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“Free the child’s potential and you will transform the world.”

  

-- Maria Montessori

                

Good education for all children is an important priority, yet few people can agree on the definition of a good education.  Current information ranks the US 18^th among industrial nations in education.  In South Korea, 93% of students graduate high school compared to 73% in the US.  In a world gone global, the US is losing ground.  As a nation we are responding, but will those changes take us where we want to go?  Two recently released documentaries, Waiting for Superman and Race to Nowhere, explore how some of those initiatives are affecting our children.

Join us for our screening of Race to Nowhere:

When: Today, Wednesday, February 23^rd, at 7:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.)
Where: The Irish American Heritage Center – Erin Room 3^rd Floor, 4626 N. Knox, Chicago, IL 60630
Tickets: Purchase tickets online at racetonowhere.com for $10 plus a processing fee or at the door for $15.

 

                I attended a screening of Waiting for Superman, which is now available at Redbox locations and Netflix.  It paints a bleak picture of the education options available for many of American students, confirming what has been the muted cry of education reform: only a small percentage of children in this country have access to good schools.  The movie challenges the audience to stop waiting for a miracle and take action.  That is a message I can get behind.

                The movie is intended to be provocative, pointing to Teachers’ Unions as the villain and charter schools as the hero.  Targeting the Teachers’ Unions as the villain is perhaps a means to play up the dramatic nature of the situation, yet the movie falls woefully short of presenting a viable solution to the problems faced in public education.  The problems are multi-faceted and can’t be solved by changing one variable.  The movie does not challenge traditional curriculum, which is a major contributor to our nation’s inability to educate the majority of children.  The movie advocates uniform standards for the nation, supplemented with clips of large groups of students from high-performing Asian cultures engaging in uniform physical activity.  The movie seems to say that this one-size-fits-all indoctrination is just what is needed for our country to regain its global competitive edge.

                This is a movie I suggest you watch.  While the outlook according to this movie is dismal, it is important to gain an understanding of what problems public education faces because their problems have a much wider impact than the schools themselves.  Read more here.