Free Waiting For Superman; Reflection Movie Review Example

“Waiting for ‘Superman’” is a powerful documentary movie that highlights and explores the issues and problems with American education system. It brings to fore the failure by schools, teachers, and government to stamp out myriad of problems that students encounter in their pursuit of good education. All the children captured in the documentary have great dreams. For instance, Daisy aspires to be a medic. She has written to one of the colleges to preserve her place. However, Guggenheim is very skeptical about the realization of this dream given the failure rates of most public schools. Guggenheim aptly demonstrates reduced standard of education by giving statistics on 8th grade Mathematics proficiency figures in which only 18% of Alaska students are considered good. The struggle by parents and guardians to give their children good education is well captured in the film. Anthony grandparent intends to give him the best education despite her father’s demise. Bianca’s parents do multiples jobs to keep her in school. She too hopes to educate Bianca up to college. Anthony’s grandparent and Bianca’ mother’s expectations are in conflict with state of affairs in public schools. Anthony, for example, is intending to attend as school that has been labeled “academic sinkhole” by Washington Post yet her grandparent expects good grades. Again, in public schools, teachers do not perform their duties as required. For instance, a teacher informs Francisco’s mother that he would be paid irrespective of whether she works or not. There is a manifestation of lack of confidence in public schools by Guggenheim and parents captured in the movie. This concern is valid given the figures shown in the documentary. Daisy, for instance, is enrolled in a school where 87% of the students are not proficient in Mathematics. Anthony is compelled to repeat grade two because he failed in examinations. Francisco attends a school that is very crowded. The conditions of these schools force the parents to look for their children admission in a charter schools. Unfortunately, there are very few openings in these schools, and there is no guarantee that these disadvantaged children would get admission. The admission is based on humiliating lottery system. Of all the students, discussed in the film, only Emily was successful. Teachers and their unions have been portrayed as one of the actors responsible for the bad state of affairs in public schools. The undercover clip shown in the documentary has pictures of a teacher reading newspapers instead of teaching. The school’s administrator’s attempt to fire a teacher is thwarted by the union. In Lisa Simpson clip, Guggenheim shows how Lisa waits for tenure and once it is granted, she stay away from class and ask her colleague to teach the class instead. Jason Kamras give his views on teachers' tenure by stating that it arose out of abuse of first teachers. He goes on to explain how difficult it is for a teacher to lose his or her job. While it is important to provide job security for teachers, it should be balanced with performance. While it is true that American education system has many failures, these failures are not restricted public schools. All the public schools in this documentary have been portrayed as “failure factories”. On the other hand, Charter and private schools have been depicted as best learning centers where every student is struggling to join. This position does not reflect the true American education system. Indeed, there are many best-performing public schools in US. There are also numerous worst performing chartered schools in the country. Consequently, the documentary has few instances of misrepresentation of facts.