A month ago, I started listening to NPR on my way to and from work. I used to do this, but when I got satellite radio in my car a few years ago I fell out of the habit, and spent my 20-30 minute drive listening to music instead. That was perfectly fine, but I forgot what I was missing.
So NPR is back on my radio, and I love it. I know that critics will argue that NPR is a hugely biased liberal news outlet, and perhaps that’s true, but it doesn’t change the fact that I enjoy the stories they showcase. I enjoy hearing both the news highlights AND more in-depth coverage of interesting issues, and almost as importantly, I enjoy NOT hearing ad nauseam about the latest antics of the celebrity du jour.
Earlier this week, All Things Considered had an interview with the man who directed An Inconvenient Truth. His latest documentary is called Waiting for Superman, which takes a look at the current state of public education in the United States. (Spoiler: it’s bad.) It centers on four students who are trying to get into charter schools via a lottery; if they don’t get in, they will have to go to their local school with high dropout rates, low test scores, etc. I embedded the trailer above, and the interview I heard on the radio is available online, if you are interested. The film is only in limited release right now, and limited release roughly translates to “Not In Houston.” Hopefully it will make it here at some point!
Yesterday, Jose sent me the link to the Mom Houston blog, which posted trailers for Waiting for Superman as well as three other upcoming documentaries about public education. (Side note: I hadn’t even mentioned the NPR story or the documentary to Jose. He independently saw it and sent it to me saying “I want to see this.” This kind of thing happens all the time. I love that we are so often on the same wavelength. Awwwww.)
This one, Race to Nowhere, intrigues me as well because while it also seems to be making the point that public education is failing children, it reaches that conclusion from a completely different approach — arguing that kids are under too much pressure, that they are not allowed to make mistakes, that they have their innate love of learning zapped out of them by a poorly run system. This one also isn’t available in Houston at the moment. SIGH.
One documentary argues that good kids aren’t given good opportunities, while the other argues that good kids are under too much pressure. Quite a contrast.
Remember the most important factors in school success have always been and will always be family, expectations, and attitude!
I wake up to NPR every morning. It’ll drive you crazy after a while. 😉 But I like it overall. It’s better than the alternatives.
On NPR… it leans liberal, sure, but I find more often than not it tries to present a balanced story. One of the better options around for news. And I wholeheartedly agree that the stories they cover are great and interesting.
On the liberal / not-liberal issue, i also think it depends a lot on your local NPR station. The main stories are standard everywhere, but if you listen between 10 and 4 in Seattle, or in the evenings, we hear some stories that I think are not played everywhere. I find the stuff I listen to at prime time (early morning, and to and from work) fairly balanced to leaning liberal, but the off-hours stuff can be very liberal, but in a non-political sense organic gardening sense, if you know what I mean.
I don’t actually know what our station plays during the day. I know at 9 a.m. the news ends and they play classical music — I think our local station may be half NPR, half classical. The 3:00 hour is a BBC news broadcast, I think, and 4:00 kicks off the NPR programming again. Not sure what plays between 10-3.