It took nearly 15 years for parents and politicians to understand that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was a cruelly misguided mess. As noted by Wikipedia:

"It supported standards-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals could improve individual outcomes in education. The Act required states to develop assessments in basic skills. To receive federal school funding, states had to give these assessments to all students at select grade levels. Each individual state developed its own standards. NCLB expanded the federal role in public education through further emphasis on annual testing, annual academic progress, report cards, and teacher qualifications, as well as significant changes in funding"

Parents and teachers complained that NCLB transformed the educational system into a process which was largely designed for "teaching to the test ." Children were essentially ingesting data that they could later regurgitate without developing critical thinking skills.

"If you wanted to change a culture in a single generation, how would you do it? You would change the way it educates its children," explained Carol Black , who directed the documentary Schooling the World: The White Man's Last Burden . "Could we really not just look in our childrens bright eyes and know that they all bring something unique and precious to the world?"

In her lengthy article entitled A Thousand Rivers: What the Modern World Has Forgotten About Children and Learning , Black analyzes some of the key differences between the standardized education systems popular in the West and the ways children are allowed to learn at their own pace in most parts of the world.

Science is a tool of breathtaking power and beauty, but it is not a good parent, she writes. It must be balanced by something broader, deeper, older. Like wind and weather, like ecosystems and microorganisms , like snow crystals and evolution , human learning remains untamed, unpredictable, a blossoming fractal movement so complex and so mysterious that none of us can measure or control it. But we are part of that fractal movement, and the ability to help our offspring learn and grow is in our DNA . We can begin rediscovering it now. Experiment. Observe. Listen. Explore the thousand other ways of learning that still exist all over the planet. Read the data and then set it aside. Watch your childs eyes, what makes them go dull and dead, what makes them brighten, quicken, glow with light. That is where learning lies.

Just as American society has evolved past the fantasy that the typical nuclear family lives in a house surrounded by a white picket fence and consists of 2.5 children being raised by two heterosexual parents, new definitions of family have been woven into the demographics of American society. Some may involve same-sex couples who adopted children that were created by heterosexuals who could not afford to raise their own offspring; others may be families who ostracized their children and threw them out of their homes.

As a result, there are times when interventions are necessary to make sure that a child does not fall through the cracks in society. In some cases, government agencies may try to rescue children who have been living on the streets; in other cases, extended family may be called upon to care for a child caught an emergency situation.

Two new films look at these situations with a rare sense of clarity and compassion . One tells its story through a fictional lens; the other copes with the harsh realities of children whose parents abandoned them or forced them from their homes. Both films are notable for their stunning cinematography .

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Directed and filmed by Nicole Opper , Visitors Day is an observational documentary set in Puebla, Mexico . Focused on a group home for boys, the films protagonist is 16-year-old Juan Carlos, whose home life took a turn for the worse after his mother died and his fathers new girlfriend began beating the boy. After Juan Carlos ran away from home to escape her abuse , he spent several years living on the streets in Mexico City before finding his way to IPODERAC, a social outreach program which stresses trust building , teamwork , brotherhood and helps to guide boys through their adolescence as they grow into men.

When he is interested in the work he is given, Juan Carlos excels and shows signs of potential leadership . Often, however, he is haunted by the guilt of having run away from home and issues of abandonment . On each months visitors day, he waits in vain for a visit from his father that never materializes.

After discussing the situation with IPODERACs counselors, Juan Carlos agrees to meet with his father in Mexico City in the hope of finding a way to move forward. His counselor acts as an intermediary who can not only make contact with the boys father, but help Juan Carlos articulate what he hopes to achieve during their reunion and find a way to forgive his father for what happened to their family.