Latest News and Comment from Education

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Davis Guggenheim, Looking For A Hero At Your House : NPR

Davis Guggenheim, Looking For A Hero At Your House : NPR

Davis Guggenheim, Looking For A Hero At Your House


Consider Daisy. She's a fifth-grader who lives in East L.A., and she's got both a tough background and some big dreams.

"She says it right out," says filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, who follows Daisy and other at-risk kids in his new documentary Waiting for Superman. "I say, 'What do you want to do for a living?' and she says, 'I want to be doctor.'"

And here's the thing, Guggenheim tells NPR's Melissa Block: "You actually think Daisy couldbe a doctor. She's already written her [target] college to say, 'Remember me, because I'm going to be applying.' Her father drives a truck, and her mother cleans hospital rooms, but they all believe that with hard work and studying, she can be a doctor."

So in Waiting for Superman — designed to spark debate and spur action around the U.S. educational system the way Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth got people talking about climate