ACPA 2015
Hollywood’s Depictions of Educators
and Higher Education
Sattik Deb, Ed.M.
Director of Student Services
Rutgers School of Management & Labor Relations
sdeb@work.rutgers.edu
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
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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
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), 301-317.
Breault, R. (2009). The Celluloid Teacher. The Educational Forum, 306-317.
Considine, D. “School on the Screen: From Mentors to Murders,” The
Secondary Teacher, no. 6 (1980), pp. 13-17.
Dalton, M. “Bad Teacher is Bad for Teachers,” Journal of Popular Film and
Television (Jun, 2013), pp. 37-41.
Giroux, H. (2008), “Hollywood Film as Public Pedagogy: Education in the
Crossfire, Afterimage, 35 (5), 7-13.
Schwartz, J. The Portrayal of Educators in Motion Pictures. Journal of
Educational Sociology, vol. 34, No. 2 (Oct., 1960), pp. 82-90.