Straight up, I thought Most Likely to Succeed was a very well-made film. Solid interviews, dynamic cinematography and innovative camera work for a documentary. There was nothing flash, the director let the words and actions speak for themselves and that lets us draw our own conclusions (and questions) as well.
Typically a documentary that doesn’t answer your questions should not be considered a strong film, but these aren’t the kind of questions I am talking about. I have the same questions from watching the film as the parents of the children who attended High Tech High do. Is this right for these kids? Are they going to be able to get to where they want to go if they don’t “toe the line”? How does admin find good teachers who are ready for a role like this and how do they maintain a high quality environment? These are valid questions that this film raises and they are not at fault for not providing answers. We simply don’t know yet.
I had come across these antiquated concepts of the education system and how it has served the social structure so well for the last 70+ years (MLtS argues 100) in other films and podcasts and I wholeheartedly agree. I don’t believe some massive conspiracy was involved to indoctrinate little cogs on a wheel (like the pacified humans being harvested in The Matrix). Instead, things just got this way. Like we ran full steam down a road for a long time before pulling up, turning around, and not being able to recognize where we started from.
There were distinct Summerhill vibes from some of the sequences in the film. I admire the teachers at the school. I think they must have some grit to commit to a system like that and to have enough confidence in their own direction that they could meet the expectations of the students and parents and admin (not to mention themselves). I would love to learn more about their process.
I definitely had a sense of dread around the middle of the film when they were describing the empty world most graduates are being sent into. I am 44 and I never did get a job related to my original degree (BA) in psychology. It was just a thing I did. My wife has her masters in business and she has struggled to find work. I picture all these people stuck on an escalator that is descending into catastrophe and they can’t get off.
Obviously the projects were the highlight of the film and designed to blow you away, but I did enjoy the way the film explained the concept of knowledge acquisition as “mile-wide, inch-deep” vs “inch-wide, mile-deep”. They gave extra time to explain it from the parent’s point of view as well as the teachers who spawned the projects and experts who were researching the phenomenon. Interviews and candid bits with the kids were illuminating, but they couldn’t express the progress the students made as well as the camera could as it recorded their performances and work leading up to the exhibition. Pretty tremendous.
In the film, there was an interview with a guy named Larry Rosenstock (sp?) who said, “This isn’t the way to do it, this is the way I did it.” That emphasis really rings true for me. I come across so many people who want to force their own way of life onto others (or, “that’s the way we did it so it should be good enough for you, too”) and this comment highlights the frame of mind that we all need to be reminded of sometimes. Every other set of eyes we look at have a different person at the controls. They don’t dress the same as me. They don’t like the same music as me. They don’t drive the same speed as me. So, why do they have to learn like I do?
Photo by author.
Edited to add links and film trailer on 28 January 2021