Journal #3 'Waiting for Superman'

In this week's New York magazine there is an article about the release of a new movie about the school system called 'Waiting for Superman'. The film is directed by the same director as the acclaimed 'An Inconvenient Truth', Davis Guggenheim. He had previously directed a film about first year teachers, 'The First Year', which followed young teachers as they struggled through their first year teaching in the L.A. Unified school districts toughest schools.

New York claims that the film ostracizes the two most influential parties in the school system, the AFT and the reformers. Though Guggenheim claims he made the film to show how kids are the real losers in the entire situation, the article says that the film only polarizes the two sides. The film shows the competitive nature bought about in the race to win a coveted spot via lottery in a charter school. Often seen as the last hope for poor inner city minorities, charter schools are seen as the best way out of a bad environment and the only way to a better life through education. Whether this is actually true or not, the film doesn't go into, rather, it portrays the system that forces parents to go to such lengths to get the education each child deserves.

I feel that the educational system is in such a place that any publicity is good publicity. Educators are hoping that this can do for education what 'Inconvenient Truth' did for climate change, but bring it into a realm which is more relative to viewers. Whereas global warming is scary and distant nothing could be warmer and closer to most people's hearts than kids. Guggenheim even admits that his liberal private schooling of his own children was part of the reason he felt it important to do this movie. His own yuppie guilt which so many of us posses only helped to portray how very unbalanced the system is. Hopefully the combination of sympathetic subject matter and adorable needy kids will help in getting the film's larger point across. I can only hope it does for the sake of our future careers and the kid's we all hope touch in our futures as teachers.