The War On Kids

Blame for problems with schooling in America is often assigned to insufficient funding or the inherent failings of today’s kids. In rare cases, parents, teachers, and administrators are also implicated. However, all efforts to improve the quality of education are doomed to fail if the system itself is not examined and understood to be the most significant impediment. After over six years in the making, THE WAR ON KIDS reveals that the problems with public education ultimately stem from the institution itself. Astonishingly all efforts at reform consistently avoid even considering this to be a possibility and the future for children and American democracy are at stake. MPAA Rating: NOTRATED
Video Rating: 5 / 5

Inga (Academy award winner Marcia Gay Harden) is a poet. She wants to buy and restore a house she is drawn to that reminds her of her childhood home, but her distant husband Hermann (Michael Gaston) sees little value in it or many of the things Inga loves. Inga realizes that many things in her life are coming full circle. Her crumbling marriage is a stark contrast to her relationship with her 8-year-old daughter, (Eulala Scheel, Ms. Harden’s real life daughter) with whom she shares her hopes, fears and inner-most thoughts following her recovery from breast cancer. By day their lives seem magical, full of cloud watching, kite flying and lazy summer drives. But at night, Inga is troubled by her marriage, its lack of intimacy and her fear of her own mortality. By weaving optimism into her life’s story it is in her own writing that she hears the echo of her mother’s journey and experiences the revelation that allows her transformation MPAA Rating: PG-13 2008