kids just need to stop being lazy and actually try. i know, because at times i'm one of those lazy kids.
I think when parents tell their kids that they are dumb if they get a wrong answer will just make the kids not want to learn.I also don't like how kids are also doing that to each other
We are very lucky where we live to have a school district who holds their teachers accountable and while we know we have to meet state standards they believe in going beyond. The teachers are encouraged to go outside the box to teach and to teach to ALL their students. They do not leave kids behind and our success rate is amazing. Everyone is expected to push beyond their expectations. You can't ever expect a child to grow if you never tell them that they can be more. With the burden on teachers now to be, not only teachers, but parent, psychologist, friend and mentor, it is harder and harder to get through to some. With little support from home and no help from the state with more funding, it is hard to make it all work. Somehow our teachers manage. Our superintendent draws no salary so that we could keep our arts/music programs. This year our band goes to London to play for the Queen. One of only 8 bands in the US chosen to go. Our community will gather together and make sure they all go. It is amazing what happens when you support your school and tell the government that you will NOT accept less than 100% from students and home.
I wasn't able to view the trailer, but this is an issue I care about a great deal. I dropped out of high-school. It wasn't that I didn't want to learn; it was a combination of social problems, anxiety, bad teachers in earlier grades, and my parents' being clueless as to how to handle the problem of me. By the time I had instructors who cared enough to try to help me with the subjects I was struggling in, it was too late.
I am so so happy that this was posted! One of my family members works for a school similar to this, so I've been exposed to this kind of thing for a while. She talked about this movie after coming back from the convention for her school program.
Where I live, students are tracked. Starting in elementary school, you can be put in Gifted & Talented and/or HORIZONS. If you are, your teachers tend to be more effective, so these kids get increasingly better, and the other kids remain about the same.
In middle school, you go into either upper-level or on-level classes. This is where the gap between students really begins to appear. The levels of challenging-ness (okay, that sounds really stupid, but I can't think of the right word) differ drastically. On-level kids are barely challenged at all. As you approach high school, if you are in on-level, it can be rather difficult to get into upper-level classes, and even more difficult to get through AP classes. Many on-level kids are very bright- it's just that they've never been EXPECTED to do more, so they have never really exerted themselves. They simply rise to the expectations set for them. Same for upper-level kids, except since the expectations for them are higher, they rise higher.
Some on-level kids do manage to break into upper-level and AP, though. It's just much more difficult to get into the mindset necessary for more challenging coursework.
I've been in the G&T/HORIZONS/upper-level track my whole life, and I have friends in on-level. I'm really glad that I was put on the more challenging track, but I can't help but wonder what would have happened if there never was an on-level to begin with. I'm pretty sure that most would rise to the occasion. I think all students should be expected to take on challenges.
I think the whole reason that I do blame the parents (and not the teachers) is precisely because, as Cid says, "kids... are just unwilling to learn, focus, or even try." Kids are naturally inquisitive and naturally want to learn. It's in our genes. I'd say that the vast majority of the time if you see a kid who doesn't want to learn, then at the root of the problem is a parent who didn't do their job right. I've seen parents punish children for asking questions ("Don't ask why! Just obey me!"), fail to teach their kid basic reasoning skills, and entirely skip the bit where you're supposed to model good learning behaviors. Parents who don't care about academics or intelligence, and parents who don't foster curiosity and independent thinking raise kids who can't learn.
In my less than humble opinion, this isn't mainly a problem with the school institutions (though there are MAJOR problems with school institutions), it's mainly a problem with the anti-intellectual culture in our country, where being smart is seen as a social faux pas, and most parents don't care enough by their kids mental capacity to nurture it.
I like how people are so quick to blame the parents. The child is going to school to learn. If being the teacher was the parent's job all children would be home schooled. If your kid if going to school it is the teacher's JOB to teach your child. They are getting PAID to teach your child. And has anyone stopped to realize not all parents are qualified to teach?
Seems like I'm the only one who thinks the problem could be with the kid. Yes some places need better teachers, I agree with that, but time and again I've met kids my age who are just unwilling to learn, focus, or even try.
There's a school near me that you need to win a lottery and then take a test to get into. Personally, I think it would be easier if everyone who wanted to go there took the test, THEN entered the lottery. Why enter the lottery when you don't even want to go there and take a spot from someone who does?
As much as the education system DOES suck and severely needs to be fixed, a lot of it has to do with kids attitudes, and there's some degree to which I agree with them.
I understand that you have to learn basic to intermediate math, science, English, etc skills. Those need to be taught to a competent level, they have to help us function in daily life. But at what point does an incredibly complicated algebra equation become needed for a person, who's had math for a subject for over 9 years, who's into more art and is pursuing that path? It really boils down to the fact that kids aren't paying attention because it doesn't apply to them, nor interest them. I can tell you for a fact that there's way more interest in my film class right now than in my algebra class simply due to the fact it isn't shoved down our throats.
Why not have kids build the problem solving skills and reading comprehension in a subject they're actually interested in?
I'll admit that idea's a little more hypothetical, since we can't have a different teacher in a school for every subject on the planet. But seriously, cramming advanced calculus down a student's throat who has no enthusiasm for the subject is NOT the way to go about enriching their learning. Sorry, but it isn't.
Oh, and not being interested doesn't give students excuses to be jackasses/rebel. I hate it when people purposely act out just for the sake of it.
Florida has state tests, and labels their schools like A, A+, B, and C or lower. it is almost based on popularity. the 'FCAT' tests they do there are waaayyy to easy ( I get 100 on the reading like... every time ) the school system is getting really bad. an A+ school I used to go to is now a C school, overcrowded, and spending its money on extra rooms, renovations, and even new benches, and some strange awning thing, not on focusing to actually help these kids in getting better grades... 
I'm from Portugal and i'm in College right now. This reminds me of when i was in middle and then secondary school i never had a good math teacher 
One of them was a engineer that made the tests so easy, i didnt even need to study, another one was to busy checking out the "evil forces" from the class room rather than teaching, but the most chocking was when one of them keep telling us: "you dont nee to know these demonstrations and teories...you only need to calculate!". Well when i got to college, i was WAY beind my coleagues in maths, because all the stuff she thought we didnt need to know and didnt teach us, where in fact important. And i spended most of my time studying back everything again.....
But here i have amazing teachers...finally. the real problem is that i have to study the double of what i would need because of this. Math is only an example.
I have a friend from the USA that keeps complaining about his old schools and education system......
But the problem isnt only on the education system, i see the "new generation" of kids that are on my brother school, and let me tell you, they're are idiots. They have no interest in learning and think that "is cool" to disobey the teachers and not study anything. Luckly the teachers seem to be "rebelling" against this and keep trying harder at teaching/educating and alert the parents for theire terrible parenting.....
My younger children are homeschooled because of my three older children going to public school and learning nothing. Parents need to step up and be part of the solution. I know that my children will never have to win the lottery because I am committed to them. Our public schools were recently awarded 360 million dollars for improvements. The majority of the money is going towards the football fields and other crap that has nothing to do with what our kids are learning or being taught.
um, the trailer isn't snowing for me o_O I just get a black box.
America doesn't pay enough attention to its education then beats down those that have a tough life after getting out of school either by dropping out or some how graduating. Hell it's almost better to send your kids to foreign countries just for an education. As what we count as high school is nothing but late elementary to them.
I'm a high school student and I'm so appalled at our education system I'm really embarrassed to say I went to a public school and I'm taking advanced classes like psp classes and they are still to easy and it aggravates me to no end that these teachers follow the school board's "Education requirements" the only teachers I know who have not followed them were my 8th grade math teacher(I actually learned something) and my 10th grade world history teacher(Actually learned something as well) It just really bothers me but it's kind of the student's fault and the parents as well because kids really don't tell their parent's what they learn in school and all they want to do is party so the parent's can't talk to the teachers or complain to the school board and some parents don't take the time to ask what is going on or go to school meetings and discuss what s going on and every time my mom and I go to open house she tells them " I wish I could send her to Catholic school but I don't have the money" and the teachers agree with her that our education is ridiculous......it just really frustrates me too no end......I hope this changes in future generations but I really doubt it :c
So the video didn't load properly for me, but I got maybe 40 seconds and the general gist of it. I think opening a child's mind to new ideas and possibilities goes a long way, such as introducing them to a new subject or even a new way to approach a topic. As a student, what is really helping me learn is to question everything, and actively seek knowledge instead of taking everything in class for granted and not thinking about it.
As for funding the schools... If you have say 1600 kids and therefore 1600 parents or more in one school, and each donates a dollar or even 50 cents a week, I think it could really add up. People see the words tax rise and protest immediately, but if we think about it it doesn't have to be that much. Maybe I'm uneducated on the subject (because real world education is another thing schools lack) but it doesn't seem like much money to me for one family.
I agree with one thing, the american school system needs a drastic change, to some it's good and to some it gives bad memories. People are between blaming the parents and goverment for such a failing thing but the fact is BOTH are at fault, the only way things will ever change is when both sides come to the realization that there is no "I in team" as lame as this statement seems rings VERY true.
Awesome sharring this Subeta 
I am from Russia. As far as I know, education in your country is really awful. You need to change something cardinally. For example take a look at the strong education system in former USSR. The situation in modern Russia is not so good, since we have been following your way. Or you may pay attention to Japan. They have brilliant education system, but it is very difficult for children to study.
Sorry for google translation. I`m not very good in English.
I skipped 4 years of public school (went to private school. For.. reasons. Basically it was a huge vacation, but that's definitely not to say it was a waste.) and when I came back, we were still doing EXACTLY the same math problems and history lessons I had left behind. Seriously. I didn't even realize what it felt like to LEARN INTERESTING THINGS until I went to college and learned something every day. But college is sooo expensive now, I don't know if I'd even do that, given a second chance. Good thing the Internet is here with all these INFOS. Too bad self-education doesn't look any good on a resume...
All I see is a black screen, which sucks because this sounds like something interesting. 3:
Whoops, hit send too soon there. Meant to add that even so, my education was pretty good, and I was in a rather affluent area. Seeing things get so much worse is depressing.
I'm saddened to see this trailer, thank you for sharing this, otherwise I would have remained ignorant. My education was rather shoddy growing up-- my German language teachers were the ones to teach us English grammar because my English language teachers never did.
I am a veteran educator in a public school, a large inner city one with 17 languages and even more gangs. However, our students are wonderful, and so are most of my colleagues, who work long hours (well beyond the bells) to help students. Our budget cuts here are staggering, and it's constant pushing of a rock uphill. However, lotteries and private charters aren't the answer, at least not to me. What we need is a chance to really teach, not train students to pass a standardized test on which everything hinges, but to teach them all that they desperately need to know. We now "assess" in one form of test or another, more than we instruct, and are hamstrung at everything we try to do. Yet, while this is going on daily, the media is happy to point out how badly "we" are failing, and how awful we "public" people are. There are black pits and golden lights in any system. We need to work together to plug our holes and spread out the light, and, yes, we can do this.
Although this trailer is about education in America, Education in my country is also going down hill. A girl, 20 years younger then me, told me that she knew of Attila the Hun through discovery Channel ... not through education at school. A friend of mine has quit teaching because if she followed the programm as planned, the children wouldn't learn anything.
My coverment is giving less and less mony to education each year. Education itself is getting more and more expncive. People with very little money will not be able to send their kids to school anymore. We are going back to the old days ... only the rich can go to colledge. And even colledge isn't that what it used to be.
Hey fail (2 comments down haha)
I used to go to the school you wrote about - I transferred out. Honestly, I got a pretty excellent education there. In fact, I've gotten an excellent education from every public school I've attended - and I've attended enough to know. That isn't to say that everyone is getting that education. I was born privileged, went to advanced programs that attracted the best teachers in the system, and learned a lot. Now I'm really looking at my choice of colleges - I could name a dozen off the top of my head that I know for sure would offer me merit money. To improve public schools, I'd like to improve preschool and education within daycare options pre-k - I know that's where my advantages started.
As a former teacher I have seen a lot. The thing that drove me away, was the lack of teaching and more "focus" on getting the scores needed. The second problem is the Teachers Union. You are awarded pay based upon your years of service. To many bad teachers have jobs because of the Union. Those teachers are not removed from the system, they are transferred to another school. Most teachers lack the basic skills to teach when they start. Sadly, a lot of them don't follow up on what is needed to teach, they just follow to Test Score needed to make that states rating. The Dept of Education is pure politics. Let the states run their own schools based upon guidelines of common sense, like teaching. However, the biggest problem is the parents. If they don't go to the Parent Teacher Conference's, how are they to know what their children are suppose to be learning and decide if this with their own family values...
I live east of Seattle. I've had a nice education thus far. But fights break out in Seattle high schools. In fact, at the high school I'll go to, one guy punched a guy from a Seattle high school because the home team, Redmond, was getting the shit beaten out of them during a game. It made that school look SO bad, one guy made a whole community look like it was racist.
In the MSP, the new WASL(washington state standardized test), the scores all... Well, let's put it this way. People in the regular class, CMP7(standard class), got way higher than people in Algebra I. We simply weren't taught the "procedures" because we didn't have to explain simple problems. Algebra kids had straight problems and didn't HAVE TO explain. The MSP was new last year, so of course it wasn't perfect. But it put people in algebra at a way higher disadvantage because the way the math is set up isn't that great. The only help the algebra kids got was a list of random equations, 90% of which we didn't have to use. oh plus if you don't pass it in 10th grade, I think you still don't get to graduate or something. I'm not sure. The redo of the WASL didn't do anything good.
Oh and a recycling/environment-obsessed science teacher convinced our school to buy a touch screen environmentally-informative electronic thing next to the office. Nobody uses it, there's places in our school that need way more improvement, and if that money was allotted to electronics, it was definitely unnecessary because some computers need to be replaced.
/end rant.
but my school isn't that bad, really.
That trailer is depressing. These are some of the things that makes me want to go to another country, just to learn. America has a horrible system, state testing doesn't help. The school system is just some popularity thing now. THIS SCHOOL HAS A "C", DON'T GO. THIS ONE HAS AN "A".
Grading children like that is sick man. Shouldn't be grading from poorly based testing.
And I'm talking about Florida.
I am from the Washington D.C. area... that video brought back some sad memories.
I've done some tutoring for the ISD school in town, in math mostly. It was a great experience and I thought that I really helped the kid out. I'm planning on doing it again, one on one with a struggling student can really encourage them.
I spent a year in South Korea teaching English. How much more can one impact someone else's education than by opening the door to the world through language?
The more you learn, the further you go. If you want to go nowhere in life, there's no sense to learn anything more.
As a teacher, I'm interested to see this movie now.
I will point out though, that it does not play in chrome. I had to use an extension to load it as an IE tab (ew).
Keith, thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. I consider myself lucky in that I went to a "decent" series of public schools and went on to attend (and graduate from) college, but my school district was far from perfect and my education still had its own set of problems that I had to navigate around or just "learn to deal with." Based on my siblings' complaints, it's only gotten worse over the years.
I strongly support the idea of education reform, and I'm definitely looking forward to this movie.
After reading all these comments, I definitely want to see the trailer and probably the movie. Problem is, I can't watch it. Dial up internet stinks. Hopefully the link stays up and I can watch it at the library or something.
Nice item. But sadly the message presented in this trailer does ring true in most parts of America's public education system.
I think this film is great to wake America up with the current education problems. But I think the main way to help others with education is to let them know that you are there anytime of the day to help with what ever they need. If a child knows they have support they will be more likely to seek out help when needed.
Ergh, and with California's budget cuts on education, my school is going nowhere. At least there's still 18 AP classes still kept ^^
A documentary by the director of An Inconvenient Truth. 8D
Anyway, I'm glad Subeta promoted this film 
Because it's better than what Gaia advertises ._.
But I didn't hear anything about the film until now...?
Confidence. That's great, haha. But it'd be better to have smarter kids than reckless ones.
First of all, I would just like to say thank you to Subeta for supporting this film. America's public education system as a whole is in dismal shape and anything that can slap us all in the face and tell us, "Hey, we have a problem here," definitely deserves such publicity.
The schools in my area are so bad that my mother was forced to have to home school me and my sister in order to provide us with a decent education. She fought with the teachers, the principals, the superintendent of schools, to try and get something done about the poor quality of education and the horrible violence in our schools, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. Before she took me and my sister out of the system, she told the superintendent that if something wasn't done about the violence in the schools soon, they would need police officers in the schools. He laughed. Not two years later, they really did need to put police in the schools and a while later they built a school with a jail in it to control violent students. I've had a science teacher that didn't know the basics about dinosaurs, I've had a math teacher who instead of helping me learn multiplication changed the x to a + on my worksheet and went on her merry way, by the time I was in fifth grade I was struggling in math and was too afraid for my life in school to care about doing the work and I didn't learn cursive until my mother started teaching me at home! In short, I've seen the very worst of America's schools first hand.
There are many problems that need to be fixed to give our kids a proper education. Some have to do with home life (manners, respecting one's elders) but more have to do with things like teacher quality and school safety, things that the districts, teacher's unions, and administrators are responsible for keeping together. We can't turn a blind eye to the fact that, on the whole, America's education system is an epic failure. I mean, we have kids having to sit through a lottery to try and get into a school where they'll actually learn! That's serious, people.
Being a high school teacher, I see both success and failure in the students and in my co-workers...and in my students' parents. (We honestly have had parents complain about teachers who had "high" expectations, ones that were completely reasonable for the advanced classes that the students were taking) It takes the community's support to raise educational standards and have high expectations. Most of what I see is "wanting the A and not working for it" and as a whole, that is the mentality of the students AND the parents. It is EVERYONE'S RESPONSIBILITY, not just the school's, to educate the youth. As a teacher, I can only do so much if the students and parents don't want high standards. When I discuss the French educational system in class, my students are APPALLED at the idea of having a couple of hours of homework and and having to focus so much time on education and not "having fun"and hanging out with their friends. Most of the time I get comments along the lines of "Man, that sucks for them. Glad I don't have to work that hard."
The schools need to want more for their students, the students need to want more for themselves, and the parents need to back up both of those goals. Our most successful students come from families who are involved and care....our dropouts, the one whose parents have given up.
We have the highest confidence, but are...was was it, 29th in math? Why are we confident again?
Education should be at the foremost of any society, since it really takes educated people to expand society. My studies right now include working with politics of education in order to improve our future.
Thank you Subeta for bringing this to our attention.
I am going to college right now to study and become an elementary school teacher. I want to inspire the students that I teach to make a difference in their community and hopefully by teaching them so, I will be making a difference in their lives as well.
And as I'm reading this, an advert comes on for an upcoming Joe Scarborough segment on the movie. Heh.
True story: I have done a lot of really odd jobs. One of those was as a shortage runner for a newspaper in the next town.
This town had a ballot initiative for a property tax that would cover a new school building on a (I think) donated lot. The old school building was at the least an eyesore and possibly dangerous, but I never went in.
The morning after the election, I was stopped in the mall by a couple of older ladies who nearly pulled the papers out of my hands. One of them then sneeringly announced "oh, I'm so sorry." because it had failed.
Property tax payers vs. little kids. That's how this has been debated for years around here. And little kids end up paying.
Even if you're not in America, you can still make a difference in the education of your own country.
I applaud Subeta for drawing attention to this issue and this documentary.
Argh! A.. a short two sentences? I don't even live in America but I feel like writing a whole freakin' essay!
I'm glad that this documentary exists. Public school funding is a very serious issue.