Tag Archives: culture

Well, Ed Burns, former police detective, school teacher and co-creator of the acclaimed HBO series The Wire has some illuminating things to say about education. Education is about empowerment and our current education system is simply not set up to do that right now. If we are going to pull out of our current economic malaise, we need to create new generations of entrepreneurs and critical thinkers. The passive consumer economy is gone. We live in a producer economy now. I’m just sayin’…

Ed Burns hasn’t had what you would call a traditional career path. Working for the Baltimore Police Department, then as a public school teacher, he eventually partnered with David Simon in creating The Wire, one of the most acclaimed dramatic series in television history. His acute, jaundiced eye was trained upon Charm City’s institutional failings as a metaphor for America’s and arguably was at its sharpest during season four, which delved into the dysfunction of the school system. It’s due to his take on education that the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union invited Burns to speak at its annual meeting this weekend, themed Youth Rights in Texas: Sensible School Discipline. The Chronicle recently spoke with Burns about education in the 21st century, the unabated rise of the surveillance state, and more.

Read more in the Austin Chroncile.