Now we're watching a new show on NBC called "School Pride". It's just like the "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition", but with - you guessed it: schools.
I'm all for stuff like this, really - I always loved the "EM:HE" stuff, especially at first. After a while it kinda became a parody of itself - you could tell what everyone was going to say and do, and exactly when someone was gonna start crying. It just became very plastic, and seemed very forced.
I was afraid this was going to be like that, and, to a certain extent, it was - right down to the camera angles and the "Surprise, we're sending you all away for 10 days while we make your school over" speech.
Tonight's episode was about Enterprise Middle School (the Eagles) in Compton, CA, a really rough suburb of Los Angeles. This school was so incredibly run down it's not even funny. There were literally roaches and rats running around the place, ceiling tiles falling out everywhere, no school supplies, holes in the football field, etc.
The first (and the biggest) thing that I saw that made this show different from the other one was that they really were trying to improve the lives and situations of these kids, and trying to solve problems as to how things got this bad in the first place. In this case, they actually sent a guy in to talk to the principal of the school. He asked the principal how he could let things get so bad, and where the supplies were. They actually had a bunch of supplies, but wouldn't let go of them. The guy from the show told him flat out that if he wouldn't give the supplies out, he may as well not even have them. He accosted the principal about some other stuff, but I didn't catch that - we had to go in to check the croutons! :-) I do know that at the end of the episode it was stated that the principal had been replaced! Wow!
The show even sent another dude to interview The Governator himself - Ah-nuld! They asked him a bunch of the same kind of questions - who's fault it is about the state of schools, and what can they do about it. Arnie admitted that part of the problem was government! He even came down later on and gave a speech (containing the requisite references to his Hollywood past: the "I'm here to pump you up", and "I'll be back!", which I'm sure went right over the heads of all those middle schoolers, but I guess he had to do it for the teevee!)
Another thing that I liked was that, unlike the families on "EM:HE", who have sometimes gone on to lose their new houses because they couldn't afford the mortgages and upkeep, everything for the schools was donated by sponsors, free of charge. Of course, the company's logos were prominently displayed and mentioned everywhere. Hey, as long as it's going to a good cause, I don't mind that the science and computer lab was brought to you by Microsoft!
All in all, it looked like a decent show, and, like I said, the kids seemed to come out on top. At the end of episode, they said that test scores were up 118 points, and they gave several examples of kids who had previously been struggling, but had gone on to attend really good magnet schools because of the improved conditions spurring on better education.
Anyway, I better go grab those croutons out of the oven. Today's stroke is for the Eagles of Enterprise Middle School - green. GO EAGLES!
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