Waiting for "Superman" Review: A System of Failure

Academy Award-winning documentarian, Davis Guggenheim, is back with a new documentary that explores the current state of the American education system, Waiting for “Superman.”

Guggenheim follows five students on their paths of education: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily. These kids live all over the United States, from New York City to Washington, D.C. to California, and in all kinds of neighborhoods, from the poor inner city to wealthy white suburbia. The common links between these children are that they are all bright students and they all work hard. They all show a great deal of promise and have ambition. And they are all screwed. Because the schools they are going to end up in will take that away from them and rob them of their opportunities.

Waiting for “Superman” is an exhaustive look into the problems that plague the modern American education system. One of the biggest being that is isn’t modern. Our system of education is still working under the methodology of the academic needs of the 1950s. Well, in the 1950s, not everyone went to college, because not everyone needed to go to college. There was still a large agrarian population. Well that doesn’t exist anymore. As one interviewee grimly put it, “If you don’t go to college in America, you’re kind of screwed. And America is kind of screwed.”

But our education system doesn’t reflect this need, still favoring a tracking system in most instances, whereby students are placed on tracks that decide where they will end up: college, managerial positions, or manual workforce. But the methodology isn’t the only problem.

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