I had been hearing bits a pieces about this documentary on the radio for the past few months; the subject matter sounded very interesting. It was an expose’ of the educational system (grades 1 thru 12) in this county. More to the point, it was an expose’ of the failure of the educational system in this country.
The difference in this documentary and all the other stories that has been published about this problem is, this documentary did not blame the Republicans for being cold hearted and not allocating enough money for this resource.
The documentary rightly explains in detail how the two main teachers unions are only concerned with keeping more teachers employed regardless of their teaching ability or their desire to actually teach the kids.
I’m not saying all teachers fall into this category; my niece was a great teacher who made a difference in some of the worst inner city environments you can get. She is now advanced her career into school administration and has the challenge of dealing with the teachers unions whose main focus is maintaining their own power base instead of education.
WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, deals with this subject in detail, it follows the travails of 4 young inner-city children whose parents actually care about their kids education.
These parents know that the mainstream public schools are lost causes with a few caring teachers sparsely spread out among the rest who just want to piss the day away until it’s quitting time. These classes consists of teachers reading the newspaper while kids text on their cell phones, or shoot dice in the back if the room, or whatever.
I can’t speak to the prevalence of this problem throughout the country. I do have one good example however.
Several years ago I was training a young black man who had immigrated from Sierra Leone, he spoke the “King’s English” more properly than I did, he was also very polite and seemed genuinely interested in learning the heating/cooling trade.
We were working on an air-conditioner in the inner city. The homeowner who was an older black lady, was enquiring about this young man and where he came from. I told her all about him and she said” he seems like a very well mannered young man and very intelligent and willing to learn". I agreed with her assessment and she told me she was a retired schoolteacher that had spent decades in Indy's very large school system. She looked at the young man and shook her head and told me “ a boy like that would be eaten alive in our school system”. I was shocked by her candor and I really didn’t know how to respond to her statement and remain politically correct.
The full impact of what that woman said to me didn’t sink in until I had clocked out for the day and had a little time to process her words.
What she had told me in so many words was this young man was better off getting an education in a diamond fueled war torn basket case of a country like Sierra Leone, than in the public schools in the heartland of America!
I don’t mean to generalize, I know the brutality of Sierra Leone, the blood diamonds, the kidnapping and slavery, the monstrous rebels who hacked off arms and legs of innocent men, women and children, but somehow this young man received a decent education in that mess and even learned to speak English better than most people that live here.
Conversely, I am sure there are some fine public schools here in America that are doing a good job teaching kids despite the overly intrusive teachers unions.
The governor of Wisconsin has his hands full trying to fix the budget problems of his state. He is being savagely opposed by all the public unions, two of which are the powerful teachers unions, the N.E.A. and the A.F.T
It’s a vicious cycle, the teachers pay unions so they will get them tenured, which means they can be the worst teacher in the world and never be fired, the union bosses crawl in bed with the liberal Democrats and give them money to reelect corrupt politicians, who in turn allocate more and more taxpayer money to the public school systems so the corrupt unions can skim off much of that money for themselves and the unionized teachers no matter how incompetent they may be.
The problem with this chain of “tails wagging the dogs” is, no where in this circle of insane money and power is there any consideration of why they are supposed to be here and that is: TO TEACH OUR DAMNED KIDS!!!!!!.
Sorry, seems I have been chasing rabbits again, back to the main theme of this blog and that is the reception of two different documentaries. Waiting For Superman, which was a very well written and produced factual account of the dire condition of public education in this country that was soundly panned by critics and ignored by the Academy.
Compared with how the fairly tale “An Inconvenient Truth” was glorified by the left winged media and lavished with awards even getting the dim witted narrator, a Nobel Prize.
Well they may as well give Nobel Prizes in boxes of Cracker Jacks anymore. That documen no strike that, that semi-fictional “B” movie was full of junk science and even stole the computer generated melting ice cap scene from the movie “The Day After Tomorrow”!
Well is it possible that the filmmaker of one film had more talent than the other? Doubt it, the same guy who did the Inconvenient Bullshit movie also did Waiting for Superman.
The difference in reception of this latest documentary by the left is because it didn’t fit the narrative of the left winged belief system.
This fact must have left the filmmaker of both films, Davis Guggenheim scratching his head. He has to be thinking” I make a documentary that is actual bullshit with a numbskull for a narrator and they rain awards and heap praise on me, then I make a factual and important documentary that could help millions of kids get a proper education and now I’m the redheaded step-child????”
If you get the chance to watch Waiting For Superman, it is well worth the 102 minutes of your life. Even if you already understand how messed up public education in this country is, this film will put things into proper context and make you realize what needs to be done about it.
That chain of “tails wagging the dogs” is the biggest impediment to the future of our country. The only way to break it is by doing what Governor Walker in Wisconsin is trying to do and reign in these self-serving money grubbing union bosses, eliminate the tenure system and reward good teachers, throttle down the power of the N.E.A. and the A.F.T, hold the corrupt left winged politicians accountable for their whore mongering with the corrupt unions and vote their asses out!
If we do all that, maybe we can get schools back to the way it used to be way back when I was a student and the biggest problem the educators faced was trying to stop guys like me from “pitching woo” with our girlfriends in the school parking lot.
If you don’t know what “pitching woo” means then you obviously didn’t go to Center Grove High School and you never got to hear the morning announcements from the greatest principal in the world.
Here’s to ya Vandy !
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