The game’s out there, and it’s play or get played. That simple.
Why We’re Teaching ‘The Wire’ at Harvard
“The Wire,” which depicted inner-city Baltimore over five seasons on HBO, shows ordinary people making sense of their world. Its complex characters on both sides of the law defy simplistic moral distinctions. (…) We think it is more than just excellent television. Impressed by its treatment of complex issues, we developed a course at Harvard drawing on the show’s portrayal of fundamental sociological principles connected to urban inequality. Our seminar was designed for 30 students; four times that many showed up for the first class last week.
Of course, our undergraduate students will read rigorous academic studies of the urban job market, education and the drug war. But the HBO series does what these texts can’t. More than simply telling a gripping story, “The Wire” shows how the deep inequality in inner-city America results from the web of lost jobs, bad schools, drugs, imprisonment, and how the situation feeds on itself.
Those kinds of connections are very difficult to illustrate in academic works. Though scholars know that deindustrialization, crime and prison, and the education system are deeply intertwined, they must often give focused attention to just one subject in relative isolation, at the expense of others. With the freedom of artistic expression, “The Wire” can be more creative. It can weave together the range of forces that shape the lives of the urban poor.
{ Julius Wilson and Anmol Chaddha/Harvard College | Continue reading }
photo { Anthony Suau }
