The documentary that I watched is called Waiting for Superman. One might think that this documentary must be about either a love story about a women waiting for the man of her dreams, or a spin off of one of the greatest superhero movies Superman. Yet this documentary is actually about education. In today's world wide society, education has grown to be one of the most important aspect of life; it is the key to a successful life. In this documentary the speaker is a professor and also retired superintendent. Throughout the documentary the speaker changes often from this superintendent to a narrative voice of the documentary creator, to families included in the documentary. This documentary touches base on many issues today in the education system. Some of the issues discussed are bad schools because of bad low income neighbor hoods or vice versa, schools not being able to advance because of bad teachers, and the struggle of families trying to get their children into the best school near them, such as charter schools. After watching this documentary the creator of this documentary was bel to open my eyes about the flaws in the education system.
One key strategy that the filmmaker included in order to make this film more interesting instead of a two hour talk about education was what the filmmakers decide to show when ever they were stating data. Throughout the entire documentary they used the same type of animation style to not only make the statistics more interesting but also to give a great illustration and picture of the actually statistic itself, using symbols and graphs. This strategy was clever and stands out from other documentaries considering it's a huge contrast to the rest of the documentary which is real and not cartoon style. By using this strategy, the filmmakers made the documentary more eye-catching, thus allowing them to directly expose that the education in hindsight needs to be reevaluated and changed for the better.
To strengthen and improve the filmmakers purpose, the follow the struggles of four families slowly yet progressively throughout the documentary. The filmmakers were able to smoothly tie in these stories of the four families and their struggles and relate it back to the data they is often presented. This weaving in of the families stories is able to bring some life to these statistics and adda sentimental factor throughout the documentary. Unfortunately these families were the percents of the data that were bad and unfortunate, such as only 6% percent of a high school class in LA would graduate; thus one of students in one of family would be borderline of this 6%. In the end of the documentary most of the families being documented were not selected for their child to make it into a charter school, therefore certainly not supporting the assumption that the educations system over all is successful.
Unfortunately we as a nation especially have not reached our goals of providing the best education. Maybe we have for a small percentage of students in America but not for every student. Education should be everyone's first and major priority considering the fact that we students are the future of the United Sates. Although the audience of this documentary could be students like myself, teachers and families who are also struggle, the real audience might just be those who have the power to change the education system and make a difference.
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