models in his life; he is consistently surrounded by bad influences. Duquan keeps to himself unlike the other corner boys in The Wire. The only person Duquan is able to confide in is Mr. Prez, his middle school teacher. Mr. Prez is one of the few teachers who do not care about standardized tests. These few teachers left want to improve the children and make sure they leave the classroom with knowledge. Despite Mr. Prez 's efforts, everything he did for Duquan ended up being worthless. Mr. Prez was Duquan’s friend, teacher and mentor, but being socially promoted scared Duquan and he headed to the corner instead. Furthermore, social promotion was something that Duquan did not expect. Duquan states, "Did I do something wrong? I ain 't acted up or nothing." Duquan, along with some of the other children are taken off guard by such changes, therefore they back out last minute and turn to other alternatives. As Mr. Prez attempts to plea Duquan’s case, the assistant principal makes it clear how it has to be handled, "The kids in this school aren 't yours, you do your peace with them and you let them go because there will be plenty more coming up behind Duquan and they 're going to need your help too." This scene in The Wire accentuates the mentality of the assistant principal and many other teachers in the system. These are simply children that come and go; no extra attachment to them is needed. Mr. Prez is one of the few that sees the harm in pushing children to the next level when they are not ready to do so. Simon and Burns show the relationship this way because they are exposing the system for its true colors. They present all the information in hopes that someone will react. Along with Duquan, another character named Sherrod felt the first hand effects of being socially promoted.
Considering Sherrod was not going to school to begin with, it made his process more difficult. Sherrod’s guardian is perplexed at the idea of promoting a student who has not even finished third grade level material. The assistant principal states, “Social promotion; we don’t have the resources to repeat grade levels and we feel to place the older children in the younger classes is unfair to teachers who are responsible for maintaining order.” The students should be the main priority in this scenario, but instead the faculty is more concerned with maintaining order and spending money they do not have. As a result of all this, Sherrod felt uncomfortable in the situation and ended up skipping class constantly. He ended up where they all go when they feel helpless, the
corner. Unlike the negative effects of social promotion, there was one good outcome of it in The Wire.
A new grant-funded program was put into place, which took the misbehaved kids and put them all together in a corner class. These kids do not listen to any rules, but once they realized there was no way out of the class, some began to behave. The whole point of the class is to get in the minds of the corner kids. These are the few teachers left that care about the students. Simon and Burns show the different sides of social promotion because the corner class is a reaction to the negative results of the corrupt system. Bunny Colvin, one of the teachers in this program states, "But it 's not about you or us or the test or the system. It 's what they expect of themselves. I mean every single one of them know they headed back to the corners...We pretend to teach them; they pretend to learn. Where they end up? Same damn corners." Bunny makes it clear that the system is just fooling itself. These children grow up in homes so devastating, therefore they take their bad behaviors to the next institution they are in. It takes certain devoted people to try and help them out of this never-ending
cycle. The Wire views society for exactly what it is, all about the systems. It focuses on the main issues affecting society in order to spark a reaction in people watching. One of the biggest comparisons made throughout the season is between the school institution and the effects it has on the students and teachers. The school system has corrupted teachers by taking away their ability to actually teach material. They have learned that teaching is pointless and it is better to focus on the state tests. Students have no motivation to be in a classroom in which nothing valuable is being taught. Amongst all those dilemmas, social promotion is the next step to ruining a child 's school experience. First hand problems are seen in Duquan and Sherrods case, in which they turned to the corner for a sense of familiarity. David Simon and Ed Burns affirm how these characters are prisoners of an institution and it takes effort to make a change. That is the reason they showed the two different aspects of social promotion and it is about time that a system that works efficiently is put into place.

Works Cited
Simon, David and Edward Burns. "Spring." The Corner. Eds. David Simon and Edward Burns. New York: Broadway, 1997. Print. 276-285.
The Wire: The Complete Fourth Season. Created by David Simon and Ed Burns. HBO, 2009. DVD.