Review-- The War on Kids

Review-- The War on Kids

Rating-- 2/5

This received lowest rating of the movies I have reviewed so far and trust me when I tell you-- do not watch this if you are a teacher because there is a strong likelihood you will throw something at the screen.

Luckily I kept myself under control but in my opinion it vilified teachers and said we are the reasoning for the school system being all wrong.

This is a documentary about how schools are turning into prisons. I will agree they are turning in that direction BUT NOT BECAUSE OF TEACHERS. As you can tell I have a problem with a lot of the content because it shows one side of the story.

A true well made documentary at least attempts to see the other side of the story and show some of their points of a view. This in my opinion is a bad documentary with horrible editing. They do make some very good points and if they had stopped about 30 minutes sooner this would be a totally different review (the first hour is their best). By the way it is a 95 minute movie (hour and a half long).

The beginning it starts with making the comparison with prisons which was effective and moves on to the over medicating of students (which if you ask most teachers they will agree-- including myself).

I do not agree with the director who choose to blame one group of people for the problems with the school system. As a result it was VERY HARD for me to stay impartial. I believe that the problems come from multiple groups and people-- no single person can be the scapegoat. If they had gone and done a more thorough examination of the situation I feel it could have been much stronger. Instead they took the easy route and blamed one group of people.

If you go into watching the movie knowing that they blame one group of people BUT want to have a lot of questions poised for you to consider. Then this is a good movie to watch. (Personally some of the best movies to pose questions are horrible movies-- so this is a good reason to watch it.) If you want to watch a movie that vilifies teachers then this is your movie (not a good reason to watch it).

This movie is on DVD--- not in theaters.

If you have seen it let me know what you think! Do you agree? disagree?