Public Education In Waiting For Superman

An important function of education is to prepare children with the academic skill that they need in order to function in society. However, the troubling aspect of the education in America is the fact that students’ performance in math and science does not match with other students in other countries. The filmmaker Davis Guggenheim spoke against public education and implied that charters schools are the hope for higher education. In the documentary “Waiting for Superman” released in 2010 the film demonstrated the dark side of public education in which parents and children expressed the desire for a better education system in search for guaranteed higher education. The film previewed a group of individuals in different geographical location in the United States who searched for a gateway entry to try to escape the public education system through a lottery. To examine the role education played in the film I will contrast three theoretical perspectives; the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionism to comprehend the American education system.

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

Following the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, US students have slipped from being ranked 18th in math in 2000 to 27th in 2012, with a similar decline in science and no change in reading. Standardized tests are unfair and discriminatory against non-English speakers and students with special needs [E. (2011, January 01)]. A 2007 national study conducted by the Center for Education policy revealed that since 2001, 44% of school districts had reduced the time spent on science, social studies and the arts by an estimate of 145 minutes per week in order to focus on reading and math while neglecting the other areas of study.

Although Waiting for Superman can be vivisected into the separate rhetorical techniques that it effectively uses, the documentary is truly a persuasive work because all of the individual rhetorical strategies have been sewn together to produce a blanket of persuasion. The documentary begins with an interview of Anthony, a student in D.C. The narrator asks him if someone eats 2 of 4 cookies, then what percent was eaten. Anthony correctly answers the problem after a few seconds, but his speech, grammar, and the time it took him to solve the problem all ally themselves towards the truth that he does not have the best education. Not only does this clip offer a student as an example, it wonderfully employs silence, for during the short clip, there is no music or background noise. This silence lends itself towards the absoluteness of education, or lack-thereof. Following this interview is two clips of an old superman film. These clips frame Geoffrey Canada, an educator, expressing his childhood beliefs about Superman. The first clip of Superman is merely Superman standing in front of a waving American Flag in the classic superhero pose: hands on his hips, chin up, and chest out. The visual image is a stark juxtaposition with the voiceover that states: “one of the saddest days was when my mother told me that Superman did not exist.” By stating that Superman does not exist, while showing an image of superman, sets up the context for the entire documentary. It supports the idea that the title presents; that education is waiting for something to save it, but there may be nothing that can. The introduction ends with Canada’s words that “there was no one coming with enough

The author's main point in this article was focusing on the problems of standardized testing in the school system. Ronald Roach states how in the past decade since the no child left behind program was established that there was no sufficient gains in the overall student math and reading scores. The author then goes on to explain how the Obama administration has been criticized over the issues of no child left behind program and how they are not effectively improving the program.

The educational problem presented on the documentary “Waiting for Superman” shows how the educative public system is in the United States. In our state, it is a right to have an education and the government provides it. The way our state works when it comes to public school has stopped parent’s from looking into others schools to get their kids into, and this

Education is an important political topic on the national scene, and statements made at national education forums are taken seriously. Therefore, when a speaker at the US News STEM Solutions Conference in San Diego says that "Ninety-nine percent of school kids are failed by the K-12 system," experts on both sides of the aisle take notes. Certainly, most teachers and those in the education industry are going to object to those numbers, and others will seek to define what "failed" means.

When the word school is mentioned, often, we first think about students and teachers. These two groups roughly describe the educational system. This assignment will focus on teachers as stakeholders in public school districts.

As a parent, you want the best for your child in life. What would you do if their entire future was decided on one lottery that was out of your control? Waiting for Superman is a documentary that was made in 2010 and created controversy among educators and parents everywhere. The director focuses on 5 students that go through the process of trying to find a better education. In Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim (the director) investigates and uncovers the downfall of American education over the years informing people the truth of what is truly going on.

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.

Education and learning are important in today's society. It seems America has a wonderful education system, but if we think deeply, we can figure out that most part in American education is broken. This is a sad truth that the educational system is not working as is supposed to be. Now it becomes messy and it mostly became a business place where money matters. And people should do something to improve it again. This paper will continue to discuss on education in the United States based on the videos depicting the broken education system, the Common Core, and Dan Rather's analysis of the Detroit Education system.

Public education in the United States is perhaps one of the most critical issues we face as a nation. Once pronouncing the United States as a “nation at risk”, the educational institution began to implement one reform strategy after another. In efforts to improve schooling for K-12 students, education reform has fiddled with class size, revised graduation requirements, and created standardized testing just to name a few. Unfortunately, traditional public schools are still failing to provide students with a quality education. This is disheartening as we learn that the United States lags behind in math and science compared to our international counterparts. It is safe to say that educational reform has spent billions of dollars over the

Visualize a standardized test taken annually by millions of students in the U.S.A. that directly affects teaching methods, school budgets, and grade promotion. Presently, millions of schools are utilizing high-stakes tests to determine these major factors. The United States expects students to perform well on standardized testing, or school districts will suffer financial consequences under the No Child Left Behind Act (Au 502). This places pressure on everyone from administrators to students in a school district. Schools worldwide are stressed to succeed on these standardized tests when they only measure a fraction of a student’s intelligence. Standardized testing must be discontinued because it negatively affects school curricula,