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Waiting For Superman Summary Essay

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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

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