Teaching a Nation: Films to Raise Awareness on the Public Education Crisis

Documentaries have quickly become informative tools in many homes. As the nation continues to face an education crisis, films can promote change by highlighting stories from educators, students, and society, to foster greater understanding and lasting, holistic solutions. 

Documentaries on Educators

The public education system has been declining for almost a decade, meaning educators have been facing increasingly challenging battles for years. One primary concern is that schools are underfunded and teachers, underpaid.

This has in large discouraged young professionals from going into a teaching career, creating a need for teachers that are, in some districts, so desperate that they have hired unqualified candidates or full-time substitutes to fill in classrooms. Additionally, the socioeconomic performance gap continues to widen.

Being that information is limited, the public may not understand the extent of this bind, and therefore be less willing to sympathize or help.  

Teachers, however, know the inner workings of the system, what works and what doesn’t. Since documentaries are an ideal way to tell real-life stories and foster understanding, filmmakers have an opportunity let teachers tell their stories.

Films that interview teachers and highlight the day-to-day challenges educators face can help build the momentum necessary for addressing these problems. Furthermore, viewers might feel empowered to make choices that help improve schools.  

Documentaries can encourage discussion around what public education needs

Documentaries on Childhood

As public education’s resources are down, absenteeism, behavioral maladjustments, and social stuntedness is rising. Not only does this make the educator’s job more taxing, but it also requires adaptability and empathy for a life that educator has never known. No one generation has grown up the same way—kids enrolled in K-12 education face an environment that today’s adults have not encountered. Educators have to be flexible and dynamic in their teaching approaches, but how can they relate to a generation that they do not understand?

Teachers must continue to learn, too. Documentaries that examine the unique experiences that children are encountering, and how those experiences shape their ability to digest and internalize information, can help teachers and parents convey better suited lessons.

Perhaps a film investigating shorter attention spans prompts a teacher to invigorate their lesson plan with attention-grabbing shifts; maybe by seeing their aptitude for technology, the classroom incorporates aids or activities based on tech. In any capacity, films that preach the narrative of learning about childhood today can better equip the educator to pivot their approach in a way that generates a more productive and inclusive learning environment.

Documentaries can inspire teachers to implement new learning strategies

Documentaries on Society

Public education may often feel like a world of its own, but students and teachers are not in a bubble. Films that remind viewers of this can inspire a call-to-action that trickles into schools in the same fashion. Because public education is struggling, and because children are facing new and evolving challenges, documentaries can also broaden viewer’s sights to digest the larger social issues of today’s world and apply the ways in which these issues bleed into education.

For example, the Covid-19 pandemic put learning on hold for many of 2025’s school-aged children at vital developmental years. Catching up from this, at an already daunting disadvantage, has undoubtedly negatively affected the way children learn.

As society continues to learn and bring issues—such as toxins in food, pollution in the environment, the social media epidemic, and economic changes—to light, parents, teachers, and the public can better understand that no one mistake can be traced back to blame. It has been a compilation of factors, and so it will take a second flooding of information to help bring about change.

Documentaries can examine what other factors are impacting the classroom

Documentaries to Spark Conversation

Filmmakers today can raise awareness for change by producing factual content that sparks conversation. In researching the challenges faced by educators, students, and the entire system, films can communicate from each angle how public education has gotten in a bind, and what must happen to reverse the damage.