So, I finally saw the film Waiting for Superman. First of all, as a film it is wonderful, in the sense that it is well shot, well told, and pulls at your heart strings. As polemic, it works, but only if you don't question the most basic assumptions of the movie.
Assumptions:
1. No Child Left Behind--or at least its goal to bring all children to "proficient" levels in math and reading--is the goal we should be shooting for. Closing the "achievement gap" in this context is the be all and end all of goals for public education. Really? How about empowering children to think? How about teaching them the real story of the history of the US, how our system really works and providing them with the tools to change their own communities? Admittedly, these goals are harder to "measure," but, more to the point, empowering poor black and brown children to take charge of their own lives is not in the interest of those who benefit at their expense.
2. Teachers unions are evil incarnate. The director/narrator is careful to say often how wonderful teachers are and how important a great teacher can be in the success of a child. Sure, who in their right mind would argue with that? But the way he describes the purpose of tenure is simplistic and misleading. Tenure ought to provide a teacher--just like a professor--intellectual freedom. Unions he points out historically came about for teachers as a way to professionalize teaching, but the implication is that the need for unions to do this are over. Therefore (faulty logic), they are standing in the way of reform in public education. If only we could get rid of every "bad" teacher, all would be well in public schools. But who gets to decide what a "good" teacher is? This takes me back to Assumption #1. Good teachers, according to this film's thesis, are the ones who can teach children to perform well on standardized tests. Well, let's aim high, why don't we!
3. Poverty and persistent institutional racism have nothing to do with craptastic public schools, apparently. In fact, at one point in the film, the director lobs this little bomb: "For years, we have assumed that poor neighborhoods equal poor schools, but what if poor schools are actually creating poor neighborhoods?" Okay, so this argument assumes that neighborhoods and schools are separate entities that act upon each other but are, in and of themselves, separate. Even though, all but one of the children he follows is poor, the narrator never really addresses this. He never really talks about all of the factors affecting children--and teachers--in schools. He sticks to his thesis that unions keep "bad" teachers in schools. We all know that "bad" schools have a larger proportion of bad teachers than "good" schools. Therefore, public schools cannot be reformed. The only answer: something else.
4. Private schools and charter schools are the only places where true reform and stellar teaching can go on. The film starts with the director pointing out that he has opted to take his children to a private school because the public school in his neighborhood is "failing" (i.e., students there are not "proficient" under NCLB). He feels guilty and says, unfortunately, poor parents don't have this choice. Enter, the charter school hunt for a handful of children he follows in their pursuit to get into a charter school. No doubt, the children he follows--with the exception of the girl who lives near Stanford U--are faced with really bad schools. They are overcrowded, unresponsive to parents, under-resourced, and in some of the most depressed parts of their cities. No doubt, these children deserve SO MUCH better. But they, and their parents, deserve better in every aspect of their lives, including schools. So, the film argues, let's pull what resources there are, and put them into charters, where these families have to go through the pride-swallowing siege of hoping they get one of the few open slots through a lottery. This part of the movie was painful and manipulative. It is simply inhumane to make parents and their children go through this. THEREFORE, let's fund more charter schools so that there are more slots.
5. Children in our poorest, most racially segregated neighborhoods, need a "way out." If those of us who don't live in these neighborhoods, whose parents didn't have to work three jobs to make ends meet, who have always had the power to challenge the status quo, really gave a crap about these children, we might stop calling for a restructuring of our country's "entitlements" or more money for prisons or more money for charter schools. Maybe, just maybe, we could demand that all children receive an education that truly teaches them how to challenge authority, how to foster real change and how to rebuild their communities. But, hey, this is super hard work, without a "villain" and a "hero." This work would be complex, messy and just damn hard! It might actually mean that the rest of us would have to share a larger portion of our pie, and that just ain't the American way of life.
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