By Waiting for ‘Superman’ is a thought-provoking film about the American school system, its failings and the measures taken to correct them. Earlier this year, the producers behind Davis Guggenheim’s (An Inconvenient Truth) latest outing launched a unique campaign to promote their documentary. Paramount Pictures asked people to pledge to see the film, implying that the more people who see it, the better chance America’s schoolchildren have of getting a better education.
The campaign has made good on the promise in one sense: it has surpassed its most recent fundraising goal. (I didn’t pledge, because as a Canadian, I would only be a supporter in name, not the tax-paying way.) However, I would have to know a lot more about the American government to truly assess the success of this film in getting its message across. I am going to give it the old college try.
As Guggenheim shows, the state of the school system is the product of intersecting factors involving ineffective policy, bloated union contracts, and a combination of apathy and ignorance going back over decades. I think it’s an important issue and deserves both the same accountability in my reviewing the film’s portrayal of it, as…
Waiting for 'Superman' is a thought-provoking film about the American school system, its failings and the measures taken to correct them. Earlier this year, the producers behind Davis Guggenheim’s (An Inconvenient Truth) latest outing launched a unique campaign to promote their documentary. Paramount Pictures asked people to pledge to see the film, implying that the more people who see it, the better chance America’s schoolchildren have of getting a better education.
The campaign has made good on the promise in one sense: it has surpassed its most recent fundraising goal. (I didn’t pledge, because as a Canadian, I would only be a supporter in name, not the tax-paying way.) However, I would have to know a lot more about the American government to truly assess the success of this film in getting its message across. I am going to give it the old college try.
As Guggenheim shows, the state of the school system is the product of intersecting factors involving ineffective policy, bloated union contracts, and a combination of apathy and ignorance going back over decades. I think it’s an important issue and deserves both the same accountability in my reviewing the film’s portrayal of it, as the documentary should be obligated to give to audiences. It is not lost on me that this is a film made by for-profit companies, for profit. I think Guggenheim and his associates are, therefore, obligated to make good on their audience’s investment. With a far more important message to disclose than many of the other documentaries circulating right now, this isn’t entertainment.
Read the review after the jump.
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Geoffrey Canada (pictured), the charismatic education lobbyist and teacher, provides the framing metaphor for this film. “Superman” is the solution that’s never coming; the reality of the American class system that says that some win and some can’t play the game. That’s the insurmountable impression that Guggenheim begins his film with and increases with statistics that show more than half of each state’s children falling behind, counter to the very promises made with the No Child Left Behind Act signed by George W. Bush in 2000. While systemic issues seem impenetrable by nature, I expected Guggenheim to show more positivity to public reform–where viewers-as-voters have the most control–instead of championing privately-funded solutions.
The film focuses prominently on the advent of charter school systems, public schools that promise higher-than average test scores of their students and receive private funding. Charter schools do not charge tuition, but are forced to run a lottery for admissions due to limited space. Guggenheim chooses not to tell the inconvenient truth that class and race inequity is another factor affecting children’s education. In this future-thinking documentary, I guess there wasn’t time to explain why or how low-income neighbourhoods–ghettos–take shape, and the corresponding education gap between these neighbourhoods and middle-class communities. Guggenheim instead takes the illustrative approach, featuring four visible minorities among the five children he follows in their attempts to get admitted to charter schools. This is a movie about checks and balances that’s a little too black and white. Add to that a blatant, WASP-y confession by Guggenheim about his decision to enroll his kids in private school (he went to one as well), and it becomes more clear why some are questioning the film’s motives.
Guggenheim spends some time with Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools system of Washington, D.C. Rhee made headlines for making effective but unpopular decisions, incensing the American teacher’s unions in particular. Part of Guggenheim’s message is that large-scale systems are too big to manage, hence the positive portrayal of the more intimate, individually run charter schools and the poor grade it gives the unions. Protective union laws and guaranteed salaries mean that some teachers rest on their laurels, and the gaps in education continue to widen, so that millions of school children enter high school two or three years behind their peers, eventually dropping out. Still, race and class remain unacknowledged, and public schools are treated as an amorphous category that denies geographic and ethnic dispersal.
Bill Gates is featured in the movie telling Congress how bad this is for America’s economic future in a competitive global economy. A just point that rings nonetheless of capitalist concern. With a private hand in the public school system, the film suggests, America can kill two birds with one stone. Guggenheim is never so explicit with what to do with the system itself, and doesn't tackle the role of the political process in reforming schools. (For some reason, this call to action was saved for the website instead of the more motivating visual medium.)
It is counter-intuitive to worry that a nation can’t represent itself accordingly on the international stage, then suggest that it’s not worthy of teaching its own children. I see a Catch-22 developing where private donors are motivated to support schools out of global economic interest and not the interest of the children, whose individual and civic identities are at stake. A child’s tears tells you there is no Superman. But then, just to confuse us, Guggenheim uses the too-tidy metaphor that if America can break the sound barrier, America’s school systems can be fixed. He just forgot to say how.
Oh wait, no he didn’t: Vote Obama. Though there is no denying that Guggenheim is a good storyteller, this film is too ambiguous when it comes right down to its central theme–whether or not there is a Superman solution–and too well-timed to the mid-term elections not to have an agenda.
Overall Score: 6.95 – Okay. (6s are just okay. These movies usually have many flaws, didn’t try to do anything special, or were poorly executed. Some will still love 6s, but most prefer to just rent them. Watch more trailers and read more reviews before you decide)
See this movie, but weigh Guggenheim's messages carefully. While it raises an important issue, Waiting for 'Superman' leaves you with unsatisfactory answers to big questions.
[NY Review of Books via Movieline; via Waiting for Superman]