An Inconvenient Truth for Schools Debuts on Island (New Documentary)

Vineyard Gazette (Martha's Vineyard, MA) ^ | 7/16/10 | Mike Seccombe

[ruralvoter]

Waiting for Superman is the new documentary by the same people who made An Inconvenient Truth, and this film sets out to do with regard to public education in America what its predecessor did with regard to climate and energy policy.

That is, to expose the manifest failings of the system, point to the culprits for those failings and, finally, to suggest remedies.

Making the case that the American education system is failing is probably the least contentious part of that process. The statistics on American educational underachievement are far less disputed than those on global warming. And the movie duly quotes them.

“Among 30 developed countries, we rate 25th in math and 21st in science. In almost every category we’ve fallen behind,” the narrator intones in the movie’s trailer.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The problem with American education is the same as the problem with Soviet agriculture. It’s a supplier dominated system demanding ever more inputs and providing ever fewer and shoddier products.

[outpostinmass2]

What countries rate above us and how many pattens do they produce a year?

What are those countries GDP?

It is one thing to have highly educated scientist it is quite another to have a place for those scientist to produce something. Didn’t the Soviet Union always beat the U.S. in test scores? How did that work out for them?

[TheClintons-STILLAnti-American]

"The problem with American education is the same as the problem with Soviet agriculture. It’s a supplier dominated system demanding ever more inputs and providing ever fewer and shoddier products."

Well put.

The response of Leftists is always to re-arrange the deck chairs and throw more money at it...NEVER to admit they're heading down a dead-end road and reverse course.

[ml/nj]

They would be better off getting John Taylor Gatto to come speak to them.

ML/NJ

[junta]

The system is eating itself. A crap hole system in suburban Detroit is rejecting white liberals for non-white teachers regardless of qualifications. As is said the center will not hold, all these cults which comprise the modern left will not survive an economic downturn.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Credit Milton Friedman with the original observation.

[RicocheT]

If it’s made by the same fools who did the “Inconvenient Truth” then it’s more statist, socialist propaganda. It will tell us the only way to save education is to throw more federal and state tax dollars at a dysfunctional system and to excuse bad student and parent behavior as we little folk are too stupid to raise our kids without a government nanny. It will tell us charter schools and any school outside the grip of government and the teachers’ unions are not a solution.