Review of Waiting for "Superman" (2010) by Andres V — 21 Mar 2011

As a teacher, this crap kinda pissed me off. I don't know where they get off saying bad teachers are the only problem with education. At no point did they address bad parenting, government spending, lack of college preparation for teachers, influence of society, blah blah blah. While I do agree that bad teachers and the unions are holding us back, that is a tiny part of the problem.

It doesn't take much for a good teacher to become a bad teacher. Just take a peak at what they have to deal with. To start, most college professors that are supposed to prepare us to be teachers have never even been in a classroom. At most they have been teachers for 2 years each. That's just long enough to realize it sucks to be in the classroom with kids that don't want to be there. Then, once we do graduate and move on, we are unprepared and over-motivated.

And how do you expect to get the cream of the crop to want to be teachers when they don't get paid squat? When you have someone who is brilliant at math, why would that person want to teach for 40k a year when they could go on to make somewhere in the 100k range.

Then there is the fact that society does not value education like it once did. Students don't care, especially if there parents don't care. All we care about in the USA is who Justin Timberlake is dating. It's shameful. I have students whose parents are some of the biggest pieces of crap you will ever meet. I had one kid who said his mom told him to hit me if I ever bothered him again. All I ever ask of a student is to fallow the rules, do your work, and don't be an asshole. But believe it or not, that's really hard for some people.

Laws are used and sometimes abused by hippie loving tree-huggers that love everyone. It's hard to learn or teach when there are criminals sitting in your classroom. There are kids who have killed people, own guns, steal, bully, and cuss like sailors that are forced to come to school. Then I am forced to teach that student and put up with their crap. I feel like a fireman at work. The minute I put out one fire, a bigger one goes up on the other side of the room. The kids don't want to be in school and their behavior reflects that.

If you want to know why kids are so screwed up, just look at MTV. Everyone wants to be a gangster or a whore on "The Real World". These kids don't understand anything bout their bodies or sexuality. They are so horny and wild, there is no such thing as gay or straight. They will just rub it on anything. School has become a social club, rather than a place of learning. Half the shows on TV seem to revolve around high school culture. But when you watch the shows, the majority of the story takes place in the halls or the Cafeteria. You almost never see the inside of a classroom. And when you do, the kids are always acting out or just not paying any attention. I used to think that art imitates life, but now I am seeing it the other way around. I think kids and even a lot of adults are looking towards art to learn to to live. Everyone wants to live out what happens in the movies, but that's just not reality.

I also think we are pushing way too much technology on students. Nobody has to learn how to spell, because we have spell check. We have calculators that could fly us to the moon, but my students can't memorize 1/2 of 50 is 25.

Getting back to the movie, it was just very insulting to sit there and listen to them go on about how bad teachers are. It was like that's the only problem in schools. But, On the other hand, I did appreciate learning about the unions and their role in ruining education. If I wasn't a teacher, and didn't know anything about their problems, I would have watched this and thought it was a great documentary. Instead I watched and I knew how badly they missed the mark.