By Robert W. Butler
The Kansas City Star
“Waiting for Superman” isn’t just a well-made, persuasive documentary. It’s a turning point. At least you come out of the theater hoping so.
The latest from Davis Guggenheim (an Oscar winner for “An Inconvenient Truth”) is a dismaying/hopeful look at American public education that essentially places the fate of the Republic on little Johnny and Susie’s ability to read, write and master basic arithmetic.
According to the film, we’ve been losing that battle for the better part of five decades; we’ve reached the point where even public schools in affluent communities are on shaky ground. As Guggenheim notes in his narration, he got the idea for this movie because every day he drove his kids past three failing LA public schools so they could attend a private academy.
He admits to “betraying the ideals I live by.” And yet what parent can blame him?
There’s not much here that will come as a surprise to anyone even remotely informed about American education. But the picture’s great service is in examining those educational models that are working … and in generating a heavy dose of sadness and outrage.
Guggenheim does a good job of laying out the bad news: plummeting test scores and a technology-driven economy that must import foreign labor because homegrown workers are mostly mathematical and engineering ignoramuses. (A telling statistic: American students rank low in just about every category except self-confidence.)
‘WAITING FOR SUPERMAN’* Rating: PG for some thematic material, mild language and incidental smoking.* Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.
Certainly the decline in American public education has many sources, but “Superman” singles out the teachers unions. These labor organizations have terrific political clout (the film refers to the Democratic Party as “a wholly owned subsidiary of the teachers unions”) and maintain a tenure system that, according to the movie, makes removing an incompetent teacher virtually impossible.
Looking for answers, Guggenheim finds a few heroes. Foremost among them is NYC educator Geoffrey Canada, who has turned a Harlem neighborhood into an educational success story by establishing a series of charter schools guaranteeing that every student will go to college.
Having laid out his case for charter schools that operate free of the constraints of union contracts, Guggenheim then focuses on five youngsters from around the country.
In a series of horrifying public ceremonies, school administrators hold lotteries to see which children will be accepted and which will be consigned to the “failure factory” of their local public schools. It’s heartbreaking.