The Language of Change

The documentary "Waiting for Superman" has opened up the airways for our nations to speak freely about American public education.  The film urges the public to look at the state of education today and question how it has become to unequal for the students.  While the film does spend much of the time criticizing the current state, the filmmakers do back their word and provide the audience with solutions to the problem.  their mission is four-fold.  With these changes, they believe America can drastically turn around education for the better.  The four solutions are: great teachers, prepared students, excellent schools and increased literacy.  The problem here lies in the fact that these generic words "great," "excellent" mean very little.  If someone were to look at the stases on which these improvements were defined, they would appear to be meaningless.  What qualifies a "great" teacher, or an "excellent" school?  These words were thrown around carelessly in the film and only added to the superior tone some critics felt this movie took.  In order to be more effective, I would have liked to have seen how Guggenheim (the director) qualified these value terms.