City Brights: Rachel Norton : 'Waiting for Superman': a review

City Brights: Rachel Norton : 'Waiting for Superman': a review

Rachel Norton

School Board Member

Waiting for Superman': a review

"Waiting for Superman"

Last week I was invited to a screening of "Waiting for Superman," a new education documentary that has attracted a lot of attention--it should be released in theaters in late September. 2010 seems to be the year of the "edumentary," with several films documenting various problems in the U.S. educational system.
I'm torn about how I feel about "Waiting for Superman," which is the highest-profile of the year's documentaries. Made by Davis Guggenheim, a filmmaker who won an Oscar for the climate documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," it's entertaining, with great characters and subject matter that I, at least, find riveting. It's an open question whether the moviegoing public will find education reform as compelling as melting polar ice caps, but based on the early buzz and the reactions of the audience I saw, it should do well. The man sitting next to me actually cried out in disbelief at several points; as the lights came up, many people pulled out their cellphones to text the word "Possible" to an address displayed on the screen. (Some kind of pledge to recommend the movie to friends, I think).

But the movie is also manipulative, over-simplified, and in the end, misleading about where the

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