Best Movies On Education?

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I've been teaching for 30 years, and the only one that really comes close to reality is fast times at ridgemont high. Mr. Hand is a teacher's teacher.



The rest of the teacher movies are just fluffy nonsense that bear no resemblance to a real classroom, real students, and real teachers. Everybody here has spent years sitting in a classroom watching that clock and wondering if it's broken, but how many have had a professor Keating telling us to stand on our desks and rip out the introduction to our textbooks?
Have any of your students ever ordered a pizza during class?



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Have any of your students ever ordered a pizza during class?
No, but the way he handled that was brilliant. Spicoli's argument was that since it's not just Mr. Hands' time, but his as well, he didn't see a problem with enjoying a pizza on our time.

What did the Maestro do? He saw the flaw in Spicoli's argument and pointed out that there were many others in the classroom. In other words, he took Spicoli's argument to its logical conclusion.

Contrast that to... oh, To sir, with love. Supposedly a great teacher movie, and no doubt responsible for a lot of rookies meeting an untimely end to their dreams of being loved by their students.

Yet, the scene I remember most vividly is when Mr Thackery walks into his classroom full of miscreants to the smell of some feminine hygiene product burning, and he loses it.

WWMHD? (what would mister hand do?) He would probably snap his fingers and have one kid running to find the custodian, another opening a window, and then once the fire was out, he would turn to the class and give his students directions to the nearest female lavatory, just in case they were confused as to how to properly dispose of a soiled tampon.



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Dead Poets Society is a favorite of mine.
WARNING: "what not to do" spoilers below

Ah, yes. Getting fired before the academic year is over, and having a student commit suicide is always a great way to round out ones professional career.



The trick is not minding
WARNING: "what not to do" spoilers below

Ah, yes. Getting fired before the academic year is over, and having a student commit suicide is always a great way to round out ones professional career.
Which, if you’ve seen the movie, the you should be aware that he was made a scapegoat.



I've been teaching for 30 years...
Wait. The person who doesn't believe the moon landing? Well, that's good to know.



The trick is not minding
Another good, and more recent one is Better Days, which focuses more on China’s education system and the pressure applied to a placement test to determine their future. Also, it deals with bullying, the main focus of the story really, as well as how the teachers respond to such bullying incidents.



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Wait. The person who doesn't believe the moon landing? Well, that's good to know.

I believe I said I suspect it didn't happen as we were told.



If I were teaching your children, would you rather I teach them to be skeptical, or to believe whatever they're told?



If I were teaching your children, would you rather I teach them to be skeptical, or to believe whatever they're told?
I would hope you would teach them to read all of the evidence clearly showing that the moon landing happened. Like the difference between terrestrial and satellite transmissions, for example.



I believe I said I suspect it didn't happen as we were told.



If I were teaching your children, would you rather I teach them to be skeptical, or to believe whatever they're told?
I see what you are saying. Critical thinking is incredibly important and should absolutely be prioritized in schools, or else the kids will go off believing the moon-landing didn't happen.



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I would hope you would teach them to read all of the evidence clearly showing that the moon landing happened. Like the difference between terrestrial and satellite transmissions, for example.

This is a great example of what might make for a good school movie, but cringe for a real teacher. Whether the moon landing happened, or didn't happen really doesn't matter. What matters is how they arrive at a particular conclusion.

It's like memorizing the multiplication tables up to 12 x 12, or understanding how multiplication works. A student who has it all memorized, but doesn't know how or why 12 and 12 is 144 is not going to be able to do 13sies.

To try to get this back to movies, I would imagine that no matter what your job, there's probably a movie about it that got all sorts of things wrong. If it's a movie about carpenters, and you're a carpenter, you'll probably be face palming every time you see somebody putting in cabinets using a framing hammer.

It's one of the things that make it hard for me to enjoy most movies about school or education. They just get it wrong!



Questions for prosepective teachers of my children:


#24 - Have you ever used the word 'sheeple' non-ironically?


#46 - Do you hate Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society?



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This is a great example of what might make for a good school movie, but cringe for a real teacher. Whether the moon landing happened, or didn't happen really doesn't matter. What matters is how they arrive at a particular conclusion.

It's like memorizing the multiplication tables up to 12 x 12, or understanding how multiplication works. A student who has it all memorized, but doesn't know how or why 12 and 12 is 144 is not going to be able to do 13sies.

To try to get this back to movies, I would imagine that no matter what your job, there's probably a movie about it that got all sorts of things wrong. If it's a movie about carpenters, and you're a carpenter, you'll probably be face palming every time you see somebody putting in cabinets using a framing hammer.

It's one of the things that make it hard for me to enjoy most movies about school or education. They just get it wrong!

I wonder if there have been movies made by teachers about teachers...



I wonder if there have been movies made by teachers about teachers...
Yes, I already mentioned one.



"How tall is King Kong ?"
My favorite is a sweet little french comedy named Le Maître d'Ecole (Claude Berri, 1981), which is refreshingly not pompous and not epic at all. Just the story of a teacher with a good connection with little kids, who faces the stress of responsibilities when other teachers take a sick leave or go on strike. Difficulties with no bad guys, no tremendous message or revelations, no outlandish drama, simply kids being kids, people being people, and idealistic, candid attempts at doing the right thing in complicated situations. Also it's been based (loosely I assume) on an actual teacher's memoir, apparently.

Thinking of it, there's a bit of a Fred Rogers mindset to it. In the way it takes seriously and respectfully, as they come, the kids' questions.

Anyway, it's miles better than Dead Poets in my view. My problem with Dead Poets Society is not its message, which is more or less obvious to its target public (only set against a ridiculously coercive and dated schooling system), but its self-satisfied, self-flattering, overly dramatic way of making its point. The way it fishes for emotions and assent with cheap evidences treated as messianic revelations. It's like having today a white progressive film for white progressive people in which a 1950 apartheid society faces one white hero going "hey I think black people should not be treated like that" while the camera spirals around him in low-angle shot with a thundering orchestral music and the public swipes a tear at the corner in their eye going "so... so TRUE, i also do think that" and then go quoting him. You can't... really fault the message, but damn is it self-serving. Damn does the fruit hang lower than the camera makes it look. Anyway, that's the impression Dead Poets Society gave to me.

And in front of that, you have people who diss the film (yeaaah didn't like it at all either) for the message itself (wait what). Which makes me a bit uneasy, and makes me want to defend it. But beh. I prefer to sidestep and let the film's fans argue with those.

And to re-watch for the 748th time the light, fun and unassuming Le Maître d'Ecole.
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Not a movie, but the scene in Wolf of Snow Hollow where the main character goes to a parent-teacher conference had me, my sister, and her husband (we are all teachers) rolling with laughter.

I think that there are some good movies that involve teachers, but I don't know that many of them really get it right or even seem to understand how schools or classrooms actually work.

There are some really interesting documentaries about education.



Not a movie, but the scene in Wolf of Snow Hollow where the main character goes to a parent-teacher conference had me, my sister, and her husband (we are all teachers) rolling with laughter.

I think that there are some good movies that involve teachers, but I don't know that many of them really get it right or even seem to understand how schools or classrooms actually work.

There are some really interesting documentaries about education.
I remember that scene but don’t remember my emotional response, if any. As I understand, you’re implying it’s bad. Can you elaborate?



Not a movie, but the scene in Wolf of Snow Hollow where the main character goes to a parent-teacher conference had me, my sister, and her husband (we are all teachers) rolling with laughter.

I think that there are some good movies that involve teachers, but I don't know that many of them really get it right or even seem to understand how schools or classrooms actually work.

There are some really interesting documentaries about education.
Agreed.

The closest I've seen are in David Simon shows: The Wire and Treme but the schools aren't their primary focus (close in s4 of the Wire) so they don't quite go into the depth necessary to really capture the experience.