Analyzing The Documentary 'Waiting For Superman'

Louis
2301 Tue/Thurs 3:30-5:30
Essay 2
American Political Socialization
The social and Political systems of each nation in the world always support its development as countries. When cultural bases in the country are well established, the political figures elected by the people would share their commitment to succeed. The United States of America has been the objective of a strong international criticism about the cultural preparation of its citizens. The ignorance that suffers the people they relate to, the dysfunction of their public education system, and people’s concern about the use of the media are some of the reasons that held responsibility for Americans’ lack of knowledge about the world and also the events around their society are the ignorance.
The United States has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world, with the top 400 households raking in more money than the bottom 60 percent combined.” Base on the article “How Dumb Are We” by the author Andrew Romano, which means that most Americans belong to a middle class dedicated to work full time to provide support for their families. In the documentary “Waiting for Superman,” directed and written by Davis Guggenheim, an important American film director, and whose topic is mainly America
education system, he suggests that, “the problem of failing neighborhoods, might be blamed on failing schools.” Parents who work full time, overtime and in some cases parents with double jobs, are less likely to spend time with their children and don’t have the opportunity to review their children’s homework or to motivate them to the best at school. In many cases parents entertain their children with video games, movies and cartoons, instead of performing extracurricular academic activities with their children for their own benefit in order to do better at school or to have a better academic knowledge.
Base on Ken Robinson, English speaker and adviser for education, with the course of time The American public education system has been suffering a continuous degradation the current system was designed and conceived for a different age. He argues that current education is affecting children’s creativity because it was developed to fulfill the demands of the industrialization era. In the current society and especially in this cosmopolitan country, the knowledge of topics such as sociology, politics, and even geography is also important as Math and English because it helps students to have a better understanding of the social changes. The emphatic focus in learning math and reading is making students to lose the interest in school and keeps them from experience other educational areas that may help them to develop their formation as artists, geographers, politicians, and sociologists.
According to Guggenheim’s documentary, he named this event that happened to America’s education system under the government of former president George W.
Bush who passed the Act “No Child left Behind,” with the purpose of improving America’s academic achievement. Base on Bush’s act all children were and are required to take tests to evaluate their success during the school year ensuring the budget for the next year. The reality in this days is that professor and staff are so concerned about how to prepare the students in order to obtain good grades and money for the school that they are leaving behind important contents and current topics that may affect the American society making them
ignorant.
Many factors affect America’s reputation as an unknowledgeable country such as the ignorance of its people, their useless public education system and the unconscious disposition of the sources to receive information. The American community needs to take radical actions to counter the progressive ignorance arising on each new generation. Instead of letting their kids waste their time in video games while they can read an interesting book Schools should integrate group activities where kids have to come together to solve certain problems and stop working in preparation for individual tests. Ken Robinson states that, “great learning happens in groups, collaboration is the stuff of growth.” In the article “What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success” published by The Atlantic, the journalist Anu Partanen refers to some techniques used by the country with the most successful education system, “Finland has no standardized tests… the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools... If a teacher is not a good professor, it is the principal’s responsibility to notice and deal with it.” By testing random groups, school principals and ministers ensure that the preparation would be standardized. Principals should visit classrooms, either by schedule or by surprise, in order to evaluate professors and get in contact with the learning environment of the students.
Finally, controlling what children watch on television is not an easy task but its parents’ responsibility to have a control of the situation. For example: Dish network, Dish Latino and some others channels companies provide educational programs for kids even for students from kinder garden up to elementary school those are great channels that teach students the basics depending of the grade level they are attending.

Work Cited Page
Guggenheim, Davis. “Waiting for Superman.” Web. April 30, 2013.
Partanen, Anu. “What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland 's School Success.” The Atlantic.
The Atlantic, 29 Dec. 2011. Web. April 30, 2013.
Robinson, Sir Ken. “Changing Education Paradigms.” Web. April 30, 2013.
Romano, Andrew. “How Dumb Are We?” Web. April 30, 2013.
Shenkman, Rick. “Excerpted from Just How Stupid Are We?”Web. April 30, 2013.