Anybody see it? Thoughts? Change anyone’s mind about anything?
Speaking as someone who very, very much inclined to agree with the film’s conclusions, I was quite disappointed. I thought it wandered a lot and could have had much more structure. I thought a nine-minute History of American Public Education slipped in somewhere in the middle would have explained a lot of the problems (e.g. it talks about bureaucratic bloat, but could have made that point more clear by explaining how education was done 200 years ago, the formation of public schools, and how we got here).
Finally, I thought the ending was far, far too weak. We kept hearing how “we know what needs to be done,” but instead of letting the people it presents as having the answers (Geoffrey Canada, etc) say in blunt terms what needs to be done, we instead got vague platitudes about “leaders need the courage to change” and “we all need to care more.”
As I told my wife, the conclusion of Roger Ebert’s review was that we need to spend more money: if an intelligent person can watch that film and still conclude that spending more money is what’s called for, either that reviewer is amazingly thickheaded, or the film has failed to explain its main points adequately.
Your thoughts?
Note that this is a CS thread: I’m looking for discussion of the film itself, and it’s effectiveness and presentation of the issues, not so much the underlying issues themselves.
I’m not going to try to distill that article, so I’ll just add this thought:
We did spend less money on education once. We also used to have many children stop at eighth grade, treat teaching as a job for young women, have a system based more on book learning than lab learning, & have a comparatively poor level of science education. And that’s aside from the rise of living wage theory…
But Ebert’s review wasn’t arguing that the movie was inaccurate or wrong; he gave it 3 1/2 stars and gave no indication that he found its arguments less than compelling … but then offers his own solution, which is very, very different from what I took the film’s to be.
That suggests to me a movie that has failed to make its point to the people it’s trying to reach.
I’m a part of many networks invested in this film - I went to Geoffrey Canada’s graduate alma mater (we even shared the dais at commencement), I used to visit the KIPP Academy in Houston (and play pick up hoops with the founder, Mike Feinberg). Anyway, I was invited to a screening and panel discussion with some significant mucky mucks in the education community. (I had to actually leave after the film, though, so I didn’t get to hear the panelists speak.)
So - overall, I think it was a good film, especially for those who aren’t really clued in as to what is happening in public schools. I read and research in this area, so I knew much of this already.
I really liked the discussion of structural inequity (how tracking once served a purpose, but belies the idea that all children can learn, the feminization of teaching). I didn’t like the focus on firing bad teachers. I feel it sort of falls into that two-minute-here’s-how-you-fix-education conversation that politicians and talk show hosts throw out. Certainly there are bad teachers out there. But there are far more poorly trained, unsupported, and overtaxed teachers, IMO. For every ridiculous abuse of union protection, there are a number of legitimate uses of due process and protection.
The Michelle Rhee as the savior of public education bit… I also thought that was a little dangerous. I haven’t spent a lot of time studying her tenure as DC schools chancellor, but having studied organizational theory I saw a lot of problems with her approach. I certainly applaud her efforts and admire much of what she did, but I didn’t really see how she attempted to build coalitions and create support from the community in her reform efforts. (True story: I was trained in the classroom by her ex-husband. Never met her though, and they seem really different personality-wise.)
I wish the film had pulled in publicly elected officials to discuss their complicity in funding corrections at alarming rates, but cutting spending on education. I also think the emphasis on charter schools being the answer was problematic, as there are excellent public district schools as well. While there was a mention that not all charter schools are successful, I think the impression left was that the only way to improve education was to get your kid in a charter. I think the kids profiled in the documentary have the kind of parents that are going to give them the best shot at achieving academic success, whether they get into Super Charter School or remain at a district school.
Which public officials have increased spending on corrections and cut spending on education, overall? Or did you mean “cut” in the sense of 'not increased as much as…"?
And once again: as they explained early on, we haven’t cut spending on education. We spend way, way more than we used to.
The first line of defense of the status quo is always “we just need to spend more money.” If the film is going to strike a serious blow against that status quo, they needed to be much more clear on that point.