photo: bjortklingd/ BY-NC-SA

When I saw The Race to Nowhere trailer, I was excited and enthralled to see a movie that was about people “like me” -- a good student who pushes herself in school and in extracurricular activities. I wanted to see a movie about my life and the lives of my peers and friends. However, the movie’s portrayal of the school system, pressures, and students in high school today is severely off from what I have encountered in my life and my understanding of education.

The documentary focused on the opinions and experiences of teachers, school administrators, psychologists, and especially on particular students in the school system. Instead of giving an accurate portrayal of the issues within America’s schools and society's drive to see its children ‘succeed’, the movie seemed to go into the investigation with a preconceived notion. It seemed to say that schools were evil and students are only products of pressures. It left out students' abilities to make or at least weigh in on decisions themselves.

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As someone who takes all AP classes and has been on the more advanced track through my school career, I find this notion offensive. Although it is true that many students do take AP classes and do things only to put it on their college applications, there is a bigger problem here. I take AP classes because I feel like they are the only classes that I can truly learn in. The students in my AP classes are interested in the material, and willing to ask questions and participate. I feel that the alternative to AP classes, 'regular' classes, are more about worksheets and going through the motions. Students in other classes often seem disengaged and bored, maybe because not enough pressure has been put upon them. I do not take difficult classes to get into a “good” school or to make lots of money when I grow up, although both of those things seem to be nice byproducts.

I see the point that the director of the film, Vicki Abeles makes: that students should not just be seen as ‘products’ and schools should not feel like factories that have to produce high test scores and highly ‘achieving’ kids, (whatever that means). I strongly agree with this, and think that the fact that grades have overcome learning in terms of priorities of students these days because of fierce competition to get into college is one of the worst things about education today. I am glad that this documentary brought up this important issue, but as a person whose situation was being portrayed, I felt severely misrepresented. Kids are products of their environments and are certainly affected by the pressures of school, their parents, and their peers. However, if we are promoting seeing kids as individuals, we cannot look at their problems and blame the existence of those problems on everything else except for them. In many cases, these students are putting pressures upon themselves, and self-confidence, stress management, and evaluation of one’s own abilities need to come before we decide what path we want to put ourselves on.

Learning and grades should not be mutually exclusive, but in my experience, neither are happiness and success in school.