Waiting for Superman....Unfinished Business

In her essay Handlin our (Unfinished) Bidness, Geneva Smitherman takes a look at African American Language curriculum, a sub-category of the overall mess that is the educational system. While reading Smitherman's essay, her personal hatred for the dysfunction that plagues education becomes very evident. The disappointment displayed in this piece of writing directly links to the problem posed in the 2010 documentary film Waiting for ‘Superman”. The film takes an in-depth, daringly honest look at the failures of the American public education system by following the difficult journeys of several underprivileged children as they strive to be accepted into a charter school.

The school system has become trapped in a state of cyclical failure; it is hard to tell where the failure began, but it is easy to see where it has spread. With thousands upon thousands of school boards with conflicting codes of conduct, the law providing tenure to practically any teacher that remains living and breathing for two years in the classroom, and teachers that live by the motto that they get paid whether their students learn or not, it is no wonder that the educational system is spiraling downwards.

Smitherman commented that “schooling should not be about convincing students to play the game, but helping them understand how the game’s been rigged and more importantly, how they can work to change it.” Standardized testing is perhaps the most corrupted component of this “game,” forcing students to adapt to a rigid idea of what knowledge is. The American educational system is in need of a serious overhaul, and we need to act sooner rather than later if we want to make a real change.