In the next few weeks, we’re all likely to hear much about the crisis facing American schools, with the release of the film Waiting For Superman. Directed by Davis Guggenheim, the director behind An Inconvenient Truth, the film takes on school curricula, teacher unions, and fundamental structural problems with American schooling that some believe are behind the achievement gap between of American students and those from other industrialized nations. Here’s a trailer:

The film has already been criticized from some corners for throwing fuel on the fire that has already led to more privatization in schools, and the regime of high-stakes testing that so typifies contemporary schooling. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I share similar concerns that the prominent placement of such figures as Michelle Rhee means the film will not be terribly critical of testing regimes, inordinately push Charter Schools as the best solution, and not fully acknowledge that, though Charters can be sites of innovation, many are not doing a very good job, either.

Possibly in preparation for the oncoming press around this film, or, who knows, maybe to plug the upcoming DML conference (in Long Beach, CA this February), the Macarthur Foundation has recently produced a glossy new video highlighting its laudable Digital Media & Learning efforts. (Full disclosure: I was employed under a Macarthur DML grant for three years as a doctoral student. Regardless, it’s an impressive set of projects aiming at shaping the future of learning, well worth checking out for yourself).

The video below illustrates a wide variety of approaches, both in and outside of school, to help change the discourse on what constitutes learning. John Seely Brown exhorts that we view engagement with gaming as a potential model for learning, Henry Jenkins argues that we take seriously that media can bring individuals into connection with communities outside those in a classroom, and Katie Salen illustrates that technology can be embraced and managed, not just outlawed.

[A brief aside about Twitter: @jseelybrown, @mizuko, @henryjenkins, and @katiesalen are all on Twitter. You can follow @macfound for the Macarthur Foundation and @dmlcentral for the Digital Media & Learning tweets. I'm @scd, by the way; read my tweets on the sidebar or just follow me!]

Do I expect that Waiting For Superman will provide solutions as wide-reaching as the ones explored in the Macarthur video? Of course not; the film appears to be a polemic that’s meant to stir up a mixture of shock and anger, not deep thought, and that’s useful to an extent. Waiting For Superman is a film that appears to be about detailing the many faces of the problem, and, if early reviews are any indication, is not very specific on the optimal solutions.

I’d love to be wrong, but films such as this are most often about mobilizing the populace to take a look at an issue they’ve been ignoring, and then drive them to action. But, it’s the form that this action will take that most concerns me and, I suspect, would concern many of the folks in the DML video. For, if we take seriously that the kids of today are growing up in a world vastly different than their parents’ world (not to mention completely alien to their grandparents’ world, which many schools are still based upon), then we need to find solutions that allow us to prepare young learners for the distributed workplaces, responsibilities of civic engagement, and the connected cultural lives of the coming years. And that just ain’t gonna be fixed by applying more testing — or, perhaps phrased a bit more politely, the 21st century learner won’t be well-served by our overreliance on assessment methods formulated in the 19th century.

Hopefully, digital media and learning advocates can begin to capitalize on the likely public conversations that crop up after the film’s release, and help shift our schools toward new models — models for the world that exists now, not a long-gone world that some still pine for.