I was invited by a friend to see a prescreening of Waiting for Superman: a documentary about the failures of America’s educational system. The movie was compelling: it was hard not to root for the five families the film followed through their trials with their respective school systems. By the end of the film, though, I wondered what it all meant.

The film describes in detail some of the problems with our schooling but offers few solutions. All I seemed to have learned was that our schools are failing, its all the fault of the teachers’ unions, and the successful teachers are the ones who can teach their students to rap. I felt a bit short-changed as there was really no epiphany in the film. Going into the movie, I was led to believe that it would show what approaches worked but there was disappointingly little of this.

Education remains a very emotional issue and there are no easy answers. Waiting for Superman gives a good effort but doesn’t delve deep enough to really do this topic justice. If you have questions about how we should be teaching our children, however, you’ll likely still have questions once you’ve seen it. I’m still waiting for Superman, myself.

See Salon for another review I agreed with.

Update: The N&O’s Craig Lindsey says the movie shows how to fix our broken schools. Maybe he saw a different film than I did.