Waiting for Superman a Review

In this over-hyped, recently-released documentary claiming to have some insight into the failings of America's public schools and what we should do about it, Davis Guggenheim points his finger at some villians, anoints the solution-givers and generally whines about the imminent danger to American global leadership of our public school system. It is a rant that has been going on at least as long as A Nation At Risk (1982) and, before that, to the time in 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik. Hm. Maybe it goes back further, to the Catholic criticism of the public schools in the 1850s as being cradles of Protestantism, to Francis Wayland's criticism of the "classical curriculum" in higher education in the 1830s. Hm...I guess it goes back to the Stoic criticism of Plato's Academy---but in those days, when America wasn't even a glimmer in the eye of the most forward-looking person, people were talking about the stifling influence of the doctrine of the Forms on philosophical thinking.

Well, to come back to the present--the villians Guggenheim identifies are the teachers unions. His solution-givers are Michelle Rhee--who just resigned from the position she held as Superintendent of the DC schools when the movie was filmed--and Geoffrey Canada, whose flagship institution in Harlem has just come under fire from critics regarding the actual student achievements in that school. In my judgment Guggenheim has neither told his history well, diagnosed the problem clearly or put forth a convincing solution. Other than that, it is a wonderful movie.

Perhaps the strongest contribution of the movie will be to add two people to the pantheon of celebrities in America--Rhee and Canada. Actually, come to think of it, with the passing of Ernest Boyer in the 1990s and the superannuation of William Bennett in the past decade, American education has been stripped of its celebrities. Now, thanks to Guggenheim, we now are safe on that score; now we will see Rhee and Canada appear all over the place giving wise suggestions on education that will lead others knowingly to nod their heads, whether or not anyone really knows what is going on.

One Good Idea

There was one good idea in the movie, an idea that passed so quickly that it was probably overlooked by most, including the producers of the film. It was that after WWII the American public education system was based on a "tracking" model, with the top 20% or so of students being "tracked" for university education, a like number being "tracked" for more blue collar positions and the rest educated in various home arts or to prepare for other careers. In other words, the American public education system was never meant to be one where a majority of the kids went on to and graduated from four year colleges. In the past 20 years, however, the emphasis stemming from WA DC as well as from the structure of the American employment market is that we need a more highly educated citizenry. In "buzz terms," we have gone from a manufacturing to an information to a "post-information" age, and our students need to be clever symbol manipulators or information providers.

If the maker of the film had thought deeply about this insight, it might have led him to think about what we might want from our education system today. For it is only after we pose and answer that basic question can that we decide on the kind of system we want. Unfortunately, since no one was able to frame the question, we didn't get any answers or, differently said, the answers proposed in the film related to testing, accountability of teachers, student performance and discipline. That is all fine and good, but if the weapons one is firing are BB guns and the war is against a nuclear-armed foe, then one will lose the war every time. Thus, the primary fault of the movie was its inability even to ask the basic question: what really do we want out of our school systems? Since Guggenheim seemingly has no clue about that one, he is subject to the predictable words of people like Bill Gates, who appears only to intone words 90% of which you probably could have guessed had you turned off the volume when he spoke.

Thus, we have a movie with no real understanding of the problem, and of no understanding of what the goal should be. Is it to get minority kids out of poverty? Good aim. Is it to break the entrenched power of unions? Debate on that one. Is it to make sure kids do well on tests? Possibly important. So we don't know.

The Real Answer

As I have argued at length in my 2010 book It's All the Basics: Teaching & Learning for the 21st Century, the twin towers of education in our day should be the realization that education needs to focus on "the basics," as I define them there, and that the central operational point is that schools should be centers of learning. I always listen when educators talk, and rarely to I hear them say the word "learning." I don't know why, but I speculate that the reason that the word "learning" is not on their lips is that learning is not a daily discipline for them in their own lives. Every artist I have ever heard speak, speaks about creation, about technique, about things that inspire or aid in creativity. No "educator" I listen to speaks of learning. They may speak about "education," about "outcomes" about "merit pay" or a host of other issues on the education political front burner today, but no one talks about learning.

If we don't know what we are talking about, then we can't hope for many positive results. We might get a few impulsive starts here and there, motivated by charismatic people or people who have a good idea or two, but eventually things founder or are simply shlucked up or incorporated weakly in the dominant education culture of the day.

Conclusion

Thus, the film, even though it showed a fleeting glimpse of my old high school, really doesn't deserve the hype or even much attention. This is too bad, especially since Guggenheim has written all over it the desire to be taken so seriously. He truly wants to create a revolution from this film, even encouraging us to text some number, it was either 666 or 777 or something like that, to let him and others know that we have joined the revolution. Oh how I wish there was someone out there saying something interesting and even slightly compelling about education in our day...

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