School of Thought: 12 Education Activists for 2012

Matt Damon: The Mama’s Boy

Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

When Academy Award winners, especially ones who have made a killing playing action-heroes, talk about public policy issues, people tend to pay attention. Damon is using his star power to help his mother, who teaches early-childhood education at Boston’s Lesley University, protest many of today’s education reform initiatives. He made news last summer when he appeared with her at an anti-No Child Left Behind rally in Washington and talked about how the law has made teachers feel so beaten down (surveys show that’s not the case) and how underpaid they are (teacher compensation is a complicated issue that doesn’t lend itself to blanket statements.) The video of Damon losing his cool at the rally with a reporter from Reason.tv — who didn’t know what she was talking about either — quickly went viral. Damon and his mom, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, made headlines again this month when they declined to accept an award from the National Education Association because its president, Dennis Van Roekel, had the temerity to coauthor an op-ed with Teach For America founder (and 11 for ’11 activist) Wendy Kopp about improving teacher quality. In a letter to Van Roekel, Carlsson-Paige decried his “collaboration” with Kopp, and anti-TFA activists lapped it up. So while much of the education world wants more collaboration and less vitriol, Damon seems to be going the other way with his educational Bourne Ultimatums.

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