Waiting for Superman

Last night me and my family decided to watch "Waiting for Superman", a movie about the American education system. I had been wanting to see "Race to Nowhere", a movie that we had talked about several times in class, and I thought Waiting for Superman would be a similar movie, and would serve as an adequate replacement.

Waiting for Superman, though, focused a lot more on individual families and their quests to get their kids into magnet or charter schools than the actual problems with the way kids are learning or the curriculum. The movie explained the benefits of increasing the number of hours kids are in school, having school during the summer, and holding kids to extremely high expectations and pushing them to succeed. It seemed to me that it was almost the opposite of what we talked about in class with Race to Nowhere.

I was hoping for some kind of statement about the problems with standardized testing, pressure to get into college, or how important the arts are, but instead I got almost the opposite. The movie almost glorified standardized tests. It also stressed a need for everyone to get into college. Also, the movie continually talked about the importance of math and science, yet it never mentioned a need for variation in the school day with art classes or more creative classes like english.

The differences in these two movies show the conflicting views on education in America today. I would recommend watching "Waiting for Superman" if you have already seen "Race to Nowhere", it might be interesting to compare and contrast the two.