Waiting for 'Superman'

Director Davis Guggenheim waited for Superman as a child, because children like the hope that somebody will come and rescue them and the world. I knocked the U.S. Education system documentary "Waiting for Superman" down two stars for two reasons. One is that they just didn't give me enough hope.

The other main failing of this film, as other reviewers have pointed out, is that he didn't cover all of the many, many reasons for an under-performing education system. Well, he kind of did, but not very clearly. He spent more time on poor teachers and the unions, and many people seem to have come out of thinking that's all he talked about. Contrary to popular reviews, he did make other points. They were just too subtle. I will agree though that he was too heavy-handed with the American Federation of Teachers.

The primary focus of the film is five children each from different parts of the country and each desperate to get into a better school. I think he padded the documentary a bit too much with their situations, and a few too many tear-jerking moments. But when Guggenheim presented me with facts, knowledge and history, "Waiting for Superman" became both informative and emotionally-resonating. And yes, that's what a good documentary is, and that's why it gets 8 stars.

Perhaps "Waiting for Superman" should have been more well-rounded, but I don't think you can present more sides in just a two-hour film. And most important, the sides he did present are accurate, informative, entertaining and well presented. I wish I saw Superman at the end instead of just tears, but I still recommend it.

This movie flows in the same vein as the Oprah Winfrey Show, Fox news, CNN, and McDonald's. It's tasty, yet difficult to digest.

There are a few themes strung throughout this noose of a movie. One major theme is: win the lottery and you'll succeed. There are two lotteries in Waiting for Superman. One is the lottery that is played out in the gymnasiums of the schools, with numbered ping-pong balls and kids who make your heart ache. The other lottery is 500 billion dollars, the $$$ of the school system in America.

For students in this movie "win the lottery and you'll succeed" means they have to be lucky, or else the public school system will fail them. This may change though, as superman is on his way. Superman is not in the guise of an administrator or a teacher. Superman is a politician (and his sidekick an entrepreneur). The business of education is a lottery. Billions of dollars are to be had by superman if he and his sidekick can fix the lottery. Students must rely on luck concerning their lottery; yet, superman can supersede luck because he and his partner have a lot of money. But they want more.

The definition of "fix" is different for politicians and businessmen than for regular people. For most, fixing the education system means making it better for the majority of people involved. For superman and his partner, fixing the lottery means using his influence and wealth to enable a tiny percentage of the population to suck money from the education system. If superman fixes the lottery, he is much more likely to 'win' the cash that comes from the business of education in America.

There are many problems with education in North America. Inviting businessmen into the sphere of education in such a manner is not a path to improvement of the majority.

I may not be a teacher, but both my parents were, and I grew up going to public school and got many views of the educational system as a whole. I'm really surprised to see that some teachers went to this and were actually offended by what it offered.

This movie did not set out to blame the issues of this country's education on the teachers. It depicts the issues with the SYSTEM. It's a system that protects the teachers' needs over the students in some cases. We all are aware that teachers don't get paid very well, but there are many upsides to a career as a teacher, and some go into this field because they are gifted, but just as many aren't.

What this film attempted to say (in my opinion, successfully) is that we must put the child's needs above all. The system is BROKEN, and that's all the director wanted to say. Through the establishment of the abuses of the unions, the communication of the compelling stats, and the following of just a few examples of a larger populace of suffering students and their families, the director did a BEAUTIFUL job of bringing issues to the surface.

Teachers who are talented, work very hard, and are committed to pushing students and not cruising through should not take offense to this film. However, there are plenty of teachers out there who should find this film threatening, just as many departments of education should, because on the whole, American schools are failing, and we have a lot of work to do.

Because there are educators who are threatened by the message of this film, I say that is what makes it a success. What effective documentary doesn't shake up the system and strike fear in those whose system it threatens? I'm ready for more!!!

This stirring documentary sends out shock-waves of injustice and even a bit of a sense of futility when it explores the state of America's public schools. Interviews with education specialists, school superintendents and even Bill Gates add up to an impressive assembly of informed adults who know what the problem is, but haven't figured out a way to fix it on a large scale.

Washington, D.C. schools superintendent Michelle Rhee says it well when she summarizes the basic problem: "Public schools fail when children's education becomes about the adults." The adults who fail these children are not limited to public officials and government bureaucrats, though; a large portion of the blame is reserved for ineffective teachers and the teachers' unions who ensure that those teachers receive tenure and cannot be removed from schools. The documentary focuses on five public school children who represent inner-city kids with broken families and day-to-day financial struggles (except for a student of middle-class parents in the Silicon Valley). With that one exception, all are enrolled in failing public elementary schools and have little chance of graduating high school if they move on to the assigned secondary schools in their districts. The tear-jerking climax sees each of the kids attending a lottery drawing for limited spaces at public charter schools and rare, effective public schools within or outside of their district. Witnessing the academic chances for these kids being decided by such a random, impersonal process is heart-breaking and calls into question the very nature of American values like "Protestant work ethic," "equality," "freedom" and "the ability to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps" and make the future brighter.

The language is limited to a few expletives. The film deals with a tangled web of adult issues that make a child's education more difficult, which probably puts it outside the spectrum of interest for most kids under age 12. However, when watched with parents, it could create some valuable family discussions on the importance of education and may even activate a family to become advocates for change. We award "Waiting for Superman" the Dove Family-Approved Seal for audiences over age 12 and praise the filmmakers for presenting many teachable moments.

Waiting for Superman does one thing right above all else: it gets a conversation going. Then something else has to matter, which is how much the people who get to talking really know about the education system in America, which has been making students fall behind compared to others throughout the world (i.e. USA ranks 25th among students for math and reading, albeit we're #1 when it comes to confidence! yey we're #1!) David Guggenheim's documentary shifts between personal stories of (mostly) inner-city kids whose parents want their kids to do well but are doubtful for good reason about whether their kids will get the fair chance, and try ultimately to get them into charter-school systems that rely on a lottery system of picking who gets in and who doesn't.

This makes up the emotional core of the picture, and it's a good one. Where things get both interesting and tricky is when Guggenheim gets into the main issue at hand: what's wrong with our countries schools, especially in inner-city/urban ones like in Harlem and DC where there are "Drop-Out Factories" created in part by students in bad neighborhoods but more-so by teachers who just don't give a good-damn about teaching. Guggenheim rails against the teacher union's seemingly monolithic nature when it comes to sacking bad teachers (we learn about the "Lemon Dance" system done with teachers who are tenured who are just bad period). Meanwhile he paints a very rosy picture of the Charter/private schools, and why not? They show how the teachers do give a damn about the students, and the better attention paid - and as we see teaching is a kind of art form that one can master - the better the students.

But doing a little research before or after the film shows that Guggenheim, for all of his good (and they are good) intentions, omits or shallowly covers certain things, such as the Kipp charter schools (it's mentioned only briefly in the doc but 1 out of 5 Charter schools really work best at what they do, and not mentioned is how kids that don't keep up in the first couple of years just get kicked out, period), and about the nature of public school teachers. The call for reform is not unwarranted, and I became saddened by the DC Chancellor's idea of giving double to teachers who don't take tenure being shot down, not even addressed, by the NEA. At the same time that Guggenheim gives some strong attention to the flailing public school/public-school-union system, and to how good though competitive Kipp and schools like it are, little attention is paid to what the urban/inner-city neighborhoods are really like that kids like this are in. I question the statement a person interviewed makes about the school system negatively affecting the neighborhoods more than the other way around. To me it would appear to be a vicious cycle where both sides need reform for true change.

But Waiting for Superman, a film meant to rile up the audience into attention like Guggenheim's previous doc An Inconvenient Truth, is useful as a way to get people who have no idea what's going on what is going on, at least the cliff-notes version of it. It isn't the digging-deepest look at the subject, yet I did feel moved by how the people trying to get by with their kids are good people wanting the best for their kids. Probably the big irony that Guggenheim does, after giving so much positive hype for how charter schools work (i.e. 96% of students go on to college who attend), is showing the lottery system as the climax, and how very few spots there are in the schools. The doc could go even further with being an activist-style position trying to affect change, or give clearer facts; there's a lot of cute-quirky animation to bring along the information, though the interviewees selected are kind of cherry-picked for its ultimate effect.

It is, in short, a good documentary but not quite a great one, and will be a big upper or a big downer depending on who you are in the audience, if you have kids, if you're a teacher, or if you're in the "rubber room" in one of the NYC schools.