Filthy rich actor Matt Damon continues his quest to limit school choice for regular Americans with kids trapped in public schools. Strangely, however, Damon also continues to choose not to send any of his four children to the schools he loves so much.
Damon was in Boston last week for a screening of the documentary “Backpack Full of Cash,” reports The Boston Globe.
He narrated the film.
The left-wing thespian who starred in “The Legend of Bagger Vance” discussed the documentary after the screening with a standing-room-only audience of teachers and education activists on the campus of Wheelock College (a private school where a year of tuition, fees and room and board costs $51,325).
Public schools have been “at the forefront of our family and dinner table conversations my entire life,” Damon — who sends his own kids to private schools — told the crowd, according to the Globe.
“Teachers have been increasingly beat up and devalued for the last two decades, and ultimately we’re all going to pay for that as a society,” Damon also said.
“To see these kids not have that kind of access — how many of these kids in these schools, how many artists have we lost? How many learners have just given up because they feel like this is not for them?”
The 90-minute “Backpack Full of Cash” documentary criticizes charter schools and insists that voucher programs, online programs and other new ideas must be shunned, and that America’s public school system should instead be infused with vast amounts of taxpayer cash.
The event at which Damon spoke was especially focused on increased government funding for music and art classes at public schools.
Damon, 46, currently resides in the fancypants Los Angeles neighborhood of Pacific Palisades.
Like millions of Americans — except in the completely opposite way — Damon has claimed with a straight face that he doesn’t “have a choice” when it comes to sending his own kids to private schools.
“Sending our kids in my family to private school was a big, big, big deal. And it was a giant family discussion,” Damon told The Guardian in 2013.
“But it was a circular conversation, really, because ultimately we don’t have a choice. I mean, I pay for a private education and I’m trying to get the one that most matches the public education that I had, but that kind of progressive education no longer exists in the public system. It’s unfair.”
The actor and his wife, Luciana, have four daughters (one of whom is Damon’s stepdaughter).
Damon was a sheltered student during his academic life. He attended two public schools: Cambridge Alternative School and then the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, which is famous as the alma mater of Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Damon also attended Harvard University, but failed to graduate.
In 2011, Damon made waves when he gave a rah-rah speech at a Save Our Schools march in Washington, D.C. The thrust was that teachers are wonderful and standardized tests are really bad.
The website Celebrity Net Worth estimates that Damon has amassed a $160 million fortune making movies.
WATCH THIS FOR EXAMPLES OF THE POTENTIAL PITFALLS OF PRIVATE AND CHARTER SCHOOLS:
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