I sat down with Davis Guggenheim recently when he came to Washington, D.C. to promote his new documentary, “Waiting for ‘Superman,” a compelling, revealing look at what’s wrong with education in America (see John Nolte’s review of the film). 

For those who’ve seen it, one of the most striking things about the film is that it comes from the man behind “An Inconvenient Truth.” So how did the guy who is known for making a film championed by liberals just make a film that trashes one of the biggest supporters of liberal candidates? That’s what I wanted to find out. 

“I grew up in northwest,” Guggenheim began, speaking of his home in North West D.C. “When I was just a kindergartner, I remember asking my mom, ‘Why do I take a bus across the Potomac into Virginia’” to go to school. His mother’s response: “Because the schools in D.C. are broken.” 

And they still are, 40 years later, he pointed out. And not just in D.C., but across the nation. “40 years later I’m driving my kids past two public schools to a private school,” he said. As a supporter of public education, he won’t send his own kids to a public school because he fears they won’t receive a good education. It’s these facts that drove him to make this film. 

I asked him about the political differences in the two films, “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Waiting for ‘Superman.’” Both stories focus on an issue bogged down by legislation and talking points. But both focus on something else: people.  (more…)

This past May, a group of sixth grade middle school students from the Wellesley, Massachusetts Public School District visited the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center as part of a school sponsored field trip. Our sister site Big Peace recently revealed the details of this visit, as well as the controversial ties that the center’s parent organization, the Muslim American Society, has to terrorism as what federal prosecutors have labeled as “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” Recently surfaced video footage from this trip as recorded by a parent chaperon depicts a series of activities that occurred as part of the Muslim mid-day prayer service at the center’s mosque.

Some of the activities observed in the video not only push the boundaries of the appropriate role of schools in facilitating religious understanding, but they introduce elements of blatant discrimination that could be especially challenging to the average ten or eleven year old. It’s an angle to this story that does not appear to have been discussed to date.

Before the prayers commenced, the field trip attendees were religiously segregated. As seen on the video, the parent describes that the women chaperons, female teachers and schoolgirls were asked to leave the prayer area, while the boys were invited to stay and participate in prayer with the men.

Such religious and gender discrimination arguably violates Title IX and Massachusetts state education codes, as reflected in the Wellesley Public School anti-discrimination policy: (more…)

So you may have heard that school officials have named an L.A. school after two greenies: Al Gore, and Rachel Carson, the dead author known for birthing the modern environmental movement.

The public school costs nearly 80 million bucks, and should open in days, for about 600 students. But there’s a prob: it’s located on a pile of toxic goo. Yep, according to activists, the soil there contained more than “a dozen underground storage tanks serving light industrial businesses,” and even more ooze may have come from tanks of a nearby gas station.

So the fact that this enviro-church sits on a vast mound of chemical poison may sound pretty ironic, at least to bloggers who might say, “hey, this sounds pretty ironic.”

But that would be an incorrect usage of the word irony.

Because, Rachel Carson’s ideology is poison, responsible in part for the deaths of millions of children worldwide. It seems only fitting that a structure named after her SHOULD be the cherry on the contaminated cake.

Carson, if you remember, wrote about DDT in her book , “Silent Spring,” back in 1962. In it she falsely wrote that the chemical – which kills malaria-carrying mosquitoes – caused harm to birds. She also linked it to cancer (more b.s.), and it was this alarmism that led to a DDT ban in 1972. (more…)

The children eager to attend Harlem Success Academies don’t care about partisan politics or ideological turf wars. They just want the best education possible. “The Lottery,” a new documentary by Madeleine Sackler, showcases families desperate for an alternative to the New York Public School system.

The film, playing an exclusive engagement through July 15 at the Starz FilmCenter in Denver, follows four such families who enter a lottery system so their children can attend a prestigious charter school. Strip away the interpersonal dynamics and you’ll find a full-throated argument on behalf of charter schools. And those who think only Republicans support school choice measures will be surprised to see a large  number of Democrats eager to give charter schools a try.

It’s an alternately fascinating and maddening film experience, and Sackler delivers the material with an elegant touch. It’s also a must-see for parents with school-age children – or just taxpayers saddened at the thought of children not reaching their potential. The families included here put a human face on the issue, but the film would be better served if we got to know them a little better. The quick glimpses at their lives – and dreams – tell us just enough about the stakes at play. (more…)

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands: one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  

An Arkansas fifth-grader made news recently by claiming there is no “liberty and justice for all” in America as his reason for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance during his school’s daily patriotic exercises. 

Red Skelton could’ve taught him a thing or two:

– 

Of course, the Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that as long as such dissent is practiced in a non-disruptive manner a student is acting well within his Constitutional rights — his faulty reasoning for the dissent being irrelevant — and he may not be compelled to participate by either the school, or the state. 

Teachers and administrators are strictly prohibited from singling out such peaceful dissent for discipline, admonishment or public ridicule.  (more…)

Here’s a little mid-week scare courtesy of the 4thgraders4obama YouTube Channel. (Don’t waste your time — I searched high and low and no luck finding the 4thgraders4bush YouTube Channel.) Yes, you read that right, an entire portal filled with nearly a dozen videos devoted to nine and ten year-olds singing, speaking and in general, getting awfully excited over a politician on the brink of having us all long for the good old days of Jimmy Carter. Here’s a taste:

–

The programmer teacher is Ms. Clark (she makes a short appearance here), but there wasn’t anything that identified the actual school. In last week’s Elementary Epidemic you saw a mix of Obama-enthusiasm. Some of the videotaped students were reminiscent of POWs speaking against their will on camera as they blink a Morse code plea for help, others were truly excited — and it’s the excited ones that are most worrisome. They’re gone. Lost forever… Ms. Clark’s entire class is like that.

The 4thgraders4obama videos do give us a broader glimpse into the methodology at work in our nation’s classrooms. In a couple of the videos you’ll see the kids watching President Obama on television and the whole class is as giddy as though they were in line for Space Mountain. Other videos have the kids standing before the camera reading what sounds like love letters to the First Family. Public or private school — that makes no difference. You don’t do this to young minds. There’s a wide berth between infusing your children with values and this. (more…)