‘Superman’ = Super Lame, More of Same

If we’re talking about how to get all kids to produce high test scores, we’re having the wrong conversation.
 
I don’t even know where to begin in my critique of “Waiting for Superman.”  I was looking forward to seeing it, hoping it would be all that Oprah and NPR purported it to be.  Instead, I found it to be a male-biased, emotionally manipulative, and uninformed regurgitation of the same old (and I mean old) ideas about educating our youth.

I’ll admit it. I cried through the last half hour in which the film painstakingly drags out the drama of these sweet children waiting on tenterhooks to hear their name or lottery number called, insuring a spot in the “high-performing” school that will save them from certain marginalization and failure.  Of course I cried.  It was designed to make me cry.  But really, we should all be crying about the mistaken conclusions to be drawn from this maudlin movie about the hope for American schools. 

In a nutshell, the film highlights this “Superman” model of education that includes longer school days, a longer school week, high expectations, and good teachers.  This is contrasted with abysmally poor learning environments with slacker teachers, out of control kids, and crumbling buildings.  An expose’ on those schools would be more than fair. However, these “Superman” schools, like Kipp Academy, Seed, and others, are coming up with the right answer to the wrong question. 

Their proof of success is that a much higher percentage of these kids are getting higher test scores, and therefore more are heading to college.  We should all be celebrating, right?  Well, not exactly.  These kids are learning to pass tests. The tests are measuring knowledge and skills that we needed for an economy that no longer exists.  Just because they’re getting into college doesn’t mean they are going to be prepared for the workforce of tomorrow. The film even stated that most recent college graduates are ill-prepared for today’s jobs.  So why, then, laud an educational program that does little else but lead to college, which is still not preparing our youth for an economy that is changing by the minute?  It doesn’t make sense.

When this film wanted to show “high quality teachers” in action, do you know what it showed? Someone pointing to words or numbers on a blackboard.  How is that a visual example of inspired teaching? Oh - or else it showed a teacher crouching down next to a student who was writing something, with the teacher pointing to their paper and asking them a question like, “So what is 5x5?”  This is ridiculous. There was nothing inspiring about any of these showcased teachers.  The only quasi-inspiring moment was when they showed a teacher singing math raps with her kids. Oh, wait. That’s right! She wasn’t a featured teacher. The featured teachers were the two young GUYS who saw her do this and decided to rip off her idea and start Kipp Academies.

Would this be a good time to mention the fact that every “success story” featured a male teacher, even though this is still a predominantly female profession?  Aside from the charismatic rapper teacher mentioned above who got less than 30 seconds of play for her part in inspiring the Kipp boys, the only women educators featured in this film were the union leader and the DC superintendent, both of whom were shown in a predictably bitchy light.  Can it be that the only innovators in education are men?  Really?  Oh, but that’s right. This wasn’t so much about innovation. 

Let’s take the scene in which they show a cartoon of how education is supposed to work. There is a cartoon teacher with a milk container of “knowledge.” A conveyor belt of kids at individual desks with their open flip-top heads move past while she pours in the knowledge.  I thought this was a joke. I thought they were going to reveal how the LAST 30 YEARS OF BRAIN RESEARCH AND LEARNING THEORY HAVE PROVEN THAT THAT’S NOT HOW PEOPLE LEARN. Instead, the film went on to show how this isn’t possible anymore because of bureaucracies and unions, the conclusion being that charter schools were the answer because they could pour the knowledge into the kids without too much intervention.  What???!!!  

There is so much to be said about what our children will need in order to be productive citizens 15-20 years from now, and most of it is guess-work.  What is certain is that conformity, standardization, and outdated content knowledge will not serve in the least.  If we’re talking about how to get all kids to produce high test scores, we’re having the wrong conversation.

If you want to be entertained and educated on the matter in only eleven very captivating minutes, watch this: