What institutional model represents the best hope for American students in the 21st century? That is the question posed in filmmaker Greg Whiteley’s documentary, which begins with the boredom felt by his own daughter in the fourth grade and expands into a full-scale examination of an alternative mode of learning represented by High Tech High, a public charter school in San Diego. Founded in 2000, the school rejects the traditional curricular design formulated, as Whiteley explains, by a committee of experts in 1892, which was based on a German model emphasizing breadth of knowledge through a mandated sequence of courses in specific subjects. Instead, High Tech aims to nurture independent thought, creativity, and cooperation among students through what one instructor calls a Socratic seminar method that culminates in the creation of collaborative projects that cross disciplinary lines. The goal is to foster an atmosphere in which students develop a capacity for innovation and teamwork that will serve them well as the development of artificial intelligence renders many white-collar jobs obsolete just as robotics have taken over blue-collar ones. Combining fly-on-the-wall footage, graphics, and interviews, Whiteley follows the progress of two ninth-grade classes, illustrating how individual students benefit from the program, including one girl who begins the year lacking self-confidence and ends it by leading an imaginative updating of a Greek tragedy, and a boy whose elaborate project is incomplete at the close of the year but, together with his team, finishes it anyway. A thoughtful and provocative contribution to the debate about how educational policy must evolve to meet the changing needs of students, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)
Most Likely to Succeed
(2015) 60 min. DVD or Blu-ray: $75: public libraries & high schools; $350: colleges & universities. DRA. Tugg. PPR. Volume 33, Issue 4
Most Likely to Succeed
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