Blackboards

I'm watching Blackboards (or Takhté siah in its original language), a 2000 film by Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf, in which travelling Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

Somehow the sight of these men, dressed much the same as teachers I have known, scurrying around the rocks and the sand searching for someone, anyone, to pay them to educate their children seems not so very far from where I walk myself.



Please, let me teach your children/ let me teach you. Education is valuable. Reading is invaluable. Can't you see that?
I am begging you simply to let me teach.

It's a sad, senseless little film in the way that the destruction of war is sad and senseless.
As I watched it, I thought, "Hey - at least the American Education System doesn't have to deal with parents not valuing education and teachers getting shot at..."

Uh, yeah.
Scratch that thought.

Ah, the passion of these educators in the movie. Now there's something I relate to very strongly. They were such kind, well-meaning men. In the end they pretty much taught for free. I'd like to say a lot more about the end, but that would spoil it for you.