A child’s first day of school is often viewed as a rite of passage; the first step on the road to a happy and successful life. This is true for most children from affluent families who live in the best school districts or can afford expensive private schools. But what if a child’s first day of school is nothing more than the first step on the road to poverty and possibly even illiteracy? The documentary Waiting for “Superman” addresses many issues in a failing school system and the innocent children that system leaves behind. Although the documentary spends little time suggesting parents’ roles in their children’s education, it clearly shows that we must make changes to help children from low-income families and improve the teacher’s unions. Although our school system is in need of change, the film did not consider the part parental involvement plays in education, a drawback of the film. Education spending in our country has more than doubled in recent decades, but children in most states have proficiency rates of only 20 or 30 percent in math and reading (Weber 6). One must wonder if, with all of this extra spending and consistently low test scores, the problem goes beyond the school system and into American families. After all, even with small class sizes, the amount of one-on-one attention is limited for each student. Isn’t it up to parents to push their children to succeed? Amy Chua, author of the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother uses an almost militant form of parenting which – though highly controversial – demands nothing short of excellence from her children. While other children were allowed to ride their bikes or play video games with their friends, Chua demanded that her seven-year-old daughter practice t... ... middle of paper ... ...hem to a life of poverty and possibly an early grave. It is time that we make bold changes to our school system, changes that would encourage teachers to perform to the best of their abilities and provide our children with a type of freedom that only comes with a quality education. Works Cited Canada, Geoffrey “He’s the Angel of Harlem.” Newsweek Online. Feb. 2009. Web. Paul, Annie Murphy. “Tiger Moms: Is Tough Parenting Really the Answer?” Time Online. 20 Jan. 2011. Web. 16 Mar. 2011 Waiting for “Superman.” Dir. Davis Guggenheim. 2010. Paramount Pictures. 2010. DVD. Wallis, Claudia. “How to Make Great Teachers.” Time Online. 13 Feb. 2008. Web. 16 March 2011. Webber, Karl. “A Nation Still At Risk.” Waiting for Superman: How We Can Save Save America’s Failing Public Schools. Ed. Carl Weber. New York: PublicAffairs. 2010. 3-10. Print.
In the speech, “America’s Schoolchildren”, President Barack Obama uses Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in an effective manner to support his claim that every student should have an active role in the responsibility of their education. First and foremost, President Obama begins his speech with an anecdote from his life, “I get it. I know what it’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mom who had to work and who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us the things that other kids had” (Obama 72). In his statement, he give us a personal story from when he lived in Indonesia, that he too went through hardships of having his father leave his family when he was two, not always
California is one of the largest states in the country and has one of the biggest state budgets, but in the past several years, its school system has become one of the worst in the nation because of enormous budget cuts in efforts to balance the state’s enormous deficit. The economic downturn at the end of the 2000s resulted in even more cuts to education. It is in environments like this one in which students from poor backgrounds become most vulnerable because of their lack of access to support in their homes as well as other programs outside of schools. Their already financially restricted school districts have no choice but to cut supplementary programs and increase class sizes among other negative changes to public schools. The lack of financial support from the state level as well as demands for schools to meet certain testing benchmarks by the state results in a system in which the schools are no longer able to focus on students as individuals; they are forced to treat students as numbers rather than on an individual case by case basis. An article from the Los Angeles Times showed that majority of Californians give California schools “a grade of C or below” and half think that the quality of schools will continue to decline (Watanabe).While the economic downturn affected the public school system in a negative way, it was not the sole root of its problems. It just simply exacerbated already existing issues.
America’s public school system started off very rough, but through the dedication of many hard-working Americans, it was starting to shape into a system that allowed all children, regardless of race, gender, religion, or nation of origin, to have an education.
The greatest country in the world still has problems evenly distributing education to its youth. The articles I have read for this unit have a common theme regarding our education system. The authors illustrate to the reader about the struggles in America concerning how we obtain and education. Oppression, politics, racism, and socioeconomic status are a few examples of what is wrong with our country and its means of delivering a fair education to all Americans.
In Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for Superman, he exposes mainly a one-sided argument against teachers unions, by stating the unions are a “menace and an impediment to reform.” His documentary explores the tragic ways in which the American public education system is failing the nation's children, and explores the roles that charter schools and education reformers could play in offering hope for the future. Statistics show our nation’s student dropout rates, diminishing science scores, math scores, and schools closing due to lack of funding, but numbers fail to represent the names and faces of the children whose entire futures are at stake due to the inability to enact change. Bianca, Emily, Anthony, Daisy, and Francisco are five students who deserve a better opportunity in education. By investigating how the current system is actually obstructing their education instead of bolstering it, Guggenheim opens the door to considering possible options for transformation and improvement. Guggenheim uses certain cinematic elements like interviews and cartoons, to influence an emotional response from the viewers and manipulate their opinion for the argument against its portrayal of unions.
Many individuals have been affected negatively by trouble makers in school. Troublemakers have either disrupted classes or bullied other students. Yes, trouble makers may harm one’s learning environment, but should they be kicked out of school? Though many individuals argue that troublemakers will not change and hold the class down, they should not be kicked out because they need help. Most of these kids that are disobedient do not know the distinction between right and wrong. We should not withdraw trouble makers from school, rather, we should help these troublemakers and teach them right from wrong. In the article “Let’s Really Reform Our Schools” by Anita Garland, she states that American high schools are disasters because there are troublemakers (694). She asserts that the withdrawal of troublemakers in schools would make the learning environment peaceful for students who want to learn
Helicopter parenting is a phenomenon that has taken the United States by storm! This style of parenting raises children to be dependent on their parents well into their mature years. Julia Lynthcott- Haims explains the four main factors that are responsible for this shift in parenting and childhood in the excerpt “The Four Cultural Shifts that Led to the Rise of the Helicopter Parent” in her book How to Raise an Adult. The “shifts” Haims proposes are juxtaposed with examples of how parenting has evolved to convey how the childrearing has transformed. The author attributes the helicopter phenomenon to four events that began in 1980s: child abductions becoming publicized, the idea that children were not doing enough schoolwork,
Telling a child they have to be number one in every subject, leads them to believe anything less is unsatisfactory. These children who are disciplined too harshly will become insecure adolescents and anxious adults (Extreme Parenting). Kwan Lee is the father of a student who attends OCT. He says, “The children of ‘Tiger Moms’ are too programmed. They get into a good college, but they don’t know what to do next,” (Yi). Such children lack initiative because their decisions have been made for them by their parents (Extreme Parenting). This leads to feelings of unsureness during the college
School funding is systemically unequal, partially because the majority of school funding comes from the school district’s local property taxes, positioning the poorest communities at the bottom rung of the education playing field. A student’s socioeconomic status often defines her success in a classroom for a number of reasons. Students who live below the poverty line have less motivation to succeed, and their parents are less inclined to participate in their child’s education, often because the parents cannot provide support for their children. Although it’s logical that school districts from poorer communities cannot collect as much funding as the richer communities, persons stuck in these low-income communities often pay higher taxes, and still their school dis...
“If you would just get up and teach them instead of handing them a packet. There’s kids in here that don’t learn like that. They need to learn face to face. I’m telling you what you need to do. You can’t expect a kid to change if all you do is just tell ‘em.” Texas student, Jeff Bliss, decided to take a stand against the lack of teaching going on in his class (Broderick).
The American public school system faces an education crisis. According to Benjamin Barber, American children barely surpass the lowest standards set for education, especially in literacy, throughout the county’s history. Barber supports the existence of this crisis in his essay “America Skips School”, but argues against a solution to remedy the numerous problems facing the system. Although he acknowledges no solution, Barber suggests a smarter flow of financial resources will address many of the issues, however, he fails to acknowledge the distribution of this money. Barber’s suggestion for smarter financial resources for schools can be effectively implemented through a structured committee focused solely on the distribution of money.
The documentary “Waiting for Superman” investigated the ways in which the American Public Education system is failing our nation’s children. It highlighted the roles that Charter Schools and education reformers could play in an effort to offer hope for the future. Moreover, the movie depicted the dropout rate of high school students and schools closing due to lack of funding. The families of five children, who were enrolled in public school, shared their personal stories. These families have taken the necessary steps to provide their children with the opportunity to obtain a good education. The children themselves aspire to be great, and desired the opportunity to one day be able to attend college. They feared, however devoid of a good public
A child’s first day of school is often viewed as a rite of passage; the first step on the road to a happy and successful life. This is true for most children from families who live in the best school districts or can afford expensive private schools. On the other hand, what if a child’s first day of school is nothing more than the first step on the road to poverty and possibly even illiteracy? People are continuously saying how children are the future and we must nurture them in order to ensure a bright future for our country. The current education system in the United States is extremely under achieving. The documentary “Waiting for Superman” addresses many issues in a failing school system and the innocent children that system leaves behind.
Marzano, R.J. (2007). The art and science of teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
This great experience for children is because, “a century ago, the ‘school to the parents’ movement in the Netherlands… [that established] a system of education” (Williamson, 2). Most Americans would agree with the Netherland’s education system because everyone wants a better education for their children and young adults. Compared to the Netherland’s education system, the USA’s educational system is lagging behind. It is because people living in poverty stricken communities does not think about their child’s education too much because they have to work three shifts a day in order to earn enough money to put food on the table. The middle and rich classes of Americans do not feel that it is an urgent problem that needs fixing because they have enough money and time to improve their child’s academic skills with tutors, after schools, summer schools, and time to personally spend with their child and work on homework or study before a test . The problem of not having education as a priority makes the ever increasing gap of social inequality increase even more. One way to fix this problem is to persuade the government to make a special budget for classes during summer for the students that want to do better in