"Waiting for Superman"

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Thursday that the documentary "Waiting for Superman" by filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, about US public schools and families' hope for a better future for their children, has been short-listed for an Oscar along with 14 other movies - the 5 nominees will only be known in late January. I found that movie heart-breaking when I saw it a few weeks ago and am thrilled that it is receiving the attention it deserves.

Many media outlets have written reviews about the movie: you can read the take of The Economist here ("For America’s children the education system is often literally a lottery"; "the film rightly identifies [the teachers' unions] as a big chunk of kryptonite standing in the way of a dramatic rescue for the children of America"; "The teachers’ unions have resolutely opposed efforts to pay good teachers more than mediocre ones, to fire the worst performers, and to shut down schools that consistently fail to deliver a decent education.") The New York Times wrote about the movie here. Time has also reviewed the movie there.

While the movie portrayed the teachers' unions as clear villains, bad teachers came a close second. One thing that bothered me was their depiction as - basically - inherently incompetent, hiding their true colors for a short few (two?) years until they got tenure and then could drop the cloth with an evil grin of victory: "you're stuck with me forever now!"

I thought the movie completely glossed over the burnout and the discouragement that come, for instance, from having to teach kids that are not prepared for their grade level and knowing they are doomed. Of course a two-hour documentary can't give all the nuances, and it did its job of raising the alarm very well (people in the audience gasped many times as we all watched, and some cried too at the end when the lotteries fail to give most of the kids profiled in the movie the break they were so desperately waiting for).

New York Times editorials about the movie include: "Waiting for Superman and the Education Debate", by Brent Staples, who says good things about the movie but also (correctly) deplores its lack of nuance, and "Waiting for Somebody" by Gail Collins, who shares my shock at the wildly inappropriate circus-like hoopla surrounding the lottery drawings (Collins writes: "I had no idea you selected your kids with a piece of performance art that makes the losers go home feeling like they’re on a Train to Failure at age 6. You can do better. Use the postal system.")

Many things have changed since the movie was made: New York's "rubber rooms" (where teachers wait, sometimes for months, with full pay while disciplinary cases against them are pending) have closed; DC teachers accepted merit pay in the spring but the polarizing chancellor, Michelle Rhee, recently resigned (also see this article), as did the chancellor of the NY school system Joel Klein.

As much as I appreciate Rhee's and Klein's efforts to improve the system, I found the "manifesto" they co-authored in the Washington Post with other education leaders simplistic and ill-advised, and applaud the scathing response entitled "Manifesto should be resignation letter" penned by a guest contributor, who criticizes their suggestions point by point. (One-line summary: it's a bit easy to put all the blame on the teachers and to advocate more testing.) The president of the American Federation of Teachers, who also appears in "Waiting for Superman", authored her own response in the Washington Post mid-October: "Don't scapegoat America's teachers."

But beyond the supersize personalities of highly accomplished individuals answering each other via the media, the fact remains that kids such as the ones profiled in the movie face a bleak future that is not of their own doing. The movie website offers some ideas for people who wonder how to get involved, and provides a list of organizations making a difference.

Comments

[Aurelie C. Thiele]

I'm reposting here a comment that was left about this post elsewhere on the Web.

"I do not want to see this movie because it blames teachers, but I have heard there is a better movie called "Race to Nowhere" which has not gotten as much attention. I think that we need to improve public schools, not privatize them, or shut them down. All students deserve an equal opportunity at a quality education." -Angie Villa

Thanks for the movie recommendation, Angie! For those of you who are interested, here is the link to the movie website: http://www.racetonowhere.com/

[Aurelie C. Thiele]

Interesting blog post from The Atlantic, published a few days ago: "Public School Chic: How Saving American Education Became Cool" http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/11/public-school-chic-how-saving-american-education-became-cool/66566/

[Ilya Kipnis]

What I'd really like to know is this: when is enough enough? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. In my opinion, the biggest failure of our schooling system isn't that our bottom-feeders stink. The bottom of the barrel will always be the bottom of the barrel, for whatever reason. Broken home, abusive parents, neglecting classwork, and the list can go on for several thousand more words. I don't believe it's teachers' jobs to be babysitters and motivators.

I believe teachers' jobs is to, well, *teach*. But I also believe you can only teach those who wish to learn. To that extent, as James Simons said, our top 10% aren't as good as the rest of the world's top 10%. In my opinion, we need to focus on the kids that *want* to learn math and science and engineering and technology, not the ones that "without an education, are at risk of falling through the cracks". That might be the job of a social worker, or a psychologist, but not a teacher.

I say the idea that everyone deserves a chance is what draws resources away from those who "merit" the chance. If someone is having trouble picking up elementary arithmetic, why exactly are we wishing to force algebra, trigonometry, and eventually calculus into their skull? In my opinion, that's a blatant waste of taxpayer money since they will most likely never use that math again. What we need to instill is a sense of "those that wish to learn will be taught. Those that stink will be weeded out." The whole "everyone is a winner" idea just doesn't sit well with me, especially because given the current times, if some of the more educated people graduating with bachelor's degrees from respectable universities, with master's and PhDs on top of that are having difficulty finding work, why are we concentrating on the masses that will not use this?

Let's make sure that the taxpayer money we spend is well-spent, and in my opinion, it is not well spent teaching those who do not wish to learn.