Review of Waiting for "Superman" (2010) by Emily Y — 07 May 2011

Every documentary seemingly has a slanted view, but I thought this film was a well-rounded informative documentary that ultimately left me infuriated with the foundational structure of education in the US and more specifically teachers' unions inability to address needed change for the sake of 'not pointing fingers at the less-than-stellar teachers'. Heaven forbid someone be held accountable for actually teaching at a high standard. WTH?

Tenure needs to be reevaluated, not done away with, but not guaranteed after such a short amount of time, and should have additional requirements. The concept of tenure was never made to be an easy accomplishment, so why is it now?

I appreciate that the film directly points out the glaringly obvious flaws within the educational system and leaves the question as to why we haven't bothered to fix them yet, while at the same time those same money, power, and control hungry leaders sit on the sidelines and continue to complain about the growing epidemic that is drop-out students and 'failing' schools.

At the end of the film, I was left wondering many things. One being, why the hell people become teachers in the first place if you don't embrace the desire to want to impact kids' lives in a drastically positive way?!? I'm not quite sure why you'd ever enter this field if you're an apethetic person to begin with. Anyway, this film definitely raises plenty of thoughts, questions, ideas, and food-for-thought. Well done Guggenheim, well done.