Tonight at 6:30, parents, teachers, and community members are gathering at Onteora High School to watch and discuss "Race to Nowhere," a provocative recent documentary about overachievement and the culture of American education. From a new blog called Phoenicia, NY:
Sponsored by the Phoenicia and Woodstock PTAs and the Onteora Middle School PTSO, there will be a moderator led discussion between an invited panel of speakers after the screening and audience members are invited to participate.
Onteora Middle School PTSO member, Keiko Sono, writes:
“This is a documentary that would question the educational system as it stands, and therefore, is controversial. It is only distributed through grass roots screenings such as ours in local communities. It is not available on Netflix or for sale on DVDs. As a condition for screening, panel discussions are required, and it is this combination that has spawned many town-hall meeting type events throughout the country.
As a public school hosting this screening, it is not appropriate for us to push any agenda, and it would be misleading to appear as if we are hosting it because we agree with the stance the film is taking. However, this film and its screening events serve as a terrific stage in which a lively discussion regarding the state of our education can begin.
Last December, the New York Times ran a story about the film and the discussions it's spawning in school districts across the country:
The movie introduces boys who drop out of high school from the pressure, girls who suffer stress-induced insomnia and worse, and students for whom “cheating has become another course,” as one puts it.
“When success is defined by high grades, test scores, trophies,”’ a child psychologist says in the film, “we know that we end up with unprepared, disengaged, exhausted and ultimately unhealthy kids.”
Vicki Abeles, the middle-aged mother and first-time filmmaker who made “Race to Nowhere,” picked up a camera when a doctor said that her then-12-year-old daughter’s stomachaches were being caused by stress from school.
“I was determined to find out how we had gotten to a place where our family had so little time together,” she explains in the film, which has an unslick, home-video quality, “where our kids were physically sick because of the pressures they were under.”
