Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Hard News: Waiting for Something



In 2010, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth") released a new story.

"Waiting for Superman" is the heartbreaking chronology of how the United States' mountainous education system is crumbling and spilling our youngest citizens in disarray off its peaks.


The film is about to be released on DVD and Blu-Ray and I recommend it. It's compelling and honest. There is lots of blame to go around, there are ideas for change and there is a belief that we can and will do better.

I'm a volunteer in the system. I don't have a teaching degree and I'm not a card-carrying member of a teachers' union. I do what I do with what I know, and that's pretty limited to Shakespeare, acting and theatre craft.


That said, I have enormous admiration for the teachers I know who struggle every day to inspire their charges.

And that said, it's impossible to ignore the degree to which school boards, education administrators and teachers' unions have stood in the way of others trying so hard to teach and, more significantly, learn.

Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times is on the ground spying on some of those looking for a better way and a route to our becoming the best we can be in the education biz.

Have a look: Dissident L.A. teachers want more from their union

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