A few months ago, I wrote a piece for a different blog about the documentary “Waiting for Superman” in which I forecasted how educators should see this movie upon its release to be part of the conversation that I felt was sure to emerge about school conditions. It didn’t.
I finally was able to watch the film myself, having to wait until it hit Netflix, as it didn’t receive cinema privilege around here, and I must say I was underwhelmed. Davis Guggenheim did a good job of piecing together social, financial, emotional, and political facts that should not shock any educator. It was like watching my own frustrating professional awakening in teaching. I suppose that is good because the previews alluded to a film that demonized teachers on whole, further demoralizing an occupation that really won’t benefit children from more of that.
If the movie identified a boogeyman, as I first expected, it was much more subtle and less predictable. The boogeyman is the irony of the mismatched beliefs our society claims and the actions we actually take regarding public education. It seems our nature to create problems for children that are centered on solutions for adults. For the past three years, I have been researching and learning about the demands of society for better public schools and the knowledge that exists in academia, and among teachers themselves, for creating effective solutions for kids. Somewhere in the mix our political system, with its contradictory requirements and inequitable funding issues, provides opportunities for us to grandly forgo the ends and means we want and could have been using en mass for a decade at least.
I sit in a peculiar position, involved in this system as teacher, researcher, and citizen-customer all at once. I feel like I can appreciate the various viewpoints, but I surely do not have all of the answers. My wish for a compromise is that we all consider those many viewpoints for the good each brings to kids (all kids), not for the way they offend our individual values. If our values are really about all kids, as we publicly espouse, our actions would become more consistent, less about adults. We wouldn’t need a superhero and the boogeyman wouldn’t be us.