As Helen Keller once mentioned, “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” Everyone strives for success to attain their childhood dreams and goals, but nothing can be accomplished without a hopeful attitude. Children embody innocence and pure optimism, yet today’s public education is taking their hopeful futures away. By capturing the stories of various elementary students attending public schools, Waiting for Superman highlights the current declining public school system and its past failures. The narrative structure along with visual statistics allows the director of this documentary to advocate that the current system of public education is not up to par and needs some savior, …show more content…
In many of these poor neighborhoods, the standing elementary and middle schools are not an option for those wishing to graduate high school and attend a four year university in the future. As a result, the families in the video take a chance and enlist in a lottery to try to gain a spot at one of the heavily desired private charter schools in the area. These schools offer something these students have never encountered: a prosperous, hopeful future. Because these facilities are so costly, they are full of instructors that truly care about their pupils’ futures and success. But given the potential of these charter schools, there are only a limited number of seats available within them. Toward the closing of the film, each child attends the lottery of the desired school they wish to attend. In efforts to re-engage the viewer’s emotions and build up anticipation, the filmmakers add text to the bottom corner of the screen to indicate the number of spots available at each school. The scenes alternate from school to school and kid to kid focusing on each situation; each school have a different amount of spots available. Similar to the opening of the film, the conclusion brings everything full circle with either news of acceptance or denial. The white numbers blink in decreasing order until “0 spaces left” flashes on the screen. These crucial several minutes within Waiting for
In modern day American schools, it has been proclaimed that kids are not getting the proper education causing them be ranked the lowest in the world. The documentary, "Waiting for Superman," directed by Davis Guggenheim expresses his opinion of schools effectively through techniques such as allusions, appealing to pathos, and his organization of the movie. The audience is persuaded to agree with his ideas on schools because of these rhetorical devices.
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.
The former DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee and the president of Harlem Children’s Zone, Geoffrey Canada are two leaders whose work stood in out in 2010 as an example of leadership that showed courage, tenacity, and dedication to the future of this country through the education of children. They were also featured in the documentary “Waiting for Superman” directed by David Guggenheim that showed a handful of diverse students undertaking an exhausting journey through public education, evaluating the drop-out rates, and academic disadvantages that they and students all across American are faced with and the contribution that leaders such as Michelle Rhee and Geoffrey Canada play a part in helping the education system prosper, and saving them from the failing statistics that continue to rise in public schools.
Sherman Alexei remembers from his childhood comics, superman jumping out of a window and breaking it. He illustrates this in his personal essay, The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me. Alexie remembers Superman breaking the window because this is what taught him to read. Over and over again he would say that superman was breaking down the door even though he could not actually read the comic. He kept on making up what Superman was saying in these panels, and eventually was able to actually read them.
Imagine being denied a basic education solely because your parents do not have a steady income, or being denied a basic education simply because you do not live in a place with access to a quality public school. For many, the lack of a satisfactory education is something that is not an issue, but one would be surprised to see how prevalent this problem actually is. The film, Waiting for Superman highlights the many issues that are indeed obvious when examining the United States’ education system. The film centers around failing schools in mainly urban areas where the problems seem to be the most abundant, but it does not deny the fact that these many problems do exist everywhere throughout the country. Director Davis Guggenheim generates, in the movie Waiting for Superman, the claim that our education system is failing, and highlights the idea that although there are some solutions that have shown effective there is still more that needs to be done. Guggenheim formulates his claim through his use of a shocking, sometimes sad tone as well as an effective narrative structure throughout the film.
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
Waiting for “Superman”, released October 29, 2010, is about five kids, Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, as they each fight to join a charter school near them. These kids feel that they deserve a better education than the public school system will provide them, and they cannot wait to escape it. The movie starts by saying that some families have a choice of what school they send their kids to while others must hand over their choice for luck. The families that rely on luck must send their child through a lottery type system. At the lotteries, the charter school randomly draws names to choose who the lucky ones will be. The charter schools are required by law to hold a lottery whenever there is limited space in the school (Waiting). The viewers receive a background story when the director interviews each of the five kids.
They showed each student who applied to these lottery schools waiting anxiously to see if they were chosen to get into a better school. Each student sat in a room filled with their
Throughout Superman and Me Sherman Alexie says many impactful things that help state his overall reason for writing the article. One of the most important phrases though is this, “I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky.” This statement is probably the most important one because it helps convey is main idea the best. Is main idea being wanting to learn himself and eventually help others learn too.
In Waiting for Superman we are introduced to the several different ways students and American school systems are failing. We see the “system”, through five different children and view their personal experiences while we follow them through their public schools. Its an intense an emotional documentary with the five kids competing for a better education through the lottery system. The documentary goes in great detail about the different education systems and how it will change our future education. Like the Charter schools that are with out teacher’s unions and Magnet schools that are secondary public schools of choice that offer a specialized curriculum. In transition by the documentary implying good teachers make good schools we see that failing
Within the documentary Waiting for Superman, David Guggenheim (the director) explores the world of education and the real life ‘struggle’ for the best education for five different children. Of course this piece offers opinions from different sources within the school system, yet it seems as if all the stances taken are very biased in saying how the problems in education only arise from bad teachers and the teacher unions. However, ironically enough, it seems as if “we never hear the voice of a single teacher… teachers are never given the opportunity to offer their views on ‘the problem’ or ‘the answer’” (Waiting for 'Superman' 2) which is quite unfortunate since both arguments are not offered. By excluding the group that influenced
In Waiting for “Superman” a film produced by a man named David Guggenheim addresses the issues that arise in the public school system, and how hard it is for kids to get a good education in the U.S. As Guggenheim quotes “no matter who we are, our what neighborhood we grew up in wanting to believe in our schools, we take a leap of faith.” Waiting for “Superman” effectively identifies failing schools, incompetent teachers, and administrative constraints as the main issues under mining education in the U.S. today. First, Guggenheim reached his audience through its focus on the stories of five children and their families as they apply to their neighborhoods local charter schools. Each child’s parent places them in the charter schools lottery drawing to earn a place in the school.
It’s been a known fact that American education is going down the drain and no one knows how to fix it. It’s also a known fact that many people have ideas on how to fix education, but no one is sure what to implement. Some people have given suggestions on fixing education, and such as using different state tests and not letting the states decide what is passing. However, there is a bit of disagreement, as those who are giving advice cannot agree on whether standardized tests should be used, and who should be blamed for students falling behind.
The movies “Waiting for Superman” investigated the ways in which the American Public Education system is failing our nation’s children. It highlighted the roles that Charter Schools and education reformers could play in an effort to offer hope for the future. The movie moreover, depicted the dropout rate of high school students and schools closing due to lack of funding.
6.) Chris stared in a number of plays throughout college, he traveled to Paris, and he took a trip abroad that was stimulating and rewarding, but it was lonely for him. It was hard for him to not have someone to share his experiences with during this time. During this time he missed the woman he was seeing, missed his friends, and missed the student life at Cornell. He wanted to change his flight to come home sooner, but at the time couldn’t afford the difference in price. The last three months of his trip in Paris, he couldn’t wait to go home because he had no particular structure in his life and felt like he needed to do something productive instead of being an observer.