Approaching the Elephant

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Approaching the Elephant

2014

1h 29m

Documentary

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Popcornmeter

100%

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11 Reviews

81%

Popcornmeter

50+ Ratings

The inaugural year of the Teddy McArdle Free School, where all classes are voluntary and rules are voted on by adults and children.

Nicolas Rapold

New York Times

There's still something exhilarating about the school's experiment and the children's ability to apply democratic principles without clobbering one another (much).

Feb 19, 2015

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Tomas Hachard

NPR

It's a visceral, experiential, and absorbing viewing experience, not an educational issue doc.

Feb 19, 2015

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A.A. Dowd

AV Club

A portrait of the sheer difficulty in establishing a democratic organization, especially when its prospective practitioners are between 5 and 12 years old.

Rated: A-

Feb 19, 2015

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Vadim Rizov

Filmmaker Magazine

It’s a multivalent winner, all the better for its deliberate, focused confinement to one space.

Jan 25, 2023

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Ivan Čerečina

4:3

Wilder's film is a remarkable document of a utopian experiment that shows great restraint in withholding judgment on its outcomes.

Rated: Recommended

Mar 21, 2016

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Glen Falkenstein

FILMINK (Australia)

Approaching the Elephant is at once a cautionary tale and frequently thought-provoking insight into an uncommon form of education.

Sep 24, 2015

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Audience Member

Anarchists try to build a school based on the idea of no structure, no rules, and democratic involvement. only someone who has spent no time at all around human beings or children would fail to guess how it ends. kids are introduced to democracy without any understanding of the tacit underlying rules which make democracy marginally effective. nothing that can remotely be called education takes place. just hundreds of potential lawsuits as children's safety is repeatedly and brazenly endangered. forget trying to get kids to learn and memorize basic facts about the world. math, geography, spelling, reading, writing, history, music, all take a back seat to pie in the sky social and child development theories. someone should hand the staff of the school a copy of heinlein's Starship Troopers and direct them to the chapter on history and moral philosophy.This movie for it's self it's ninety minutes of watching and waiting for the other shoe to drop. a veritable comedy of human folly when reality takes a back seat to ideology.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/02/23

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Amanda Wilder

Director

Jay Craven

Producer

Robert Greene

Producer

Amanda Wilder

Producer

Caitlin Mae Burke

Producer

Amanda Wilder

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Synopsis

The inaugural year of the Teddy McArdle Free School, where all classes are voluntary and rules are voted on by adults and children.

Director: Amanda Wilder
Producer: Jay Craven, Robert Greene, Amanda Wilder, Caitlin Mae Burke
Production Co: Wilder Films
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Jun 20, 2017
Runtime: 1h 29m

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