Waiting for Superman

[Abbey Marie]

Has anyone else seen this documentary? I thought it was fairly well done, but missed the boat on the real reasons why one inner city school succeeds, while another fails.

My reasons:
1. The school has a large percentage of students from dysfunctional, often fatherless homes.

2. It is extremely difficult to get rid of kids who don't do the work/are troublemakers.

3. Teachers' Unions/tenure make it nearly impossible to get rid of bad teachers.

The special schools that succeed are, I'll bet, usually the ones who can get rid of any kid who fits one or both of those descriptions.

The documentary did not address the first two points at all; in fact it only showed very concerned parents and nice kids who want to do well. It did shed light on the problem with the unions, though.

Any thoughts?

[avatar4321]

I saw it the other night. I thought it was good. It's good to wake people up to whats going on in the school systems. But you are also correct, i think the missed the boat on a few things.

The broken homes - I think that's one of the biggest factors.

And I didn't like the whole premise behind it. We have to wait for someone else to help us. That's one of the biggest problems! Everyone is waiting, No one is getting off their butt and getting to work!

It's all about getting the piece of paper. That's all that matters. Real knowledge doesn't matter. Instilling a desire to learn doesnt matter. Just get the paper so you can get the job you aren't qualified for. Somehow that fixes all our problems.

No we have to recreate the culture of enlightenment. We have to fix the family and instill in our children a desire to learn and to self educate. And we have to be willing to learn so that we can teach them ourselves.

We need to stop outsourcing everything important to the government.