How to watch *It's a Wonderful Life* with your kids in an age of education "reform"

Many of my Shakespearean colleagues here and around the world get irritated or bored by the question "why are you writing and teaching about Shakespeare....hasn't everything that can be said been said already?"

But, generally speaking, depending on the tone used when asking, I kind of like that one.

Because it is easy to answer (even without reminding folks that no, speaking strictly as a literary historian, we really don't know everything about the distant past yet).

Simply put, great and long lasting works of art are great and long lasting because they register critical parts of the world that produced them. As the world evolves around those works of art the works of art become part of that world -- shaping it, not just representing it -- and so it is critical to be continually reading and responding to those works anew.

Those works, in short, are us. And to stop reading them is, in a sense, to stop reading or examining ourselves anew.

Stage goers, for example, could see the comedy (the genre of the play) in the anti-semitism of The Merchant of Venice before the holocaust. It is, quite distinctly, a different play today.

I am reminded of this not by watching any Shakespeare (it is Saturday, something of a day off), but by scanning the TV schedules for upcoming repeats of Frank Capra's *It's a Wonderful Life.*

Like many, watching this year after year is something of a family tradition for us. Alas, too, for my kids, it is an occupational hazard for me that when I watch films with my kids I am also teaching those films.

Here is how I plan to teach *It's a Wonderful Life* this year in the hopes of having them see the "classic" film -- and thus their world -- anew.

I plan to stop the film at the point where George Bailey -- having lost his funds (via Uncle Billy) from work -- is at home in a rather desparate mindset. He is frustrated and scared by the manipulations of those who would only accumulate wealth, who see that as a value in and of itself.

But rather than direct his frustrations at their proper source (Mr. Potter and the banking system), he lambasts both his wife and his children who are happily preparing for a family gathering. The figure he scapegoats, in particular, however, is his daughter's (Zuzu of the petals) teacher (Mrs. Welch). Mrs. Welch (wonderfully, Capra gives this character we never actually see a name -- unlike Charles Schulz in Peanuts) has called the Bailey home after her work day to see how Zuzu is doing (she has caught a minor cold) and George lashes out at her in misguided anger.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_xh0xdBO94

His wife is horrified.

Mr. Welch, the teacher's husband, is enraged.

Later, of course, the husband will run in to George at Martini's bar and punch him ("My mouth's bleeding, my mouth's bleeding!" being, pointedly, the first moment George realizes it is, indeed, a wonderful life). The dust-up will lead to a bit of drunken driving and a suicide attempt.

But, again, I plan to stop the film at the phone conversation with Mrs. Welch this year.

I plan to do so because, culturally speaking, this is where the country and the state is at, stopped in fit of fury and idiocy called education reform, and I want my kids to ponder that. Perhaps I will even give them a bubble test to see if they get the point.

As a country and as a nation we have decided -- like a George Bailey -- to direct our anger and frustration at public school teachers who are doing fine, who are, in fact, reaching out to families still despite being treated so poorly.

The film, my kids know, ends with George getting the message that the world would be utterly different without him.

This year, though, I want them to see  that the film -- and the world -- will be utterly different if we stay where we are now: screaming at Mrs. Welch because we can't find the money we lost building houses.