by Kim Barker
First published 1998
Kim Barker works within the maze of public broadcasting, where good intentions collide with institutional reality. She believes educational television can transform how children learn, but the system has other priorities. Budget meetings drain energy from creative vision. Administrators speak in acronyms while teachers beg for programs that actually reach their students. Barker documents pilot programs, writes reports that disappear into filing cabinets, and watches promising initiatives die in committee. Her colleagues range from passionate educators to career bureaucrats who view programming as line items. The plan she evaluates represents months of work by dedicated people, yet implementation seems impossible. Barker must decide whether to recommend changes that might save the project or acknowledge that some systems resist reform from within.
Genres: politics, education, non-fiction, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: bureaucracy, institutional-reform
118 pages · Hardcover · Community Agency for Social Enquiry