Strip Me

Take what you want
Steal my pride
Build me up
Or cut me down to size
Shut me out
But I’ll just scream
I'm only one voice in a million
But you ain't taking that from me
Oh oh no you ain't taking that from me

I dont need a microphone
To say what I been thinking
My heart is like a loudspeaker
Thats always on eleven
And if you strip me,
Strip it all away

If you strip me,
What would you find
If you strip me,
Strip it all away
I’m still the same

- STRIP ME by Natasha Bedingfield

Over the course of the week, I've gotten to see two interesting documentaries. Usually I'm wary of documentaries, but the two that I saw recently did a pretty decent job and reached me on every level. After watching both of them, I walked away, not with a flight of fancy enthusiasm to conquer the world, but with a bigger quest for knowledge, research, and understanding—much of which I've already begun to incorporate into my own life.

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

I will admit, this one was heavy-handed in its one-sided cause, but it also provided me with enough facts and resources to dig deeper to understand the underbelly of the American education system. The movie highly promotes charter schools as the premiere form of education for students and it shows a lot of pros about them, while heaping on the disdain for public schools. After seeing the film, I'm not FULLY convinced that charter schools are the complete answer, but their techniques and some other practical solutions provided in the film do shed some hope for the future of education that can be used on an at-home level. It also digs deeper into what circumstances are halting success in public schools across America. It was a hard pill for me to swallow at first, because I came from GREAT public schools and each of my teachers genuinely cared about my personal success in the realm of a quality education and positive social growth, but I could see where some of the data provided was valid. The truth I walked away with is that as a community, much can be done to help push education forward—through community involvement, individual awareness of the issue at hand, and by parents understanding that they DO have options and can make daily decisions to propel their child's academic level, there is hope for the future of America.

Here is a clip from the movie:

FREAKONOMICS

 This movie was definitely one that left me with my world turned on its side. There was a lot of information and intrigue to question various angles of basic life assumptions that I had never thought to question. It's broken down into four parts, each with their own focus. While these segments were not long enough to really provide a thorough conclusion about their individual topics, it provided enough information for me to process the data and come to my own conclusions about each topic, which I appreciated.

This was the first 3 minutes of the film. This part wasn't really what intrigued me, as much as it was the segment about all the tips and tricks that parents buy into to be "successful" parents who raise their kids to be "the best of the best." The segment on observations of the decrease in crime rates also got me to think about things from a different angle.

I'm not saying necessarily that you should RUSH out to the theaters to see these documentaries because they will BLOW YOUR MIND, but they are worth the watch on Netflix. They bring awareness and provoke thought. I feel that if we would spend more time thinking about such things and how we can challenge our own viewpoint of the things that are taught to us (and which we sometimes take at face value), as opposed to thinking about surface issues or how to get the next big awesome thing that will seemingly enhance our lives, then we'll be doing our communities and our own families a great service.