PrintOctober 8, 2010
Waiting for the Superman Who Will Never Arrive
Movies about education, especially documentaries lacking any star power, are unlikely blockbuster hits. Waiting for "Superman," directed by Davis Guggenheim of An Inconvenient Truth fame (and Obama's 2008 Democratic presidential convention bio-flick), has changed everything. The film, a top award-winner at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, premiered on October 1, 2010 and is now in theaters everywhere. It has generated enormous chatter, mainly positive, across the ideological spectrum (see here). Conceivably, Superman will do for education reform what Inconvenient Truth did for global warming: whip up public discussion of a complicated topic into an orgy of half-truths, outright falsifications, clichés, and misdirected "solutions." Like any effective, emotion-driven film, Superman artfully reduces murky reality to a good-versus-bad morality play. Guggenheim tracks five families with "unforgettable" children of varying ages, most...(Read Full Article)
