Waiting for Superman
Scathing Expose’ Chronicles Failings of Public Educational System
Waiting for Superman
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Rated PG for mature themes, mild epithets and smoking crude humor.
Actors: Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee
Directors: Davis Guggenheim
Format: NTSC
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
Studio: Paramount Vantage
Run Time: 102 minutes
Review by Kam Williams
Excellent (4 stars)
Every other month or so, another new documentary illustrates how America’s
public schools are failing its inner-city students. Already this year, we’ve
seen several scathing indictments of the educational system, from The Cartel
to The Lottery to The Providence Effect to Race to Nowhere.
Now we have Waiting for Superman, which just might be the best of the
genre’s bumper crop. The film was directed by Academy Award-winner Davis
Guggenheim (for An Inconvenient Truth), a man who shows a knack here for
weaving ordinarily-bland statistics and bureaucrat-speak into a riveting
drama replete with empathetic victims, altruistic heroes and a maniacal,
power-hungry villain.
Though the play-by-play is subsequently narrated by Guggenheim in engaging
fashion, the movie opens with an explanation of the title by Geoffrey
Canada. The dedicated children’s advocate reflects on growing up in the
slums in the Bronx by recounting how heartbroken he was the day his mother
explained to him that Superman wasn’t real. Why? Because it meant that he
had to face the hard, cold truth that no one was coming to rescue him from
the ghetto.
Fast-forward a generation after Canada received his Master’s degree in
Education from Harvard University, and we find him back in his hometown
wearing a cape as an academic superhero. For in his capacity as the CEO of
the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), he presides over a trio of charter schools
which have met with phenomenal success compared to the regular public
schools in the ‘hood.
Mr. Canada gets portrayed as the life-saving cavalry, cast opposite an evil
adversary in American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. She
looks downright diabolical repeatedly defending the union in the face of
shocking proof of decades of ongoing ineptitude.
Although incompetent members of other professions, like doctors (2%) and
lawyers (1%), are apt to lose their licenses, fewer than 1 in 2500 teachers
ever face firing. Guggenheim proceeds to illustrate exactly how Weingarten
and her minions have managed to maintain the mediocre status quo by forcing
frustrated administrators to run a gauntlet of regulations designed to allow
disciplinary proceedings to drag on for years.
The upshot, of course, is that thousands of the nation’s public schools have
become dropout factories serving as feeders for the criminal justice system.
The poorly-served students are the big losers, of course, and their
desperate parents’ only hope for their offspring rests with admission to an
excellent program like HCZ’s.
The tension mounts as the action telescopes tightly on the anguished faces
of families praying that their kids’ names will be picked in the lottery.
Otherwise, as we’ve been assured, each tyke’s potential is certain to be
swallowed up by a sinkhole also known as their regular public school.
An Oscar-quality expose’ laying the blame for the escalating dropout rate
right at the feet of a greedy and selfish teachers’ union which could care
less about educating the country’s kids.
Related Links
The Lottery - DVD Chronicles Competition for Admission to Harlem
Charter
School
http://aalbc.com/reviews/lottery.html