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I went to see Race To Nowhere last night and this song by The Weepies opened and closed it. While I liked the song, I’m not sure how I feel about the movie.
It will be compared to Waiting For Superman for obvious reasons. As the folks I saw it with pointed out, one was made by men and the other by women. Superman, as the name implies, is all macho and identifies specific problems and, supposedly, offers definitive solutions. Similar to the white men who created it, they do not explore alternatives, some of which are far more likely to succeed.
They have an agenda and are going to hit you over the head trying to convince you they are right. They are brash, follow the trendy ‘scorched earth’ method of discussion and in the process, fail miserably at what they say they are trying to accomplish. I believe their real goal is to give up on public education and justify the privatization (for profit!) of education.
Race To Nowhere, like the women who produced it, are much more sanguine and reflective. They raise questions but do not have answers. They are OK with that. Women don’t always need to solve everything. It is enough to know they are not happy.
That being said, the questions they raised affect an extremely small and select group of children. While they tried to bring in kids of color from Oakland and Richmond primarily, this was a movie about white suburban angst. Parents worry about their children’s success in this newly competitive world. The parents never ask if they, themselves, would have been admitted to the colleges they attended if they were forced to compete with everyone rather than just the other white privileged suburban children from their time.
I was deeply moved by the discussion of teen suicide. I did find it strange that no children were interviewed who had witnessed a killing of a student, which is far more common in public education than suicide. Stressing our children, whether through achievement or poverty, is a terrible thing. We should allow our children to be just that, children. They should be able to live free of the worries and stressed of adulthood as long as possible.
I am happy Race To Nowhere opened a new discussion on what we want our education to accomplish. Do we want well-rounded critical thinkers? Or do we want students who can test into Cal only to remediate 50% of them because they don’t actually know anything. I hope our society takes up this discussion. We really do need to find answers.