Overscheduled kids and teens, teach-to-the-test, erosion of free play time, stressful school environments are all real and serious problems that affect youth of America today.
"Race to Nowhere" is an attempt to cast a light and raise awareness to these problems, which are part of a larger tend where adult-led structured activities came to dominate virtually all non-sleeping time of students, in school, at home, or in the countless places they are chauffeured to and from. It follows the difficult-to- execute model of bringing several people who will tell their stories in parallel narratives while the director inserts other pieces to bring "familiar faces" of the issues the documentary portrays.
Excessive homework was the thread line chosen to guide the filmmaker throughout her project (which was born out of a situation she witnessed in her own family). It does a good job bringing and naming the issues and enumerating there.
However, there are 'execution flaws'. The parallel narratives of teens, parents, kids, teachers don't really add up depth and multiple viewpoints on the issue as much as they add length to the featured documentary.
More worrying, at some point the director starts shooting almost randomly at a variety of social issues: teen suicide (with a counterproductive and hard-to-believe direct blaming of a suicide case on a single event, which is something professional seriously advise against), income inequality, consumerism, social media hyperconectivity of teens, school district politics, teacher social standards etc. They could all be directly or indirectly tied to the hypercharged, hypercompetitive, test-driven school culture the films wants to take aim at, but they appear juggled around without much coherence or connection.
"Race to Nowhere" wasted an excellent opportunity to really look into misguided education practices and their effects on teens, but as it was unveiled, it certainly fails to rally up the audience to support the reforms the director seems to support right before the final credits.
