Literary Analysis Of Waiting For Superman

In the article “Fremont high school”, Jonathan Kozol describes how the inability to provide the needed funding and address the necessities of minority children is preventing students from functioning properly at school. He talks to Meriya, a student who expresses her disgust on the unequal consideration given to urban and suburban schools. She and her classmates undergo physical and personal embarrassments. Kozol states that the average ninth grade student reads at fourth or fifth grade level while a third read at third grade level or below. Although academic problems are the main factor for low grades, students deal with other factors every day. For example, School bathrooms are unsanitary, air condition does not work, classrooms have limited

Firefighters, Police officers, and soldiers are all of our heroes today, but the heroes that children are lacking in today’s society are teachers. In the documentary Waiting for Superman, it does a great job of showing many of the flaws in today’s education system. In Waiting for Superman, The music and audio features provide a humorous tone and also, at times, a more serious tone. Ethos is established throughout the Waiting for Superman documentary by having experienced teachers and presidents of well known educational companies give their thought on what needs to happen with the schooling system in the United States. The experts in this topic talked about how many of the public schools in the United States are considered to be dropout factories, which is where more than forty percent of the enrolled students drop out. This means more kids sitting on the street with no jobs or education. Furthermore, crime rates will go up, as well as the poverty level because the children can not get a well paying job. It is made known in Waiting for Superman, that the good schools are very expensive and only have limited spots available. To get into these schools, there are often raffles in which you enter for a chance to get in. This method is unfair because there is no guarantee you will get chosen, therefore you may end up getting a worse education than what you know you can receive.

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

This demonstrates that if Sam’s school had got more funding then Sam may have received a proper education, and would have learned the intellectual skills that could help him to obtain a high paying job. Unlike many other people in richer parts of America who are able to achieve a lot in life due to their education, Sam’s lack of wealth ruins his future. Another example is one that hits closer to home- in terms of educational funding, the Illinois system is corrupt, and one of the districts that suffers most is that of Chicago Public Schools. In an interview with Ryan Young from CNN and an anonymous Chicago Public School teacher over the recent strike over budget cuts and the overall lack in school funding, the teacher states, “We care about the students. We want funding for our schools so our children can have supplies… gym, art, and PE., just like the kids in the suburbs do.” This is a direct representation of what is occurring in the Chicago Public School system today as a consequence of budget cuts and unequal funding. In general, the lack of school funding gives poorer children disadvantages when it comes to supplies that can help them to thrive. Also, budget cuts weaken the capacity of schools’ to develop the intelligence and creativity of the next generation of workers. In fact,, funding cuts lessen the ability of the schools to help prepare children better for their future, such as improving teacher

Over the last few years public school systems have been slowly decreasing in their effectiveness, causing there to be many students, especially those whose families are struggling financially, to be left behind; while others, who have the ability to enter charter schools, are receiving a better education and are succeeding. The documentary Waiting for Superman, directed by David Guggenheim, is focused on this disheartening truth about the American Education System. Through the use of rhetorical strategies such as pathos, logos, and music, it attracts the audience to the plot and leaves them with an unsettling feeling about schooling that will hopefully cause them to want to take

Schools frequently cite a variety of social problems like poverty, broken homes, and bad parenting as excuses for their own poor performance (Greene, 289). In the article of The Myth of Helplessness it touches on a few reasons why it is believed that some schools have great reviews and others don’t. Greene talks about what others believe helps the school systems and what is believed that causes students to fail in school. I agree with author Jay P. Greene that, yes poverty, broken homes and other social problems pose a significant challenge but the evidence simply does not leave room for the conclusion that these challenges are insurmountable (290).

“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 rich or poor, look up to our school system to educate their children. However, too many of these parents are beginning to realize that proper education, like Superman, is nonexistent. In Waiting for “Superman,” Davis Guggenheim addresses the teachers union about the failing public school system in America. Through the use of ethos, anecdotes, statistics and visual and audio elements, Guggenheim attacks a problem too precious to let slip through our fingers.

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.

For Daisy to be successful, and on the right path, she wants to attend KIPP LA Prep school, and Daisy only has a 14% chance of getting in. Francisco is a first grader in the Bronx, already attending a failing school. Anthony wishes to attend the Harlem Success Academy. Anthony's chance of getting into his school of choice is only 5%. In the documentary, people such as Geoffrey Canada, and Michele Rhee, tell and show the issues facing America’s children today in schools worldwide.

In Waiting for Superman, David Guggenheim’s documentary about America's school systems, he asks a multitude of very important questions that many people have been asking for a while now. Such as the question of if our teachers are essential to the well performance of a school, how can we, the everyday people, resolve poor performance within the school systems with an oftentimes uncritical view of teachers? In addition to that it raises the question on whether bad schools only exist in slums or other places as well. It also brings up the question can children excel in school if they are brought up in poverty.

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.

All across the United States there are schools that are struggling financially and culturally due to different socio-economic challenges. Some of these challenges can not be avoided although many of them could be avoided. One of these problems that could be avoided is the act of institutionalized separation of rich and poor. If integration was more focused the school systems in certain parts of a city would not be understaffed and underfunded. In the documentary Waiting for Superman there were many different points made by the filmmaker that in the modern Education system people are believing that teachers are the only ones responsible for the success of their students. In the film states that people should not “wait for superman to come to the rescue; look in the mirror. We need to understand that it is not just the schools and teachers that are accountable for students performance”. This idea can be seen not only in the film but in Sheryll Cashin’s The Failures of Integration. A piece of literature that touches on modern education systems and the people in those organizations. Waiting for Superman argues that the public schools system in the United States is failing due to poor performing teachers in schools. When The Failures of Integration argues that race and socioeconomic impact is more important than the teachers in the failing schools.

2. When a student attend an underfunded school, they receive a negative outlook to learning. Students will be exposed to schools that predominantly have white students, schools that have more funding, better facilities, and better teachers. This makes Black and Latinos feel like they are not as important as the white students. This feeling of unimportance displayed in these lower income schools teaches the students that they are not as important because of their race and class.

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.