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The New York Times calls it “a shocking chronicle of institutional dysfunction.” Variety describes it as “a wake-up call about appalling conditions” in American schools. The Political Film Society asks, “why the disinterest in the rights of children in the United States?”

“The War on Kids” is an award-winning documentary film released by Spectacle Films in 2009. This documentary was directed by Cevin Soling and won an award for best educational documentary at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.

Filmed at public schools in Tennessee, Florida, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Florida, “The War on Kids” shows schools as authoritarian institutions that cannot be reformed. The documentary uncovers how American children are subjected to suffocating control in the public school system. In fact, the film compares the educational system to prison and its methods of discipline to fascism.

The thought-provoking documentary suggests an educational system where fear is the regulator and control is the major motivator. Following the history of zero-tolerance policies on violence and drugs, the documentary concentrates on middle-class schools rather than those in inner city school districts. Soling, the documentary’s director, provides significant evidence of absurd overreaction in American public schools.

Chapter or “lesson” segments accompany emotional interviews and alarming news reports in the documentary. Students, educators, administrators, writers, and health professionals warn Americans about the consequences of paranoia in the schools. Students are suffocated by locked-down classrooms and resouce centers, metal detectors, security cameras, drug-sniffing canines, and armed guards on a day-to-day basis. The shocking outcome is vanishing educational progress and democratic values in schools.

This film also highlights a unique irony in American schools. While schools treat children like criminals in order to protect them from drug addiction, pharmaceutical companies feed children dangerous, behavior-altering drugs like Ritalin–with the willing help of doctors, parents, school administrators, and others.

According to the Political Film Society, two countries have yet to ratify a Convention on children’s rights–Somalia and the United States. They show that the media has pointed its lens on the torture of a handful of suspected Islamic terrorists to the neglect of hundreds of students abused, interrogated, and incarcerated in the schools. Additionally, the believe that the “No Child Left Behind” law actually stunts educational outcomes and stifles the love of learning.

While “The War on Children” does not present a clear remedy for the various problems in public schools, the film advocates home schooling as a viable alternative. Some viewers might conclude that the only solid solution is the abolition of the public school system in America today.