Race to Nowhere by Vicki Abeles

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our value by deciding what to put in our textbook. For liberal arts, such as history and English, how well we do on the test is based on how well we know American’s history and culture. Some rules in school, such as obey the teacher and say the Pledge of Allegiance, gradually shape our value to be patriotic and teach us the norm of obeying the authority. Through a hidden curriculum, the school taught us the norms to maintain the stratification system by teaching us how to behave in the position of student (Basirico 437).

Credentialism, defined in textbooks as the “practice of requiring degrees for higher-paying job, whether or not the degrees actually signify skills necessary to accomplish the job”. The film shows the students do all they can to get into high-degree education. However, they always have overloaded work taking on more than they can necessarily handle, and they have to take many different subjects and learn special skills. Not all the things they learn will be useful later in the work. But they learn it because “.. The jobs requiring a great deal of education do not necessarily require the skills people learn in school, but the job requires the cultural norms learned in school” (442).

The film also reflects one latent function in school, age segregation. Age segregation is defined as “the separation of group by age, such as occurs in our education system” (438). Before college, students who enter same school level is about the same age. Although some students skip a grade in a specific course, the age difference won’t be too obvious. The peer group is all around the same age. They share the same living environment, share the same goal, and have the same stress as each other. For example, most of the students interviewed in the film were sharing the stress of applying to college, and none of them will have the stress of getting fired by the manager. The school environment keeps the students away from other distraction and help them focus on their career. However, students will also learn values that works in school be won’t be reflected by the society.

Overall, the film speaks differently to people in different position who view it. The filmmakers interviewed people in the different society role and gathered their opinion about the education system. The students now are focused on getting good grade instead of learning the material. One student said that, “I’m not thinking really hard about the meaning of any of what I am learning, I’m just thinking about getting things done.” By showing the negative attitude students have toward learning, the movie accurately reflects the modern problems in our school system. Society should be more thoughtful and more intentional about the system they provide to their next generation.