Matt Andrus

Waiting for Superman and The Smartest Guys in the Room

This blog will discuss the two films, “Waiting for Superman” and “The Smartest Guys in the Room.”  The first film, “Waiting for Superman” was a documentary that addressed the problems within the public school system in America.  The school system is a failing program in America, and this is a strong statistic in the inner city schools, kids will come from middle school and make it maybe a few weeks into their first time in high school.  The key to good schooling is good teachers who keep the students up with the curriculum.  But because teachers have tenure, which basically guarantees them a position as a teacher and if they are performing poorly the school board must go through a million hoops to fire the individual.  In the end, the documentary is a very pro charter school film that proposes most public schools be converted into charter schools.  The flaws in the documentary that stand out is the continual preaching of ideas and facts that have no source and are taught using cartoons as to show the simplicity of a situation or easily explain an idea or flaw. 

            The Smartest Guys in the Room was about the collapse and bankruptcy of Enron.  Enron was one of the largest companies with the most rapidly growing stock purchases in the market going into the 2000’s.  Enron headed by people like Ken Lay, and Jeff Skilling, specifically Jeff Skilling, who lead a number of individuals in the eventual business run with fraud as its primary income.  As Enron played on Wallstreets greed, they profited greatly from it.  Skilling spoke of the growing technology that Enron had acquired and the increasing ways that Enron had found to make money out of nothing.  Enron was actually 30 billion dollars in debt and found ways to put these debt numbers in other investors as not to be detected in Enron.  Enron continually made the claims that they were a very successful company and they had no hiccups or would have no problem in the near future.  But eventually the people inquiring began to be heard more on a national spectrum.  Why didn’t Enron ever release its balance numbers, why didn’t they have proof of how they made their money.  Eventually numbers showed that Enron had been basically routing power away from California and asking for money in order to give California basically just the amount of power to keep them on a leash to keep California paying into their pockets.  As news got out to the public stocks dropped and public anger grew very rapidly and hence began the immediate spiral downward in Enron.  This documentary used a lot of facts and interviewed people from all over including a few former Enron traders, but for the most part it was a very one sided opinion, but the numbers can’t lie and there is an outrageous amount of evidence to support the documentaries stake on the corruption within Enron.