WAITING FOR SUPERMAN
***
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Principal cast: Parents, children and teachers
Country: USA
Classification: PG
Runtime: 112 mins.
Australian release date: 24 March 2011
This is the most disconcerting documentary you will see all year! Well, it is up there with recent docos about climate change, political deception and all the other miserable realities of life. Davis Guggenheim, who scared the pants off non sceptics with his Academy Award winning An Inconvenient Truth, has come forward with a deeply personal observation of the current state of public education in the USA with Waiting For Superman. The camera follows five young first to eight graders and their parents as the adults attempt to get their children into decent schools. In a country where, since 1971, reading and maths levels have flat-lined and where most schools throughout most states are averaging 20-35% performance levels, it comes as no surprise.
The drop-out numbers are astounding and many kids roam the streets with virtually no vested interest in living, let alone learning. Apparently, school dropouts account for 68% of USA prison inmates. No surprise there, either. The problem used to be attributed to troubled upbringings but the reality is that the poor education usually found on offer in poorer districts is the main contributor to the alarming statistics.
Guggenheim discovered this when he was driving his kids to their expensive private school one day, knowing they would have a decent education. However, as he drove past the more troubled areas, where kids were being bundled off to low-grade education facilities, he was struck with questions he could not answer. He wondered what it would be like for those families who had no choice but to enrol their kids into a system that was set up for failure.
The story follows the five families and there are some heartbreaking interviews with both the kids and their parents. Guggenheim fills the film with facts and figures that build a compelling case for why reform should happen. After all, knowledge is power and, as an observer, you can’t help but feel you are watching a system that is as archaic as colonialism, which denies people their right to a decent education and thus keeps them under control. Interviews with passionate teachers, in particular Geoffrey Canada (who created the Harlem Children’s Zone, an area of 97 square blocks where high school and college graduation rates have skyrocketed dramatically), reveal successful strategies that have been ignored by both unions and state and federal governments. Many educators claim that re-structuring the system was necessary to get students to learn properly. In one telling scene, a teacher uses rap music to get her students to learn the times table, supporting a theory that if you apply the right method, you’ll get the right result. The final scenes are harrowing as you watch the kids being selected for decent schools by a lottery system. It reminded me of the ballot system for conscription in the Vietnam War. In this case, however, you would want your number to be drawn.
This is an on-going problem in the USA and it resonated this week when there was a quote in a Sydney newspaper, from an Ohio woman, who was sentenced to ten days’ jail for falsifying residency records in order to get her children into a better school district. She said, “It’s overwhelming. I’m exhausted. I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them.” Let’s hope there are a few super-persons out there who can make the necessary changes before it is too late if, indeed, it isn’t already!
Principal cast: Parents, children and teachers
Country: USA
Classification: PG
Runtime: 112 mins.
Australian release date: 24 March 2011
This is the most disconcerting documentary you will see all year! Well, it is up there with recent docos about climate change, political deception and all the other miserable realities of life. Davis Guggenheim, who scared the pants off non sceptics with his Academy Award winning An Inconvenient Truth, has come forward with a deeply personal observation of the current state of public education in the USA with Waiting For Superman. The camera follows five young first to eight graders and their parents as the adults attempt to get their children into decent schools. In a country where, since 1971, reading and maths levels have flat-lined and where most schools throughout most states are averaging 20-35% performance levels, it comes as no surprise.
The drop-out numbers are astounding and many kids roam the streets with virtually no vested interest in living, let alone learning. Apparently, school dropouts account for 68% of USA prison inmates. No surprise there, either. The problem used to be attributed to troubled upbringings but the reality is that the poor education usually found on offer in poorer districts is the main contributor to the alarming statistics.
Guggenheim discovered this when he was driving his kids to their expensive private school one day, knowing they would have a decent education. However, as he drove past the more troubled areas, where kids were being bundled off to low-grade education facilities, he was struck with questions he could not answer. He wondered what it would be like for those families who had no choice but to enrol their kids into a system that was set up for failure.
The story follows the five families and there are some heartbreaking interviews with both the kids and their parents. Guggenheim fills the film with facts and figures that build a compelling case for why reform should happen. After all, knowledge is power and, as an observer, you can’t help but feel you are watching a system that is as archaic as colonialism, which denies people their right to a decent education and thus keeps them under control. Interviews with passionate teachers, in particular Geoffrey Canada (who created the Harlem Children’s Zone, an area of 97 square blocks where high school and college graduation rates have skyrocketed dramatically), reveal successful strategies that have been ignored by both unions and state and federal governments. Many educators claim that re-structuring the system was necessary to get students to learn properly. In one telling scene, a teacher uses rap music to get her students to learn the times table, supporting a theory that if you apply the right method, you’ll get the right result. The final scenes are harrowing as you watch the kids being selected for decent schools by a lottery system. It reminded me of the ballot system for conscription in the Vietnam War. In this case, however, you would want your number to be drawn.
This is an on-going problem in the USA and it resonated this week when there was a quote in a Sydney newspaper, from an Ohio woman, who was sentenced to ten days’ jail for falsifying residency records in order to get her children into a better school district. She said, “It’s overwhelming. I’m exhausted. I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them.” Let’s hope there are a few super-persons out there who can make the necessary changes before it is too late if, indeed, it isn’t already!