(Guest film review by Vincent Green)
Director Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting For ‘Superman’” is more than just a behind-the-scenes look at the families of five students and their quest for better schools.
It’s an indictment of educational bureaucracy, teachers unions and outdated educational practices. It’s also a touching look at families struggling with an issue that terrifies every parent and should terrify every citizen – failing schools.
Guggenheim, whose credits include the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” last examined our schools through a group of rookie school teachers in the 1999 TV documentary “The First Year.” His newest look follows the lives of students struggling in an educational system ill-equipped to help them learn. These students have hard lives. For example, Anthony repeated second grade the year his father died of drug abuse, and Bianca’s mother can’t keep up the payments for her parochial parochial school. Guggenheim treats these children and their families with great care, and so we too care for them deeply. Each has much to offer the world … if only the schools could support them as they should.
Who can save them? Thus the title “Waiting For ‘Superman.’”
That title is a quote from Geoffrey Canada, the President of the Harlem Children Zone, who claims in his youth he was the one “waiting.” In fact, Guggenheim portrays both Canada and Washington D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee as the ‘Supermen’ we need. Both are outsiders – Canada runs a collection of charter schools in 94 blocks of NYC and Rhee’s only experience in schools prior to her appointment as Chancellor was three years as a teacher. Canada weaves his tale very effectively, and you cannot help but cheer as he promises to never let a child of his fall behind. Rhee comes across as well-meaning but naive, closing schools and firing principals yet ultimately failing when she comes face-to-face with the true problem in the schools – the teachers unions.
Every movie needs a villain, and we find one in Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers. As Guggenheim laments tenure as rewarding ineffective teaching and unions for protecting teachers under disciplinary action, he intersperses cuts of Weingarten. These interview and rally clips very effectively intimate the power of the unions. When we compare the teacher-protector Weingarten to the fight-the-status-quo Rhee, it’s not hard to see who the filmmaker wants to portray as a hero.
In fact, the true villain may be the system itself.
Guggenheim shares plenty of statistics to support his thesis that schools are ineffective. He uses animations styled to look like old photos (which eventually become tiring) and throws out terrifyingly low statistics about our performance against other nations or low reading and math proficiency nationwide. What he does not do is share statistical data in support of charter schools in general. While he mentions individual success rates for the schools he profiles, he glosses over an important statistic- 4 out of 5 charter schools are not doing significantly better than the public schools.
As we watch our schools failing, we also see our five students cope with teachers who do not return phone calls, endure exclusion from graduation for unpaid tuition bills, and witness a Silicon Valley school that is all flash and no bang. They all want to go to charter schools, but the competition is steep and seemingly unfair – students are not picked for need or potential, but by a random public drawing guaranteed to disappoint most who enter. If you were not already frustrated by the school’s failure to serve these students, you become positively bereft when we see some of the five lose out in the film’s lottery-driven finale.
While the tone is heavy and the story frustrating, you are riveted by Erich Roland’s cinematography. He does a remarkable job of finding beauty in city streets and cramped households, crowded hallways and empty stairwells. Christophe Beck’s simple score lends another layer of tenderness, so that each time we feel down, we find another hero in an unexpectedly beautiful vista – a teacher counseling a student or a parent and child looking together out a tenement window – and we find hope.
Guggenheim does not offer concrete solutions to our educational woes beyond the wonderful charters he profiles, but he claims that we must all be part of the solution. Now that you’ve read that, you can skip the closing credits which repeatedly exhort you to send a text to a special number or to visit the website so you can “take action.”
“Waiting For ‘Superman’” is both a collection of compelling personal stories and a slightly preachy, somewhat skewed look at our failing educational system. See it for both, but be sure to stay for Anthony’s first day at his new school – it’ll tear your heart out.
Vincent Green has been in education for nearly 20 years. He is a certified music teacher and school administrator in New York State. He regularly leads in-service training for teachers in both technology and music. Check out his blog, DadRevisited.
(Photo: Daisy (right) and her Dad in “Waiting for ‘Superman’” Photo credit: Courtesy of Paramount Pictures. © 2010 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.)
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