Race to Nowhere by Vicki Abeles

Race to Nowhere

The film “Race to Nowhere” by Vicki Abeles challenges the current way education system prepare the kids for success. By interviewing educator, parents, education experts and students, “Race to Nowhere ” reflect the problematic education system that focus on results instead of process. Also, the film provides many merit pondering scenes. For example, the students grew up under the pressure of peer-competition and over-scheduling work, and they have to abandon their leisure and even sleeping time for school work and extra curriculum. Slowly, students start to have depression, stress-related illness, and many other mental disorders. They start to use inappropriate ways, such as cheating, to improve their grades. “Race to Nowhere” is undoubted a inspired film that sounds the alarm of the modern education system.

Based on the textbook, the institution is a set of organized beliefs or rules that establishes how a society will attempt to meet its basic social needs. Education, as one of the institution, is based on the purpose of teaching students to become an active member in the transformation of further societies. Also, the school imparts norms that will be useful when they face the challenge in society to its students (Basirico 436). In the film, students are learning the norm of ”competition”, which teaches them that if they don’t take enough class, they will lose to other students. More so, the education is a competition, and students are competent to each other in achieving better success. Based on several student’s testimony, they are trying to take as much honor classes as possible in order to compete with other students for the better universities. In order to win the game, some students decide to cheat on the test. This “norm” of competition can later prepare them for the further competition in the workplace when they start finding jobs. Additionally, the textbook stated that, “… education dominates the lives of children; and it also plays an important role in adult life, as adult students, parents, taxpayers, school employees, government official, and voters participate in the school system” (Basirico 435). In the film, parents are affected by their child’s school life, and sometimes they participate with their child to achieve higher academic. For instance, the parents put time and money for their kids to play instruments and sports, so the kids can have a higher chance to be accepted by brand university. The educational institution, like many other institutions, does not perform its role in a certain group of people. Instead, people with different careers are involved in the school system.

In the functionalist perspective, various social institutions are believed in working together like organs to maintain and reproduce societies (Basirico 39). Based on the textbook, functionalist perspective suggests that the intended function of the educational system is to supply the family socialization, and it helps children to gain both the skill and knowledge necessary to function in the world. Also, school will evaluation achievement and talent, and direct the talent student to more advance course. For instance, some students in the film are taking honor classes because they got a good result in the previous course. School use tests to evaluate the students, and they move the more talent students into advanced class while leaving the less talent students in the class (non-honor class) that fits them and help them to perform their best in the further. To sum up, there has four manifest functions of school system--- teaching skills, evaluating student’s achievement, transmitting new ideas from researches and creating new knowledge. The school also provides latent functions such as prolonged adolescence and age segregation.

Furthermore, while providing us knowledge, school shapes our values and norm by imparting us the value from upper-class. The film shows us that students have to go to school to learn the subjects, review the subjects, study and take tests. It is a process of letting students memorize the lesson. Since the education department controls what we learn in school, it shapes

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