I found my housemate keeping this DVD in her shelf. Taking advantage of being her housemate, I watched it while enjoying wine. Well, it turned out that this movie is not good to watch over wine. The movie is all about the depressing, dysfunctional public education system in the United States. It is understandable that parents want to homeschool their kids or send their kids to magnet schools or charter schools.
In a sense, the movie is helpful for foreigners like me to understand why the level of knowledge of university students, generally speaking, is incredibly low. I only know students here (a public university), so I don't intend to generalize what I have experienced and witnessed. But I have heard similar stories from teachers and parents across the country.
But this movie is kind of anti-union, bashing unionized, tenure-track teachers. They are unionized and tenured so that schools cannot fire them easily. That's what the movie says. Really?! I thought. Look at what it happening across the country. Teachers are being fired because of massive budget cuts. Kids are losing their favorite teachers. Kids are taking four-day weekends, which is ridiculous to me. The anti-union message aside, the movie tells you enough about how bad the public school system can be.