Race to Nowhere

I saw the movie as part of a faculty work-day earlier this week, and wow.  Where to start?  It was clear very early on that it was a propaganda piece, so the fact that it wasn’t balanced didn’t bother me especially.  The misrepresentations in it were more annoying, and the occasional error of fact even more so.

Nonetheless, rather than go on about its shortcomings, I will mention that there were a number of points that every teacher should consider (though I’d like to think good ones already do so).

• A good teacher-student relationship is probably the most significant contributing factor to how well “teaching” works.
• Every teacher should routinely consider the cost/benefit ratio of homework–for most classes (not all), “less is more” as Orson Cook used to say all the time.  But, unlike the point the film made, I would say the nature of the homework is important as well.  Students at SJS tend to despise what they call “busywork.”  I don’t completely share their definition: the fact that you can, given sufficient time, get the right answer to a problem does not mean you have facility with the ideas or skills involved. Hence, I don’t agree that it’s “pointless” to give problems once the students can do one of them.  However, I do agree that once they’ve demonstrated reasonably facility, more problems are overkill.
• Another useful point for teachers to get out of the film is that unless you pay very close attention to a variety of sources, you as a teacher don’t necessarily know what your students’ lives are actually like.  Some people are very good at holding things together in public while being near a breaking point inside.  Taking at face value a student’s well-being from a superficial observation that she “does her work”, “doesn’t cause trouble,” and “makes reasonable grades” is naive.  It’s analogous to the teacher who, when no-one responds to the prompt, “Are there any questions?” assumes everyone knows everything.

I can’t really think of other good things about the film unless parents who saw it recognized themselves in it.  As someone said at a discussion afterwards, parents have a great deal more agency than they are willing to exercise.  It is possible to say no to yet-another-extracurricular activity or another AP course.  And in spite of what some parents seem to think, your future success and happiness in life are not guaranteed (or destroyed) by where you went to college…

And oh yeah.  The most unfortunate part, arguably, is that the “race” the movie talks about is not, in fact, to nowhere.  It is, in some cases, the most likely way to get into a college of a certain sort.  So, if that’s your major goal in life, then you’re not racing to nowhere–you’re running hard in the direction of your goal.  Whether it’s a reasonable goal for you (or not) and whether you reach the goal (or not) are separate questions.