I was invited by a friend to see a prescreening of Waiting for Superman: a documentary about the failures of America’s educational system. The movie was compelling: it was hard not to root for the five families the film followed through their trials with their respective school systems. By the end of the film, though, I wondered what it all meant.
The film describes in detail some of the problems with our schooling but offers few solutions. All I seemed to have learned was that our schools are failing, its all the fault of the teachers’ unions, and the successful teachers are the ones who can teach their students to rap. I felt a bit short-changed as there was really no epiphany in the film. Going into the movie, I was led to believe that it would show what approaches worked but there was disappointingly little of this.
Education remains a very emotional issue and there are no easy answers. Waiting for Superman gives a good effort but doesn’t delve deep enough to really do this topic justice. If you have questions about how we should be teaching our children, however, you’ll likely still have questions once you’ve seen it. I’m still waiting for Superman, myself.
See Salon for another review I agreed with.
Update: The N&O’s Craig Lindsey says the movie shows how to fix our broken schools. Maybe he saw a different film than I did.
I have not seen the movie, but I have read enough reviews and analysis to know they are completely missing the point. The problem with schools is not teacher’s unions, lack of funding, parental involvement, or any similar complaint. Those are all problems, but they are not THE problem. THE problem is the single minded focus on fill in the bubble test scores that started under Bush with No Child Left Behind and has only intensified with Obama’s administration. We are teaching kids how to take standardized tests, not how to think.
Exactly, Chris. The movie showed a quick clip of kids filling out tests and Dubya touting the testing of No Child Left Behind but there was never any mention of whether this test-oriented focus is helpful at all.
I agree that forcing teachers to focus on testing and not on learning is one of the single most counterproductive efforts. I see this as one of the worst effects caused by the politicization of our education system. Politicians like to declare they will hold people accountable and to take the approach that “we’ll just test them to death” sounds great in the stump speech but is horrible in actual practice.
I’m still trying to figure out how to get the politicians out of the classroom and leave the educating to the educators. It might just be a lost cause.