Watching ‘Race to Nowhere’ and ‘The Lottery’
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I wanted to like ‘Race to Nowhere’ but I really didn’t. The film is a grassroots-type documentary by mother Vicki Abeles who decided to make the film after her children began having problems at school. The amount of homework, the high-stakes testing, and other stress factors was leading to anxiety and depression at home. The more she looked into this, the more widespread the problem appeared to be.
But watching the film, two thoughts kept running through my mind. First, nearly all the students and families in the film were from upper-middle-class families. Not all of them, mind you, but most. The non-upper-middle-class students seemed more like token additions to the film. More on this in a minute.
Second, kids with high-powered parents eager to have their offspring get into good colleges are going to do a lot
