Best Movies On Education?

Quite the opposite, we thought it was totally on-point and hilarious.

He comes into the conference. He's using the overly-mannered language. He doesn't really listen to what the teacher is saying and just tries to make excuses. He can't help but take a series of passive-aggressive digs at his ex-wife and her parenting choices. He makes a bunch of vague promises about taking action to address the issues, but clearly is just saying what he thinks the teacher wants to hear.

Then there's just the (very real) absurdity of trying to have a conversation with another adult while sitting at a desk that was designed for 9 year olds.

My area of expertise is elementary education, so I'm often put off on two fronts: not understanding classrooms, and not understanding kids.

The thing that always makes me laugh with movies that take place in high school is where the kid comes to class, class begins and there's like 5 minutes of discussion, then the bell rings and the teacher is like "See you all tomorrow" with no sense of time having lapsed. Like, what school is this with 8 minute long classes?

So much agreement. There's also, depending on genre, the students at rapt attention as the teacher monologues only to be interrupted by the bell, at which the teacher shouts some last minute announcements as the kids hustle out the door.

Where is the classroom management? Virtually no one allows the bell to dismiss, orderly teachers keep track of time and try to have the class packed up, cleaned and ready to go when that bell rings and pure lecturing seems to only be allowed to exist in college now. It's all blended learning and guided mini-lessons.

It's always very transparent when a screenwriter hasn't set foot into a classroom since their days in high school and doesn't really remember what it was like very well. It's all outdated and inauthentic.

Have you seen Moxie? I'm convinced Amy Poehler was actually home schooled.

I did see Moxie and enjoyed it, but certainly not for its realism!

I constantly think "Where is the classroom management?!" and shake my head at the lectures. It reinforces such an old-fashioned idea about the teacher being the holder of all wisdom and telling students what to think. The students are always seated in rows and never at tables. You never see students engaged in, you know, reading or creative writing or science or social studies or any kind of small group work. (Unless a child is writing some thinly allegorical story to make the teacher aware of an issue at home). There is a lot of students solving a single math problem on the board as the rest of the class watches, which . . . .

There are also a lot of times that the "good teachers" in films engage in things like clear favoritism.

This teacher is probably the same person that leaves a four-course breakfast on the table as they grab one slice of toast and run out the door.

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My Collection

Mean Girls (2004)
Precious (2009)

I have GOT to watch this movie someday. I've seen the '69 remake but have never seen the original.

To Sir with Love was the first movie that popped into my head when I saw the title of this thread.

I only saw the re-make, but I recommend it!

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"Bad Education" is not really about the classroom, but the business side of it.

"Dangerous Minds" while being overall silly, but had moments of clarity.

"Dazed & Confused" is centered around the school, yet captures the era beautifully.

"Teachers" is the dark side brother to Ridgemont High.

The business side could be interesting, too.

When it comes to the relationship a teacher has with their student, and the responsibilities they may bear, Paper Chase and Prime of Miss Jean Brodie I think get to articulating this best.



As for the more common and cliched teacher as saviour trope, To Sir With Love is the most affecting. Most often though, these types of movies should be avoided like a venereal disease.

Today I had a classroom moment that I would not believe if I saw it in a film.

Children A, B, and C all sit in a row (okay, a column, each in front of the other).

Student A pulls me to the hall. "Student B told me to "f*ck off""

I call student B out. "Student A called me a p*ssy, and student C called me a b*tch."

I call student C out. "I DON'T KNOW WHY I SAID IT, IT JUST SLIPPED OUT!"

Like a bunch of little profane dominoes.

Play nice, Janson.

The buck stops with Student C.

Student C is a trip. She came to Back to School night in a crop top, mostly looking at her cell phone and I was like Okay . . . ..

Then she shows up to school and during independent reading she's like "I'm learning about Millard Fillmore!" and "So over summer break I learned all the Presidents' birthdays and some other ones too!" and then later "Duh! Of course Franklin was 81 at the Constitutional Convention! He was born in 1706!"

Benjamin Franklin was one old son of a bitch, as I assume Student C would say.*

Wonderful movie.
The 69 version is very good, but it's a musical (not that there's anything wrong with that).

But the original is a classic that could never be surpassed (which is why they remade it as a musical, it wouldn't make sense trying to just do a straight remake).

I shan't.

I'd sooner let my child be educated by a moon-denier than someone who considers Sheriff Brody as a "girly man". (By which I mean by neither.)

Spare the children from the girly moon men.