ACPA 2015 Hollywood’s Depictions of Educators and Higher Education Sattik Deb, Ed.M. Director of Student Services Rutgers School of Management & Labor Relations

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Over the past 75 years, popular cultural films—from Goodbye Mr. Chips to Freedom Writers—depicting educators and higher education arguably have had as much influence on public discourse about education as has academic research. Thus it is necessary to critically think about these films as a means of reflecting on issues in education, how we think about higher education, and how it can inform our practices in student affairs.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education This presentation serves a three-fold purpose of 1) critically analyzing films; 2) lending credibility to comedies as a viable genre for such critical analysis and; 3) applying this analysis in our practice as student affairs professionals.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education “Humans are creatures who make pictures of themselves and then come to resemble this picture.” – Iris Murdoch

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education What are some films you can think of that depict educators or education?

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939) Blackboard Jungle (1955) To Sir With Love (1967) Up the Down Staircase (1967) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) Conrack (1974) Stand and Deliver (1988) Dead Poets Society (1989) Lean on Me (1989) Dangerous Minds (1995) Freedom Writers (2007) Bad Teacher (2011) Accepted (2006)

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Popular culture and most scholarly research commonly focus on less comedic films as these as the basis of analyzing educational issues.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Research Considine (1980) looks to films such as “Goodbye Mr. Chips,” “The Children’s Hour,” “That Hagen Girl,” “Blackboard Jungle,” “The Prime of Miss Brodie,” “Halls of Anger,” and “To Sir, With Love” as among the most prominent portrayals of teachers and the classroom. Bauer’s (1998) references include “Blackboard Jungle,” “To Sir, With Love,” “Lean on Me,” “Dead Poets Society,” “Educating Rita,” “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “Stand and Deliver,” and “Dangerous Minds,” among others. Moore (2007) identifies “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” “The Joe Clark Story,” “Freedom Writers,” and “Knights of the South Bronx” as films that portray the education profession.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Research Breault (2009) analyzes 15 films in his analysis including “Blackboard Jungle,” “To Sir, With Love,” “Conrack,” “Teachers,” “The Principal,” “Stand and Deliver,” “Dead Poets Society,” “Lean on Me,” “Kindergarten Cop,” “Dangerous Minds,” “Mr. Holland's Opus,” “Music of the Heart,” “The Emperor's Club,” “The Ron Clark Story,” and “The Freedom Writers”. Only one, “Kindergarten Cop,” is classified as a comedy. Schwartz (1960), Trier (2001), and Giroux (2008) look to similar films in their analysis of Hollywood’s portrayals of educators. Similarly, most Google searches for “top movies about educators” predominantly yield polls and informal lists with these and other similarly dramatic portrayals.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education

Blackboard Jungle (1955) Film opens with a marquee discussing juvenile delinquency. Opening scene sets the tone and dispels with any notion of youth innocence. Dadier feels that the students do not care about education and likens his classroom to a jungle “If you can just get them stimulated. Get them to use their imagination. Reach out for something.” Technology in the classroom always resonates with youth. Dadier shows Jack and the Beanstalk rather than delivering a lecture and, as it is today, multimedia resonated with his class, as they became truly engaged in learning for the first time.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education To Sir With Love (1967) “You’re the new lamb for the slaughter.” “Talk about life.” – teach what matters Students have the weight of the world on their shoulders. Thackery is presented with this reality. Thackery’s disposal of a pile of “useless” books is both a symbolic and literal paradigm shift in his classroom. He expounds that his students will no longer be seen as children but as adults and will be treated accordingly. Thackery fundamentally redefines the teacher-student relationship by empowering his students and by opening his students up to the possibility of learning.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Up The Down Staircase (1967) “I came here to teach. I thought that’s what I spent the past six years preparing for.” Except there’s no time to teach. Only time for notices, paperwork, etc. Guidance counselor dedicates her time to reducing everyone to a file 18/6 At Coolidge High School, there is enormous emphasis on the “system” rather than context. The premise starts with the marginalization of urban schools. Image of a system persisting without apparent purpose.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Stand and Deliver (1988) At the center of the movie lies the issues of race and class, in particular, a group of students excluded from an adequate education because of their racial origins, and the economic realities that happen to inform those racial origins. “They learned if you try real hard, nothing changes.” “If you want higher test scores, you start by changing the economic conditions of the community…We lack the resources to institute the changes the district recommends.” Jaime Escalante essentially sacrifices his life for his students and he asks them to do the same for him.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Dead Poets Society (1989) “In my class you will learn to think for yourselves again.” “I stand upon my desk to remind myself to constantly look at things in a different way.” “What will your verse be?” – Keating works to humanize students in the backdrop of an institution that essentially dehumanizes them by enforcing an excess of order. Another pained/sacrificing teacher.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Lean on Me (1989) Unlike most films, this one depicts and administrator instead of an instructor. The opening credit sequence features the Guns ‘N Roses hit Welcome to the Jungle, a potential homage to Blackboard Jungle, and a song about the dark side of Los Angeles. Joe Clark questions what Mozart will do to get the students jobs, which lends itself to a pedagogical question. Standardized testing is the pathway to the American dream. There is much emphasis on testing. The “fruitlessness of egalitarianism.”

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Dangerous Minds (1995) Students are bused into a suburban school and put into a special program called “The Academy,” which complies with desegregation orders by instituting resegregation within the school. LouAnne Johnson makes a series of missteps throughout, all driven by a lack of understanding. She is guided through the lens of white culture and marine culture: –“How are you going to save me from my life?” –“You don’t understand nothin’. You don’t live in my neighborhood.”

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Freedom Writers (2007) A play off 1961’s Freedom Riders in Montgomery, Alabama. The daughter of a civil rights activist, who idealistically wants to teach at an integrated institution, Erin is shocked at the level of self-segregation among her students and the hostility between the different ethnic groups. The classroom is competing with culture, a very predominant one at that. Gang violence is an expression of humanity’s baser instincts. “What are you doing in here that makes a difference in my goddamn life?” - Eva The school's normal curriculum won't get through to these kids, Gruwell modifies her lesson plan (i.e. Tupac)

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Why do movies about educators get made more than any other ordinary professions?

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education What role does aesthetics and other factors play in influencing how education is portrayed?

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Accepted features an underachieving high school senior, Bartleby Gaines, portrayed by Justin Long, who is rejected by all eight colleges to which he has applied. When the weight of rejection sets in, he literally and figuratively constructs an elaborate ruse by which to bamboozle his perpetually disappointed parents into believing that he has, in fact, been admitted into college. Bartleby, along with his close friends Daryl 'Hands' Holloway, portrayed by Columbus Short, and Rory Thayer, portrayed by Maria Thayer, both of whom have also been denied an opportunity to attend college (albeit for different reasons than Bartleby), hatch a plot to create a fictional college, South Harmon Institute of Technology.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Popular culture and most scholarly research focus on more serious films such as classics like Goodbye Mr. Chips and Blackboard Jungle and contemporary successes like Stand and Deliver and Freedom Writers when identifying relevant depictions of education, however Accepted offers similar motifs and lessons that may not be—unfairly—taken as seriously considering the comedic genre of the film.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Pick your scenes “You want to fit in, you go to college.” “Rejection sucks.” “American education is in the shitter.” “What a load of horse shit.” “Why can’t we both exist?”

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education “You want to fit in, you go to college.”

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education “Rejection sucks.”

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education “American education is in the shitter.”

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education “What a load of horse shit.”

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education “Why can’t we both exist?”

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Though an absurd comedy, Accepted lends credibility to a number of concepts including the philosophy of student-centered instruction, high-order thinking (i.e. Bloom’s Taxonomy), pedagogical creativity and authenticity, and the individual nature of students.

ACPA 2015: Hollywood’s Depictions of Education Sources Bauer, D. (1998). Indecent Proposals: Teachers in the Movies. College English, 60(3), Breault, R. (2009). The Celluloid Teacher. The Educational Forum, Considine, D. “School on the Screen: From Mentors to Murders,” The Secondary Teacher, no. 6 (1980), pp Dalton, M. “Bad Teacher is Bad for Teachers,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Jun, 2013), pp Giroux, H. (2008), “Hollywood Film as Public Pedagogy: Education in the Crossfire, Afterimage, 35 (5), Schwartz, J. The Portrayal of Educators in Motion Pictures. Journal of Educational Sociology, vol. 34, No. 2 (Oct., 1960), pp