Education And The Real Life 'Struggle In Waiting For Superman'

In Sherman Alexie’s short story “Superman and Me,” Alexie writes about his life as an Indian child growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. He depicts his life from when he was three years old, living on the reservation, up to his current self, as an adult writer who frequently visits that reservation. He primarily describes his interest in reading and how it has changed his life for the better.

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

The documentary presents intrinsic issues facing the child age demographic. The title of the documentary is ‘waiting for superman.’ The title in itself speaks of a sense of hope in an abstract idea that is simply imaginary in nature. The term superman is, in this context, used to describe the education system. The title of the documentary describes the high sense of hope with which children go to school. This high sense of hope is motivated by the ignorance that they harbor as to the actual dynamics of the public school system. The premise should be that no child is left behind. This is with reference to learning in the school system. This theoretical analogy is, however, very far from the actual truth on the ground. The situation is that a lot of children are left behind. An argument can be made from the documentary that all of the children in the public school

There are many freedoms that people often take for granted like the freedom to learn and not to be judged for acting upon that freedom. Sherman Alexie wrote the essay “Superman and Me” to help Indian children realize that they can learn and not be defined by what people tell them. In the essay “Superman and Me”, Alexie talks about how when he was a child he was looked down upon because he wanted to learn. To support his belief that education is an important element in life and can often save lives he uses his experiences in life to help Native American children realize the same things. I am one of the lucky ones. Like Alexie, I had the ability to learn and parents who supported my education. Therefore, I agree with Alexie that Indian children need role models and heroes and need to learn to value education in order to break down the stereotypes that are put on them by people.

The article “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie is an informative article about the author growing up on an Indian reservation, attending reservation school and where he is today. The author's underlying message in the article is cultural differences when not accepted can cause issues not only socially but also in education. The author does a great job in persuading his readers of the issues on education in reservation schools and possibly how to fix these issues.

Educational systems in America are impaired, and the very educators that are meant to teach are the one’s pulling it down. That is the apparent message that Davis Guggenheim attempts to convey in his documentary “Waiting for Superman”. He uses many strategies to get his message across. Some of these include cartoons, children, and those reformers that are attempting to pull the system out of the ditch that it has found its way into. He makes his point very well, and uses facts and figures correctly. He does leave out some of the opinions of the opposing views, but it does not take away from his point that the educational system in America is in need of repair.

Sherman Alexie recounted in his essay “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” how his first ever read as a child was an unspecified Superman comic, and how he learned to read from this comic. At first, this seems just a minor detail he put at the beginning of his essay, but with further analysis, I will explain why this is one of the most impactful and important details in his message.

Throughout literature many pieces of work can be compared and contrasted to each other. In “Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie discusses the challenges he faced as a young Indian adult, who found his passion of reading at an early age, living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He challenged the stereotype of the young Indian students who were thought to be uneducated while living on a reservation. Likewise, in the excerpt from The Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez shares his similar experience of being a minority and trying to break stereotypes of appearing uneducated. He shares the details of his life growing up learning a different culture and the struggles he faced becoming assimilated into American culture. In these two specific pieces of literature discuss the importance of breaking stereotypes of social and educational American standards and have similar occupational goals; on the other hand the two authors share their different family relationships.

Waiting for "Superman" was filmed by Davis Guggenheim. It was released back in 2009. It talks about the education system in different neighborhoods around the United States of America. It also shows the corruption in the education system. This movie shows how the bad the public education is, and how many people are struggling on a daily basis to get a great education no matter the sacrifices.

She kept insisting to do things the non-Bolivian way and her mother continuously explained to Andrea that’s not the way she was raised. “Why did I have an American flag next to my Bolivian one? My mother instilled Bolivian values in me…” (Roman 256) she included both flags indicating that she doesn’t want to fail her mother and forget the Bolivian culture.

In Waiting for Superman, a documentary by Davis Guggenheim, Guggenheim explains how teacher unions are making it impossible to change public education for the benefit of American students. Guggenheim begins the documentary by explaining what tenure is. Tenure was created by universities to protect professors from losing their jobs for political reasons, but only after many years of teaching were they granted tenure. Public school teachers believed they should be granted tenure, so they formed unions and went on strike. Eventually they were granted tenure, and it's now part of every teachers contract, making it almost impossible to evoke change in the school systems.

The argument of the consistency of our education system has been going on for few decades. We all agree on the base that the school system has been broken. There have been solutions proposed, such as George W. Bush reform act “No Child Left Behind,” but we hadn’t seen a drastic change in the system. The biggest question that is raised is that what changes, as flawed as the system looks, should be implemented to the system to benefit and excel each and every student in our nation. Is the problem from the lack of responsibility of the teacher’s union as “Waiting for Superman” argued or is there more to it? Though it might look convincing to criticize factors such as the national teachers’ union for how deprived our education system is,

Whether you call him Kal-El, Clark Joseph Kent or the Man of Steel, fans and non-alike know him the world over as Superman. Recently, this iconoclastic character was reintroduced to a new generation with the film Man of Steel and so began for some a look back to another era where a bold new dawn of superhero action movies was born with Superman The Movie. An inevitable debate ensued about whether a modern, technologically advanced and possibly more faithful adaptation could outshine the original, with all its nostalgia, including an inimitable portrayal of Superman given by the late Christopher Reeve. My aim is to find out whether I still believe a man can truly fly or if he is just simply wearing a costume.

Superman and Batman are iconic superheroes. A argument often talked about amongst DC comic book superhero fans is, “Who is the better superhero, Batman or Superman?” Superman is an more advanced and interesting superhero because of his superpowers.

In the American public school system students are failing and society is doing nothing but taking a blind eye to the injustice. In the film, Waiting For Superman, director, Davis Guggenheim, investigates the various ways these schools are producing failing students in the United States. By following the stories of five children throughout the documentary we, the viewers, begin to take notice of the corrupt public school system as the children experience the inequalities of a low income school first hand. Guggenheim uses audio and pop-up animations to effectively argue his claim and motivate the audience to change the way public schools are being operated.