Back   OpEd News
Font
PageWidth
Original Content at
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Movie-Review-Waiting-for-by-Rob-Kall-101009-98.html
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

October 9, 2010

Movie Review: Waiting for Superman; Are Teachers Unions Education's Big Problem?

By Rob Kall

After hearing about it from many sources, including, in my interview with Arianna Huffington, I decided I needed to see Waiting For Superman. When it comes to movies, I want to entertained. So I tend to resist paying to see documentaries. I'm glad I did go to see this one. It made me cry... a lot. It is touching, heart wrenching, infuriating. You must see it. then act.

::::::::


After hearing about it from many sources, including, in my interview with Arianna Huffington, I decided I needed to see Waiting For Superman.

When it comes to movies, I want to entertained. So I tend to resist paying to see documentaries. I'm glad I did go to see this one.

It made me cry... a lot. It is touching, heart wrenching, infuriating. You must see it. then act.

The movie is directed by Davis Guggenheim, who also directed Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

The movie tells several stories-- how schools and school districts are destroying people, neighborhoods, even our economy. It walks us through the lives of several parents and their kids who are in schools that have failed, schools that literally hurt children, as John Taylor Gatto, former best teacher in NYC, has said, dumbs them down.

The movie weaves stories of teachers unions with the story of Michelle Rhee's efforts to reform the Washington D.C. failed school system. It reaches its peak message showing real parents and their children waiting, as the balls drop, to see if they make it, by pure chance, into the charter schools that will give the kids an opportunity to break out of the failed school cycle.

Here's the conversation I had with Arianna Huffington about Waiting for Superman, the day before I went to see it. (The interview focused on her new, excellent book, THIRD WORLD AMERICA; How Our Politicians Are Abandoning The Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream

RK: ...one of the areas that you say is most important is education and you mention the new movie that is just out. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

AH: I write about the release of Waiting for Superman which basically, in a very evocative, powerful way connects us to the crisis in education. We all know that again our public schools are failing our children, that there are many good public schools, but there are also many dysfunctional public schools. We all know that there are many phenomenal teachers, but also there are teachers who cannot teach who nevertheless have tenure and continue to teach children. And you know we have this phenomenon where only 1 in 2500 teachers is ever fired compared to 1 in 37 or 1 in 67 lawyers and doctors so clearly there is something askew here.

We have not again brought that sense of urgency that Geoffrey Canada who is turning lives around in Harlem is bringing into the movie and when you see the lottery that takes place in the movie for children to be able to leave their dysfunctional public schools and go to a decent public charter school nearby, you see that the middle class American dream has beame of chance, literallcome a gy.

RK: You know, it's interesting because just a couple of weeks ago I interviewed John Taylor Gatto who is an award-winning, the best teacher of the year for New York City and then New York State and he wrote a couple of books about how schools dumb us down. You and he describe the same thing, how the history of American education comes from the Prussian educational model, preparing students to be obedient soldiers and compliant citizens and that that's what our schools are still working to do and really what you talk about is how they really have to drastically change and just doing that anymore is just no good for America. So, where should it go?

AH: Well, first of all, we need to acknowledge that right now we cannot possibly continue to fail our children. I mean we need to all agree that what passed as education reform, the Leave No Child Behind Act, was really a sham. It was exactly a bipartisan coming together that did not address the problem and that is what our system is capable of producing, it appears, just bipartisan sham. So now we really need to challenge those who stand in the way. If teachers unions stand in the way because of tenure that needs to be addressed. You know I think the President is doing some really good things here, the Race to the Top is a really good step forward. We see a real tipping point here. The people and parents are organizing, the movie is capturing people's attention and really the movie is incredibly pro-teacher. We need to make that very clear. It just acknowledges that we need to separate the good teachers from those that need to find another different job.

(thanks to Cheryl Biren for transcribing the full interview, which will be published Sunday, October 10, and broadcast on the radio October 13th.)

I walked out, after the film ended, with the impression that teachers unions that put teachers first, not students, are the problem. Their contracts prevent public schools from evaluating teachers, let alone firing them. Those stats Arianna mentions are increclick heredible-- one in 2500 compared to .one in 37 or one in 67 fired.

I posted a brief comment on facebook, saying I liked the movie, and was surprised to see some commenters attack the movie-- saying it's anti-public school, anti-teacher.

I disagree. Here's what I replied:

Anti-public education? I didn't see that. I saw that public education is hamstrung by contracts with unions, so NO form of teacher assessment is allowed. It covered Michelle Rhee's efforts to reform the D.C. school system.

It covered NY City's "rubber room" where bad teachers are sent at full pay, at a cost of $100 million a year, because union contracts don't allow them to be fired.

I left feeling teachers unions conflate student need with teacher job security need. An attack on teachers unions is not an attack on education.

BTW, the link you provide make claims about the movie that are totally untrue, like the movie advocates to put billions into private schools.

I finished watching the movie feeling that public schools need to be rescued from teachers unions, that teachers unions were misguided and one of the prime causes of our educational system problems.

One article attacks the movie as advocating for putting millions into private schools. I don' think it does that. I think it gives us good reasons for pressuring unions to make major changes. Protections for teachers should be tempered with protections for students and accountability for teachers.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.


Check out his platform at RobKall.com


He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity


He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com


more detailed bio:


Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.


Rob Kall Wikipedia Page


Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel


Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel


Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.


Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.


To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.


For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.


Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..


To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.


Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.


His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.


Join the conversation:


On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution


and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation





Back