Utter heartbreak and distress are the only words to describe the inner turmoil experienced while watching the eye-opening educational documentary Waiting for Superman. Rolling out was one of the few media outlets invited to attend the advance screening of this phenomenal film shown at ArcLight Hollywood’s theater. Created by Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, the man behind the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting places a microscope over nation’s school system, and what we see is unsettling.
Having had the pleasure of being an English teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District, this writer witnessed firsthand the perils faced by educators and families in poor neighborhoods. From apathetic teachers to unmotivated students, the education system is not progressive. Tack on crime, financial woes and a dated school curriculum; it equals a recipe for disaster.
Waiting for Superman takes you on a journey through several school districts: both failing and succeeding. Students are used as case studies and the impossible process their parents face when seeking a better education for them are chronicled. If you are under the impression that these problems happen only in the ghetto, think again.
Studies from schools all over the country confirm that even students who live in suburban and middle class areas are undereducated, leaving them unequipped to compete in the global marketplace. Our dire education situation spans farther than you could ever imagine and if we don’t figure something out soon, we are in big trouble. But there is hope.
Social activists and educators Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee, David Levin and Mike Feinberg, are this era’s ‘supermen.’ They’re on the frontline fighting for our children’s futures. Canada, who has been a guest on “Oprah,” has demonstrated amazing progress with his Harlem Children’s Zone “pipeline” learning process that has been heralded by President Obama, as “a miracle.” Obama plans to use this system to revamp schools across the country. Michelle Rhee, the newly appointed chancellor of education in Washington D.C., has been deemed a nuisance by many around the district, but her cutthroat tactics, like firing hundreds of principals and school staff, and hard-nosed actions have been successful. Levin and Feinberg, once inner city school instructors, were frustrated with the struggles that came with teaching students who were classified as ‘left behind.’ They designed the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and have opened 82 schools around the nation
Waiting is riveting and will open your eyes to a national epidemic that doesn’t receive the attention it deserves. –marqueta smith
