Waiting for Superman? Stop.

Waiting For Superman is a School “documentary” exploring problems within public education.  

Complain about education and potential solutions? Pay attention to the sway of blame and responsibility. Listen for words like- principal, superintendent, and the president of the US. An understandable reaction. However, the more you, me, we, students deflect and blame, we perpetuate the current status quo. This concept is magnified in “Waiting For Superman”.

Funded by the Koch Brothers, the message is clear- teacher unions are a root cause of ‘failing’ schools.  Unions protect a bad teacher vs. a ‘high-performing’ teacher. 

"Students with high-performing teachers progressed three times as fast as those with low performing teachers. A bad teacher covers only fifty percent of the required curriculum in a school year. A good teacher can cover up to 150%.”

Questions: Is that a good thing? What required curriculum?  Who writes this required curriculum? Who funds the required curriculum? Who benefits from this required curriculum?  A good teacher does not question the curriculum? A good teacher obeys? 

The Koch creed is- starve public education, make it bleed so BM’s (business model’s) can feed their greed.  

There is a lottery system? Kids who are smart enough to get into college but don’t have the funds- gamble for their future.

Let’s think about this- a society that has intelligent kids that can’t afford higher education. And a society in which some kids that can afford an education might not necessarily be astute.  

Now riddle me this- what kind of society are we going to have?  What kind of society do we have?  what kind of society do you want?  Is it in the curriculum? 

Waiting for Superman or the Ubermensch? Two totally different conversations if only we had the time….  and curriculum.