The welfare state has been dismantled, leaving a much greater number of Americans without a safety net. And the further the public sector retreats from the provision of social services, the more the finance industry steps in to "help us" get what we need to get by.

The Waiting for Superman director discusses what it takes to be an effective teacher today and his hopes for his children. "It would be the happiest day of my life," says Guggenheim, "if my son or daughter came to me and said, 'Dad, I want to be a teacher.'"

Here's my brutally harsh interrogation of my better writing half whose work includes the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting For Superman and It Might Get Loud.

As can be seen in many paintings on view, healthy sibling rivalry often took place around a game of chess, safely transferring brotherly battles to the symbolic realm of the chessboard or painted tableau.

It's one thing when documentaries like Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for 'Superman and Madeleine Sackler's much better The Lottery look at problems in public education and offer some solutions (such as charter schools).