Schools: The Disaster Movie
A debate has been raging over why our education system is failing. A new documentary by the director of An Inconvenient Truth throws fuel on the fire.
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Waiting for "Superman" is a paean to reformers like Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee (left), while it casts AFT president Randi Weingarten (right), in the words of Variety, as "something of a foaming satanic beast." (Photo: Mike McGregor) |
The Harlem-based educator and activist Geoffrey Canada first met the filmmaker Davis Guggenheim in 2008, when Canada was in Los Angeles raising money for the Children’s Defense Fund, which he chairs. Guggenheim told Canada that he was making a documentary about the crisis in America’s schools and implored him to be in it. Canada had heard this pitch before, more times than he could count, from a stream of camera-toting do-gooders whose movies were destined to be seen by audiences smaller than the crowd on a rainy