I seem to have had documentaries in my system lately. Not long ago, I watched another one from last year to receive wide critical acclaim, Waiting for Superman. This film, directed by the same man who directed An Inconvenient Truth, takes on the public school system in America.Though some of the film shows the poor results of that system, more time is given to a half dozen charter schools with highly successful programs that would seem to illustrate a model that works... but that, according to the film, can't be implemented in the system at large due to bureaucracy. We're also shown a few examples of administrators who tried to change things from within the system, only to be slapped down.
To further add to the discouragement, the film tracks several families as they try to win the "lottery" to get their children into one of these charter schools. The odds are quite stacked against them, and the story does not end happily for most.
From one perspective, these human faces put on the problem at issue could make this documentary seem superior to An Inconvenient Truth. From my perspective, a little more time could have been spent articulating the case, particularly showing us more of what exactly these "success story schools" were doing differently. So I'd have to say that this documentary comes out a little weaker in the wash.
Still, it's a worthy film highlighting a very serious and real problem. I rate it a B-.
1 comment:
Yeah, we had about a 20% chance (based on the apparent number of applicants) of getting B into a charter school for kindergarten. They've never called a lottery number higher than 70 to offer a space, and most years they stop in the 50's somewhere. Our lottery number was 141.
It really is just ridiculous. Between No Child Left Behind, a miserable failure of a system from any perspective or way of reckoning it, the crushing bureaucracy of the system as a whole, and the woeful lack of funding and resources available to the schools in the first place, I really have to wonder how anyone thinks we will continue to be a force on a global scale, unless it is merely on the strength of our military.
It is simply ridiculous that our education system seems to be given the lowest priority possible. The whole idea is insane to me.
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