Waiting for Superman

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. This movie impressed me most with the amazing resolve of education reformers that fought against the self-serving teachers unions who only cared about their own livelihoods while sacrificing those of their students. However I wanted to see more classroom scenes and fewer ones involving everyday household activities. Spending so much time in the film on the actual picking of the names for the school entrance lottery was plain wrong. An entrance examination system is a fairer way of selecting students where enrollments are limited. This happened to me before I was accepted at a private high school. Concepts such as verbal and math proficiency as highlighted in the film were meaningless to me as I had no idea what students were supposed to have learned at the various grade levels. Personally I expect all high school students to master some calculus but I am in a small minority. Blaming all problems on bad teachers went too far. Bullies terrorize students even driving some to suicide a fact glossed over by this film. The movie never really explained why teachers were failing their students. As I see it some do not even know the course material, others are afraid to speak in public while others lack empathy. Even the great teachers in this film admitted they were just awful when they started out. Many were fired without due process. The emphasis on the low rankings of aptitude scores of American students did not serve any useful purpose. It is not supposed to be a competition but a means to get a well-rounded education. This film concentrates too much on the dropouts and not enough on the college graduates with poor reading and writing skills who make it very tough on future employers. It is small wonder this happens when lazy teachers prefer multiple choice exams to term papers and essays. Certain ideas such as home schooling and correspondence courses were not really tackled. Such learning disabilities as dyslexia which may make reading almost impossible were not mentioned. It is astonishing that kids learn so much in the first 6 years of life without ever having set foot inside a classroom. My parents taught me to read and write before I entered elementary school. My teachers were not too happy. Parents have to get more involved with their kids. I was shocked to see parents in this film struggling with their kid's homework assignments. I found the special features on the Blu-ray much more informative than the film itself. I marveled at a segment where straight A students got gold ties but I realized at the same time that grade inflation has become a serious problem in recent years. And finally the movie forgot to bring up the fact that there are web sites where students can rate their professors thus encouraging the better ones. All in all this film did a lackluster job explaining the state of education in America.