The documentary Waiting for “Superman,” directed by Davis Guggenheim, is a film that shows how school systems are today. This film follows five children and documents them to see what their lives and schools are like. These students range in age from first graders to eighth graders. They also all live in different areas of the country, including California, Washington D.C., and New York. During the production of the documentary, Guggenheim found evidence showing that many teachers are bad instructors and that many schools are failing to educate their students.
Additionally, she believes that Guggenheim uses incorrect evidence and deliberately omits certain statistics in order to advance the film’s propaganda. Ravitch attacks several of Guggenheim’s “facts”, such as in the subject areas of poverty, the link between teachers and student achievement, student academic performance, and international educational methodology. In terms of this film’s many pieces of false data, Ravitch states: “Perhaps the greatest distortion in this film is its misrepresentation of data about student academic performance. The film claims that 70 percent of eight-grade students cannot read at grade level. This is flatly wrong.
In the documentary, Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim discusses the defects of the United States Public Education. Guggenheim interviews influential educators that bring their ideas and opinions regarding the education. Throughout the documentary, Guggenheim also presents five students whose are trying to get accepted into charter schools so they can have a better education than what they would receive in a public school. After watching this documentary, I was astounded by statistics and revelations about the United State Public schools systems. Although, I graduated from a public school and plan to work in a public school this documentary shed some light into what I will be facing in this academic
Waiting on Superman follows the struggles of Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, where Emily is the only white student from a well funded suburban neighborhood (Guggenheim). The others come from communities where “failure factories” are common. Because of financial burdens, most of them cannot attend a private school so they rely on charter schools to get good educations (Guggenheim). Their cases exhibit the disproportionate rate at which good schools are available for their differing neighborhoods. The film only shows only two are accepted to their perspective charter schools; Emily who is white and Anthony a black student who got accepted on a waitlist.
The effect of parents bringing kids into poverty are endless because there are endless reasons why people are in poverty. 13.4 percent of children were born into poverty which means there is a higher percentage of kids that were not born into it but are now in it(Breslow,2018 para 9). Kids do not make money or if they are old enough to get a job they still don't pay all the bills or have to provide for other people. The parents are the main source of income for these kids in poverty, it does not mean it was their fault because they could have lost their jobs or have been in poverty for their entire lives. There are parents who are at fault because of their drug addiction, lack of managing money, or because they do not consider their kids in their
This feature was able convey the message to the audience very effectively for example; the scene in which the officer is pointing towards the camera “You will not laugh, you will not cry” is sending a message of control and dominance. The director was able to position the shot from a below the eye-level shot, in which the camera is placed below, from the trainees perspective. This shot was an important element for control, dominance, and shows the Sargent being very superior. Secondly, the editing of this film was very progressive, and starts to build up towards the end. In addition, the framing of most of the shots was mostly track in and track out, primarily to focus on the subject.
They have developed a dark sense of humor that is evident through their dialogue throughout the whole documentary. Riding on the topic of poverty, parents do not have the money to support their artistic endeavors. It is also saddening to see that most of the parents are broken by their poverty, and resort to selling their children and taking their anger out on them. Another thing that was pointed out was that the root causes of poverty were addiction to drugs and alcohol. Therefore, children have a social stigma and cannot be easily accepted into school, because of their parents’
I thought that this movie was a good movie with graphics and historical accuracy, but this just is not the kind of movies that I am personally into. If you are into this kind of stuff I believe you would be able to follow this much more than I was able to. In conclusion, this movie was a good movie that is historically accutrate on what really
Though, as one breaks it down one can see that it does not follow the stereotypical princess story. This plays to the movies advantage because it draws in moviegoers of all ages to it. Those who are younger will be entranced by the colorful landscapes shown on the screen, while the older crowd will love the storyline and the action depicted. Conversely, scenery plays an important role in the movie’s action scenes. The cliffs where Inigo duels Dread Pirate Robert for the first time leaves the watcher on the edge of their seats, wondering who is going to come out unscarthed.
Not only the narrative method but also the shooting angle and lighting setting make contribution to the real reflection and immersive feeling. A. Narrative Method The film builds up a tree-like narrative structure with characters as the main body and events interconnecting with characters as decorations. It mitigates the dramatized effect, weakens binary opposite elements, like the past and the future, life and death, and facts and false appearance. Then it combines the emotions of characters, like absurdity and helplessness of a single life, with the natural and unadorned narration.