Posted by Ian Sole on October 25, 2010 0 Comments

Yesterday afternoon was absolutely gorgeous here in central Virginia but I decided to spend it inside a packed cinema to view a provocative documentary by the same director of Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim. While leaving me angry and frustrated I’m glad I went.

 The film, “Waiting for Superman” is an exploration of the failure of the public education system in the wealthiest country in the world. It paints a bleak, but sadly to me at least, not an unsurprising view of education standards across the USA. By just about any measure the US falls at or near the bottom of the tables for math and reading proficiency compared to developed and even some under-developed countries around the world, and the drop-out rate among students attending college is now at an all-time high. It presented a plethora of troublesome statistics and reviewed efforts by successive governments and education specialists to affect positive change. But bottom line, despite high rhetoric and a host of presidential initiatives dating back to Johnson and aimed at improving the situation, we have fundamentally failed. We have failed to deliver the education our children and our country needs to compete in the global economy and much of the world is about to eat our lunch.

www.waitingforsuperman.com

What’s at stake here is portrayed through the lives and aspirations of 5 young kids and nowhere more dramatically than in the heart-wrenching scenes at the various state lotteries. Here they wait with their parents in the sheer and simple hope of gaining a place at one of the successful “alternative schools” which through the usual combination of visionary Principals and inspirational teachers have bucked the trend and realized outstanding results. Only one however gets in and you could hear the sobs and groans throughout the theater as each child reacts to their dreams being dashed. How can this be possible in such a wealthy nation? How could we have reached this pitiful situation?

There is plenty of blame to go around of course, and the movie holds back few punches in its depiction of the unions and their leadership as a large part of the problem, particularly with regards tenure and it spends a good deal of time following the efforts of the highly controversial Michelle Rhee in her efforts to shake things up in Washington DC. (Rhee resigned on October 13^th shortly after her primary backer, Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his bid for re-election and has launched her own website, twitter and facebook pages to continue the dialog on over-hauling the US education system)

As the film ends we are thrown a lifeline when one of these precious kids, having initially failed to win a place at a highly coveted SEED school , receives a call telling him that a place has been found. The sense of relief and exhilaration in the audience was palpable, but to me misguided. It gave the impression that all will be well. Everything will work out fine in the end. We can all go back to our private lives and not worry any more.

But that’s not true. We need to be worried. We need to be very worried. Public education for whatever reason or reasons is failing our children and unless changed dramatically for the better it will fail their children and the continued decline of America to that of a second or even third rate country will become a reality. Just as with several other crucial issues facing the country today – the environment; health care; poverty levels; religious extremism to name just a few, education must be tackled now. In fact I would argue it trumps all other issues in its affect on our long term well being.

A few may challenge the premise of the movie. Some may argue with the causes and many will have different ideas as to the best solutions. But none should argue the urgency of the situation.

I’d like to hear what you have to say. Post your comments here or at our twitter or facebook pages.

My son is now 9 years old. He can’t afford to wait for Superman forever! And nor can America.