Teachers union president pans “Waiting for ‘Superman’”
Michelle Eberlin, president of the Quincy Federation of Teachers, issued a pre-emptive strike prior to the release this weekend of the controversial new movie “Waiting for ‘Superman.’ ”
“It is basically an attack on teachers and teachers unions, and it needs to be addressed in our community,” she told members of the Quincy School Board Wednesday night.
The documentary by Davis Guggenheim, director of “An Inconvenient Truth,” takes aim at the demise of the public education system in America.
The film has been creating a buzz ever since it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The clamor got even louder this week after Oprah Winfrey featured the movie on her show.
Here’s how the movie is described on the film’s own Facebook site: “Waiting for Superman examines the crisis of public education in the United States through multiple interlocking stories—from a handful of students and their families whose futures hang in the balance, to the educators and reformers trying to find real and lasting solutions within a dysfunctional system.”
Eberlin said based on what she had read and heard, the film paints an unfair picture of education in America.
“The film itself misses the key points of an effective solution” to the problems facing education, she said.
