...Essay 1: Reviews Essay For this semester project I chose the documentary, Waiting for Superman. This film was directed by Davis Guggenheim, and released in Hollywood, CA in the year 2010. The reviews I selected that were most compelling to me were “Waiting for Superman Movie Review,” published by Roger Ebert, “School Spirit Waiting for Superman,” published by the New Yorker, and “Waiting for Superman: Are Teachers the Problem?,” published by TIME Entertainment. I was able to access all three of my chosen reviews online, and they were published in the same year as the film was released. Through analyzing the three reviews on Waiting for Superman, one major trend between them is that they agree there is some problem with our nation’s public schools system, and the reforms such as No Child Left Behind and receiving tenure contribute to this problem. Agreeing with the ideas presented in Waiting for Superman and these reviews, I feel that the problems existing in our schools could be solved with more funding to provide teachers with higher pay. The first review, published by Roger Ebert, focuses on the main argument of how our nation’s funding could change to better our public education programs. For example, “Spend less money on prisons and more money on education. Reduce our military burden and put that money into education. In 20 years, you would have more useful citizens, less crime and no less national security. It's so simple”(Roger Ebert). This was Roger Ebert’s proposal...
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...Fixing America's public education system won't be easy -- but together, it's possible. The Waiting for "Superman" social action campaign has one primary goal: to ensure that every child receives a great education. The campaign seeks to build public awareness, ignite personal involvement and inspire real social change. The campaign's four core initiatives are: • Setting academic standards that are on par with the world's best • Recruiting and rewarding great teachers • Creating and nurturing excellent schools, and • Increasing literacy rates The following pages are your toolkit for educational reform. Learn more about the Waiting For "Superman" initiatives below, and find ways to take action with our "Help Your School" and "Fix the System" tips throughout this site. Help our students get the quality education they deserve. Our country's future depends on it. And every child deserves a great education. Every child deserves a great teacher. In other industries, the best employees are acknowledged for their exceptional contributions. A career in teaching should be no different. We can produce world-class students only if we train and support world-class teachers. There's no question that our current educational system is failing our students. The statistics are staggering: among 30 developed countries, the U.S. is ranked 25th in math and 21st in science. We need to better prepare today's generation of students starting NOW. The future depends on it. A child's destiny...
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...n 2010, Davis Guggenheim released one of the years most talked about documentaries, Waiting for Superman. His film was an eye opening, to many, look at the failings of the U.S. school system. The film follows five students across the U.S., who range in grade level from kindergarten to eighth grade, as they try and escape the public school system through a lottery for a chance admission to a charter school. Guggenheim lays the blame for the failing public education system at the feet of the various teachers unions, and makes a plea for the public in general to get involved in reforming the system. By analyzing Waiting for Superman through a sociological perspective, issues of inequality will be explained using the theoretical approach of the conflict perspective. Waiting for Superman begins with the director, David Guggenheim driving past the Los Angeles public schools as he takes his own children to a private school. Guggenheim starts to explain the problems with public education, in regards to how it is failing our society in general, and that the only way for the average family to escape it, is luck. The documentary follows five children, four are minorities from lower income families and one is white from an affluent area of California. All five face the same problem, a public education system that views them as numbers that feed the system. They are not considered for their individual talents or shortcomings. They are all doomed to follow a predestined track...
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...Waiting for Superman This is a documentary movie which portrays the shortage of public education system in the United States. People who are live in the poverty are the principal victims of public education system. Students receive different standard education is because good public schools are not allow every students get in and bad teachers in public schools are less efficient than good teachers in good public schools. For example, the movie portrays students who are poor and not from the neighborhood, they do not have choice to go to private schools, the only way is apply the good public schools, due to there are many people to apply, they have to wait for being chosen by lottery. The movie also shows that teachers in good public schools can finish 150 percent curriculum in one year, but teachers in ordinary public schools can only finish 50 percent curriculum. In brief, schools and bad teachers widen the disparities between students, and parents lack of choice to move their children out of failing schools. In Bad Teacher , Kumashiro(2012) states that “Michelle Rhee fire the lazy and incompetent teachers, and Barack Obama urged that it is time for rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad teachers (Page11, Paragraph 1).” In another words, bad teachers are black sheep in the public education, good teaches are hero. If all bad teachers are dismissed, then public education system can be improved. In fact, this is not an assumption which people made, it is true...
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...film's title is based on an interview with Geoffrey Canada wherein he recounts being told (as a child) by his mother that Superman was not real, and how he was frightened because there was nobody to save him. 2) What do you see as the main purpose of the documentary? Waiting For "Superman" is an inside look at the problems with education in America. The film is extremely eye-opening, showing just how bad a state most of our education systems are in. They clearly illustrate that no matter the area, teachers are failing America's youth at an alarming rate. I found the film to be very biased though, as it only points out what's wrong with the system, and fails to mention any of the positives that still exist in education. It also fails to offer solutions for the problems. Guggenheim throws lots of facts and figures at us and repeats the same themes. It gets to a point where he's just beating us over the head with the same concepts. Many people saw this as an inspirational call to action, but me, I saw it as a guy complaining. Honestly, if you can't offer up a solution than why present the problem? I'm pretty sure that almost everyone in America knows how bad education has gotten, even if they don't have the exact figures in front of them 3) What are the major theme(s) of the documentary? One of The major Inconvenient Behind Waiting for Superman' is provides a critique of an increasingly free-market driven education system, the undermining of teacher unions and...
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...Robby Hammers November 16, 2011 Sociology 201 Sissa Harris Waiting for Superman The film “Waiting for Superman” illustrates various problems that we have in our public education system. The film follows several children on their quest to get accepted by different schools because if they continue down the path of public school they will fall behind and are far more likely to drop out. Problems in Education: One major problem that the film addresses quite thoroughly is the problem with school funding. Schools receive money from the state, and they are also funded by tax money from citizens who live in the communities. Typically in a neighborhood where the average home price is relatively high the school will often receive and spend more money per student than a school in a poor community. A school in a rich neighborhood will more often than not have newer and higher quality learning materials than a school in a low income community. This difference in income has a huge impact on the education students receive. For example, a “school in a poor neighborhood may be rundown, lack library and science facilities, have crowded classrooms, and be staffed with poorly trained teachers” (Macionis 350). In the film, they called these schools names such as “dropout factories” and “academic sinkholes”. The children in the movie were forced to attend these schools which put them at a huge disadvantage compared to kids who were able to attend a private school or even a decent public school...
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...1960s promising education reform, with none being successful. The fate of millions of children around the country lies in the hands of irresponsible adults, individuals who are responsible for these poor education systems. The 2010 documentary Waiting for Superman travels in depth to the corrupt system that will continue to affect the lives of the same people who will soon be Americas future. In the gripping documentary it is revealed that a leading factor to our faulty system is the refusal of teachers unions to adopt a system that rewards good teachers. Due to the tenure system that was enacted by American Association of University Professors in 1900, teachers are guaranteed a life contract that declares that their position cannot be terminated without just cause. This means that bad teachers who only hinder their students’ performance can keep their jobs and not suffer any repercussion’s. However, good teachers who do their job well are paid just as much as the bad teacher, indicating the unfair nature of our system. However, this isn’t the only problem. As parents realize that our public education system may only lead to negative situations they aim to send their children to schools that provide a better future. Waiting for superman introduces five children in different parts of the country that are all hoping to get into a charter school that offers more chances and a structured teaching dynamic. On the other hand, the chance of getting into this school is only offered...
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...“Waiting For Superman” Geoffrey Canada stated, “One of the saddest days of my life was when my mother told me Superman didn’t exist... I was crying because there was no one coming with enough power to save us.” Just as many children look up to fictional characters such as Superman, parents look up to our school system to educate, if not raise, their children. However, too many of these parents are beginning to realize that an effective education, like Superman, is nonexistent. In Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim addresses a failing public school system in America that is a result of teachers unions, ineffective teachers, and false promises, among many other factors. The director’s selective perception in the video Waiting for Superman purports that public education is incapable of meeting the challenge of providing an adequate education to each one of its students and hence, charter schools are the answer to fixing the problem with education in the United States. He focuses on the plethora of public schools robustly failing its students and the factors causing them to fail. He gives statistics and facts to support his arguments and emphasizes that which makes a great school or a great student, is a great teacher. He criticizes the public school system by calling the federal, state, local, and district boards a “tangled mess of conflicting regulations and mixed agendas.” He states “the things we’ve done to help our schools work better have become the things that prevent...
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...Waiting for Superman The controversial documentary “Waiting for Superman” produced by the award winning director David Guggenhein and producer Lesley Chilcott addressed some of the failures we have in our public school system. The failures are such, teaching standards and student’s low ranking compare to other nations are in question, overcrowded schools, bad teachers who are protected by powerful unions and the inability to fire a tenured teacher, and the disturbing authorities misappropriate handling of money for school improvements. American public school students have fallen far behind compare to other developed countries. In math and science, the United States ranked 23rd and 25th in reading. Finland, Japan, Korea, and Canada were at the top of the pedestal. Guggenheim illustrates the hard realities of American public education, the statistics showed that 70% to 80% of students can’t function at their grade level, and while spending on education has more doubled since the early 1970s, math, science, and reading have remained low even as the other nations have surpassed us. This is because of poor teacher performances, according to Guggenhein. In other countries, for example, Finland, all teachers have their master’s degree. They are selected top three percent of their class. They are considered elite in terms of profession. The Finnish system works because they have built a school system that has overtime strengthened education equity and their national...
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...Rhetorical Analysis of Waiting for “Superman” The movie Waiting for “Superman” is conducted in an effective and efficient manner which gave supported facts throughout the film. This documentary follows Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily who are all from different families, in different areas, and shows what they must go through in hopes for a better education. In addition to following each child, the viewer will see how some kids must got through what’s called “The lottery” in order to be admitted into a school of higher education. The director of the film, Davis Guggenheim, argues that America’s schools are in desperate need of attention in order to improve our education system. Guggenheim supports this with the use of logos, ethos, pathos, and visual rhetoric throughout the film. Guggenheim uses logos in conjunction with juxtaposition to provide a fine argument over the fact that America’s public school system is significantly failing in numerous areas. Guggenheim supports this argument with numerous statistics throughout the film. One statistic given is “when students in America were tested in reading, most scored between 20-35% of grade level” (Guggenheim). With that stat alone, Guggenheim really puts into perspective how bad students are lacking general proficiencies in school. Another given fact is the amount the United Sates spends to send a someone to prison for 4 years, vs a student to private school for 13 years. “The cost for one prisoner is approximately...
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...Diaman Nichols Nichols-E2 Compton English 17 October 2013 South Carolina’s Strong-Council System vs. Strong-Mayor System of Government Many South Carolinians dwelling in, Columbia, the capital city, has been questioning the idea of changing the already existing form of government, which is a strong-counsel system, to a strong-mayor system. The feasibility of this particular implication of a new system, strong-mayor system of government has dismayed some while simultaneously satisfying others. Some residents and lawmakers say there is no need to change Columbia’s system of government, which the city has been using since 1949. On the contrary, those pushing for change counter that Columbia needs an elected chief executive, who is empowered to render decisions quickly, so the city can better compete for businesses and the jobs they would bring. Currently, Charleston and North Charleston are the only major and prosperous cities in South Carolina with a strong-mayor system of government. Should Columbia change its already existing strong-council system of government to a strong-mayor system of government? Columbia’s current system of government is a feeble and ineffective system which desperately needs to be changed. This change will manifest to other cities that South Carolina’s capital city is politically and economically stable and be a stimulating example to others...
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...In today’s society, adolescents are exposed to many different types of risk factors, protective factors, and even resilience. Risk factors are prevalent in adolescent behaviors, those including exposure to substance abuse and teenage delinquency. Such risk factors can be caused environmentally, interpersonally and individually. To alleviate risk factors, personal resources have come into existence through protective factors and even resilience to many hazardous situations among adolescents. Children and teenagers have prevailed over adversity more so than adults. Risk factors are conditions that increase the likelihood that youth will expose themselves to danger. Protective factors are safeguards that promote resiliency and enhance a young person’s ability to resist risks or hazards and make good decisions. Like risk factors, protective factors can exist in and be addressed by individuals, families, communities, and institutions. The greater the intensity or number of risk factors, the greater the likelihood that youth will engage in delinquent or other risky behaviors. Exposure to protective factors helps young people make better decisions, confront obstacles, and find the supports they need. They may prevent, diminish, or counteract the effects of risk factors. Families and communities are key to enhancing positive youth development when they provide strong parenting, good adult role models, and dependable sources of adult supervision, a strong sense of community...
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...After watching Waiting for Superman and reading What ‘Superman’ got wrong, point by point, both stances seemed to place themselves at the far ends of a spectrum that I found myself somewhere in the middle on for most of the issues brought up. Waiting for Superman is clearly the work of a non-teacher, as the reforms showcased in the film highlight radical change to teaching staff, the dissolving of teachers unions, and the placement of the child’s needs above the adults. What ‘Superman’ got wrong, point by point is (as stated) the rebuttal to the movie from the view of a teacher. The educator who wrote this essay, Rick Ayers, shows his support for teachers unions, the addressing of the curriculum and method that we teach kids and not the people...
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...In 2010, Davis Guggenheim released one of the years most talked about documentaries, Waiting for Superman. His film was an eye opening, to many, look at the failings of the U.S. school system. The film follows five students across the U.S., who range in grade level from kindergarten to eighth grade, as they try and escape the public school system through a lottery for a chance admission to a charter school. Guggenheim lays the blame for the failing public education system at the feet of the various teachers unions, and makes a plea for the public in general to get involved in reforming the system. By analyzing Waiting for Superman through a sociological perspective, issues of inequality will be explained using the theoretical approach of the conflict perspective. Waiting for Superman begins with the director, David Guggenheim driving past the Los Angeles public schools as he takes his own children to a private school. Guggenheim starts to explain the problems with public education, in regards to how it is failing our society in general, and that the only way for the average family to escape it, is luck. The documentary follows five children, four are minorities from lower income families and one is white from an affluent area of California. All five face the same problem, a public education system that views them as numbers that feed the system. They are not considered for their individual talents or shortcomings. They are all doomed to follow a predestined track, developed...
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...________________________________________________________________________ Waiting for Balance: A Review of Waiting for Superman Directed by Davis Guggenheim Paramount Vantage and Participant Media, 2010. Approximately 90 minutes. ________________________________________________________________________ Reviewed by Joseph Flynn, Northern Illinois University Introduction Waiting for Superman is the latest documentary by the Academy Award winning director Davis Guggenheim. Guggenheim also directed An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore documentary about climate change and global warming. What made An Inconvenient Truth such a masterwork was that it presented stark and incontrovertible information about the destruction of our environment and further challenged the viewers to do something about it. Waiting for Superman follows a similar formula. It presents the viewer with an incredible amount of troubling information about our public schools and models of seemingly progressive advocates for change. The data represented is also properly cited on-screen, differentiating it from personal polemics like Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9-11. It concludes with a challenge to act for the best interests of our nation’s youths; the end credits include a web site where viewers can go for ideas. That makes it difficult to speak negatively about the film, but upon a closer analysis we find that most of the information presented in the film is over-generalized and highly debatable...
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