Director Greg Whiteley’s Most Likely To Succeed 2015 documentary is very valuable in bringing up the idea of a change in the educational system by a change of teaching methods. Research was done in many schools across the country, but the documentary focus on High Tech High in San Diego, California.
The documentary initially highlights the impact of robots on society; the world’s best chess player is a robot and the robot is also the jeopardy winner (Whiteley 7:00). There is a growing concern in some years, college graduates will have an increasingly hard time finding jobs because robots and other technologies will have taken many of those jobs (Whiteley 10:16). The documentary explains a theory of change as seen through High Tech High, where students learn in a different environment than a traditional school. Students at High Tech High do not have bells and do not have class periods, but they do have combined subjects. Their goals include teaching students skills that they will use in real life; “innovative thinking, not innovative production” (Whiteley 31:00). In traditional schooling, students are taught test taking strategies. At High Tech High, however, tests are not taken, as students simply work along each other in different projects to use skills and portray their work in an exhibition.
The methods at High Tech High allow teaching to be much more student centered, and they allow the teacher to have more autonomy as they are allowed to teach anything they want because they are not required to follow state standards. Kahlenberg and Potter would agree with this aspect of High Tech High, as they push for teacher autonomy. Their book quotes, “This [teacher voice/autonomy] promotes a better learning environment for students, which raises student achievement, and a better working environment for teachers” (Kahlenberg and Potter 6). They argue that increased teacher autonomy serves as somewhat of a domino effect for positive impacts on the students, which were seen in action at High Tech High.
The scene depicted in the screenshot above depicts a large component of the documentary and of schooling in general. One can observe that the students all physically look the same. They are taking the same test. However, all students are different. Students learn in different methods, and standardized tests do not capture that. Students should learn more, not less, but learning for a test is hindering students of skills that can be applied. The documentary mentions how test prep is for the most part multiple choice and factual recall, nothing in real life (Whiteley 47:00). Furthermore, the things a student memorizes for a test will eventually disappear because tests are not collaborative, they do not push thinking (Whiteley 47:50). To me, this was an influential scene because testing is a current debate. Keeping or removing them are changes that can dramatically impact the learning of students. In my opinion, it was smart the way filmmakers captured this scene because they captured students taking a multiple choice, standardized test from an above angle. This angle puts an emphasis on the similarity of the tests, making one realize how similar they are, and it puts an emphasis on the idea that tests are not collaborative, which shows how tests do not help emphasize skills used in real life.
Throughout the documentary I had a lot of questions: Did High Tech High students get into colleges? Did they do well in tests? Do they know specific math skills? The director made sure my questions were answered. It was mentioned that although test taking was not a focus, students still performed above the state average (Whiteley 1:20:00). Furthermore, it was mentioned that 98 percent of students get into college (Whiteley 1:20:20). I think this shows how as a society, we should not be afraid to make changes in the educational system. However, some of my questions still went unanswered. There are holes in demographics. I wish I would have known more specifically the kinds of students and their socioeconomic backgrounds because I strongly believe income and family backgrounds play a role in the performance of students. Overall, this documentary gives lots to talk about and to analyze.
Sources:
Kahlenberg, Richard and Halley Potter. 2014-2015. “Restoring Shanker’s Vision for Charter Schools.” American Educator.
Whiteley, Greg. 2015. “Most Likely To Succeed.” Film; Video Documentary.