Independent Viewing 2

Wating For "Superman"

Big "A" Arguement

Claim:

Good teachers are the key to improving a child's education. Good teachers should be rewarded based on their students's test score, and bad teachers should be fired (no more/limited tenure).

Outline:

Intro :

-America falling behind on education.

-Research done - What is the cause?

-Lots has been done (list some examples...) but it ultimately it comes down to something simple: good teachers.

Thesis: While it is true that good teachers are the key to providing a good education, they should not be rewarded or punished based on test scores

Body 1:

Better teachers are the key to improving the quality of the education a school can offer.

- They can cover more curriculum in the time given.

- They get the students involved in more ways than just book work.

- Each student has a better chance at succeeding.

- They increase literacy and test scores, upping the standards of the school and attracting more families to the district.

- They emphasize the importance of education to the students - avoids turning them off from school altogether.

- Teaching is more than book knowledge - teach study habits and instill ideas that will promote further education

- Important because their primary concern is the student.

Body 2 -

However, when teachers are evaluated based on their students' test scores, they can no longer perform/teach to their full capacity.

- They are forced to teach for the test, rather than to judge what topics are most important\

        - good example: ap classes - supposed to be involved college classes, now they are just classes that teach us how to take a test

- We say that teaching is more than test taking and book learning, but putting this system in place will just promote that - teachers care about students' educations, but their salary and carreer will take precedence in order to protect themselves and their schools

- the overall quality of the education will decrease

Body 3 -

Instead of offering incentives which would restric the teachers, it would be better to make all attempts to improve their skills.

- While it makes sense to offer bonuses and incentives for industrial workers, researchers, etc, it is not the same for teachers. It is okay for them to be evaluated, but not by student achievement via a national exam. That is like studying for the sat - you don't learn important math, only the bare minimum needed for the test

- start at the beginning - hire highly qualified teachers at a decent salary (rather than promising future raises)

- Give them tools, training, coaching, and experience so that they may improve

 

Independent Viewing 1

Waiting For "Superman"

Bibliography:

Waiting for Superman. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Perf. Paramount Home Entertainment, 2011. DVD. 

Summary:

The documentary analyzes the failing American public school system, and the effect it has on the futures of the kids within it. All through the film, Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”), the director and co-writer, has been followed the educational ambitions of five children in urban areas across the country: Los Angeles, Harlem, the Bronx, Washington, D.C., and Redwood City, California. The film offers insight into the reasons behind the childrens' and schools' poor performances, but also possible solutions. For example, many student's poor test results are directly related to the quality of the teacher. However, as many or most teachers have tenure and cannot be fired, the school is not able to improve, and neither are the students. Guggenheim then goes deeper, explaining that we cannot eliminate tenure due to the political strength of the Teachers Union. He then gives the perspectives of many people that are currently trying to change the system. He similarly analyses "drop-out factories", the affiliation between bad neighborhoods and high school drop-outs, the effect of longer days on student improvement, and the current struggle for better public schooling in charter schools. The film ends with a series of lotteries in which our five main children try to get into a charter school, and on two make it.  

Rhetorical Devices:
Archival Footage - As it is documentary, the film switches between the five storylines of the struggling children to explanations of the overarching problems. During the latter, there are a lot of clips of high school drop-outs, legislators trying to make reforms in Congress, speeches and promises given by presidents, etc. Their purposes vary, but they are mostly used to support a claim.
Logos/support - These mostly came in the when the narrator was trying to explain vocabulary, a conflict, or research study to the audience. They were are no people, only a series of statistics and diagrams on the screen. However, they were always presented as cute, childish animations. This was perhaps done to emphasize the innocence of those represented, or to contrast the sheer impact that the cute little animations had on the future of hundreds of thousands of children.
Pathos: This appeal was made extremely effectivly by focusing in on the overarching topics offered by the film, narrowing the story to five very driven children and their parents. Though struggling financially, all of these families know the value of education, as do their children, and are working extremely hard to offer their children the best, but all they can do is enter them in a lottery. Particularly when the most passionate students don't get chosen, the audience begins to feel the parents' and childrens' desparation at the situation, and it pushes the audience to fight for change.
Expert Testimony: The claims made by the film for fixing the system are extremely politically involved, and would entail changes in a system that has remained static for centuries. To convince the audience of his ideas for limiting distribution of tenure and lengthening school days, he needed very very solid support, and he often used expert testimony to do so.
Satire -  Although not emphasized greatly, satire is discretely present throughout the film. After getting the audience on his side, Guggenheim alienates the refutation with statements like "The great nation that put a man on tehmoon was finally going to fix education."
Parallels - This was another device used to make the refutation seem weak. He stated a claim that many experts have testifed to be true, that children from these bad districts simply can't learn. He then compares it with a previously commonly held belief, that airplanes could not break the sound barrier. By proving that that all of the people that once believed the second claim wholeheartedly were very wrong, he makes all of the experts that stated the other claim seem wrong.