Most Likely to Succeed(2015)
dir. Greg Whiteley
The best case for project-based learning, with caveats.
Where to watch: Streaming on KanopyLetterboxd ↗
A year inside High Tech High, a San Diego charter school built entirely around project-based learning instead of standardized instruction, following two classes of ninth graders.
Why it’s here
Makes the most vivid case in documentary form for project-based learning over the standard model — but its history of how American schooling got this way has been disputed by actual education historians, and its producers have their own stake in the reform it's arguing for. Worth watching with that critique alongside it, not instead of it.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- North America
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educationally Underprepared
Mike Rose
The kids school labels remedial are not dumb.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom
Lisa Delpit
The unspoken rules schools never teach.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Deschooling Society
Ivan Illich
Schools don't educate. They certify. Illich proves it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Dumbing Us Down
John Taylor Gatto
NYC Teacher of the Year quit. Here's what school actually teaches.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Free to Learn
Peter Gray
Children are designed to learn through play. School keeps interrupting.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
How Children Fail
John Holt
Children don't fail school. School fails children. Here's the proof.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
How Children Learn
John Holt
Children are born knowing how to learn. Here's what that looks like.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Impro for Storytellers
Keith Johnstone
Make it up. Mean it anyway.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST