I suspected the satire would be lost on some, which is fair. You get the satire and don't find it funny, which is also fair. I'm glad you took offense if someone had to, because, even when you're angry, you're a pretty lucid guy.
My intention wasn't to drop a stick of plastique onto my blog floor and set it off. I referenced it earnestly, as a preface to a post I'm in the process of drafting.
I agree that right now we need less cynicism. But I disagree that inspiration and uplift are the answer.
We need to advocate realism. Specifically, we need to get teachers to talk more realistically about teaching.
Even more specifically, no matter how plainly teachers feel these things, we need to stop calling our job "a calling." (You've called teaching "a calling" in one of your comments on my blog, so I am cognizant of where we stand on this one.)
We need to avoid terminology like "passion" in describing the prerequisites of our job. We need to eschew terms like "artist" in describing our vocations and completely strip martyrdom from the discussion.
Gals like Gruwell (not that I've seen the movie) have done more for students in a year than I have in three, but she, and movies like Freedom Writers, do teacher recruitment a disservice by implying there is something superheroic and otherworldy about our job. Every time a movie like Freedom Writers comes around, I get a little melancholy and think about how close I came to becoming a CPA. From how Hollywood and so many teachers describe this job, to succeed you have to possess some rarified blend of passion, artistry, and martyrdom and you'll know if you do because it'll smell faintly of crayons and coffee.
But this job -- like all jobs -- needs hard-workers more than it needs saints. It needs problem solvers and creative thinkers. It needs people who are confident and well-spoken. The public's perception of teaching, I fear, mirrors that of the clergy, where teachers have been summoned to this crusade by some spiritual force. Passion is then their reward and it's on them to absorb the financial burden of their calling.
But this is just a *job*, one which eagerly accepts dedicated workers and puts them to good use. My last semester at UC Davis, I took an internship in a high school in lieu of a PE class. I realized within a week that every talent I had ever developed was out in that classroom in steady rotation, often simultaneously. The same is true of every skill I've adopted since. If we're interested in selling this job to fiercely dedicated undergrads and under-fulfilled graduates, that there is our sales pitch, not a mantra of superhuman self-sacrifice.
I'm with Dan on this one. Some (many?) of these movies need a good deal of deconstructing before you take home the message. Take 3 examples: Dangerous Minds, School of Rock and Dead Poets' Society. On the surface they're uplifting, moral stories (stories with a moral or message), inspirational movies. But if you take a second, closer look, what you see is actually a very traditional teacher. There is very little that is unorthodox in any of those movies, and certainly the roles of teachers and students in those movies don't teach us (teachers) very much. No new ground is broken. They are charismatic teachers, but is that the answer to the myriad problems in education? And something tells me a bunch of people not a million miles from educational administration are happy for the public to have the impression that education's problems are essentially down to not enough charismatic, energetic, super-teachers. Except for Dangerous Minds, the students in these movies don't really have much of a voice; they're just sheep, peons, foils to show up the brilliance of the teacher. It's Hollywood, for goodness sakes, guys, wakey, wakey!
I have a lot to say about this topic. Sappy teacher movies have always offended me. Here is someone from The New York Times that said it better... The one funny thing about his take on teacher movies is the joke about how in the movie Erin Gruwell actually had a key to her room. Anybody who has spent one day in the School District of Philadelphia will tell you not getting a key for the first week is common place. I have been in four schools in the SDP and in each of those four schools, I didn't get key for the first week or two or even three! One year, I had to teach a class in a different classroom. I wasn't given a key for the whole year! ha! (rant mode off)
Here is this article from the New York Times, Tom Moore.
Classroom Distinctions
By TOM MOORE
Published: January 19, 2007
IN the past year or so I have seen Matthew Perry drink 30 cartons of milk, Ted Danson explain the difference between a rook and a pawn, and Hilary Swank remind us that white teachers still can’t dance or jive talk. In other words, I have been confronted by distorted images of my own profession — teaching. Teaching the post-desegregation urban poor, to be precise.
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Although my friends and family (who should all know better) continue to ask me whether my job is similar to these movies, I find it hard to recognize myself or my students in them.
So what are these films really about? And what do they teach us about teachers? Are we heroes, villains, bullies, fools? The time has come to set the class record straight.
At the beginning of Ms. Swank’s new movie, “Freedom Writers,” her character, a teacher named Erin Gruwell, walks into her Long Beach, Calif., classroom, and the camera pans across the room to show us what we are supposed to believe is a terribly shabby learning environment. Any experienced educator will have already noted that not only does she have the right key to get into the room but, unlike the seventh-grade science teacher in my current school, she has a door to put the key into. The worst thing about Ms. Gruwell’s classroom seems to be graffiti on the desks, and crooked blinds.
I felt like shouting, Hey, at least you have blinds! My first classroom didn’t, but it did have a family of pigeons living next to the window, whose pane was a cracked piece of plastic. During the winter, snowflakes blew in. The pigeons competed with the mice and cockroaches for the students’ attention.
This is not to say that all schools in poor neighborhoods are a shambles, or that teaching in a real school is impossible. In fact, thousands of teachers in New York City somehow manage to teach every day, many of them in schools more underfinanced and chaotic than anything you’ve seen in movies or on television (except perhaps the most recent season of “The Wire”).
Ms. Gruwell’s students might backtalk, but first they listen to what she says. And when she raises her inflection just slightly, the class falls silent. Many of the students I’ve known won’t sit down unless they’re repeatedly asked to (maybe not even then), and they don’t listen just because the teacher is speaking; even “good teachers” are occasionally drowned out by the din of 30 students simultaneously using language that would easily earn a movie an NC-17 rating.
When a fight breaks out during an English lesson, Ms. Gruwell steps into the hallway and a security guard immediately materializes to break it up. Forget the teacher — this guy was the hero of the movie for me.
If I were to step out into the hallway during a fight, the only people I’d see would be some students who’d heard there was a fight in my room. I’d be wasting my time waiting for a security guard. The handful of guards where I work are responsible for the safety of five floors, six exits, two yards and four schools jammed into my building.
Although personal safety is at the top of both teachers’ and students’ lists of grievances, the people in charge of real schools don’t take it as seriously as the people in charge of movie schools seem to.
The great misconception of these films is not that actual schools are more chaotic and decrepit — many schools in poor neighborhoods are clean and orderly yet still don’t have enough teachers or money for supplies. No, the most dangerous message such films promote is that what schools really need are heroes. This is the Myth of the Great Teacher.
Films like “Freedom Writers” portray teachers more as missionaries than professionals, eager to give up their lives and comfort for the benefit of others, without need of compensation. Ms. Gruwell sacrifices money, time and even her marriage for her job.
Her behavior is not represented as obsessive or self-destructive, but driven — necessary, even. She is forced into making these sacrifices by the aggressive neglect of the school’s administrators, who won’t even let her take books from the bookroom. The film applauds Ms. Gruwell’s dedication, but also implies that she has no other choice. In order to be a good teacher, she has to be a hero.
“Freedom Writers,” like all teacher movies this side of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” is presented as a celebration of teaching, but its message is that poor students need only love, idealism and martyrdom.
I won’t argue the need for more of the first two, but I’m always surprised at how, once a Ms. Gruwell wins over a class with clowning, tears, rewards and motivational speeches, there is nothing those kids can’t do. It is as if all the previously insurmountable obstacles students face could be erased by a 10-minute pep talk or a fancy dinner. This trivializes not only the difficulties many real students must overcome, but also the hard-earned skill and tireless effort real teachers must use to help those students succeed.
Every year young people enter the teaching profession hoping to emulate the teachers they’ve seen in films. (Maybe in the back of my mind I felt that I could be an inspiring teacher like Howard Hesseman or Gabe Kaplan.) But when you’re confronted with the reality of teaching not just one class of misunderstood teenagers (the common television and movie conceit) but four or five every day, and dealing with parents, administrators, mentors, grades, attendance records, standardized tests and individual education plans for children with learning disabilities, not to mention multiple daily lesson plans — all without being able to count on the support of your superiors — it becomes harder to measure up to the heroic movie teachers you thought you might be.
It’s no surprise that half the teachers in poor urban schools, like Erin Gruwell herself, quit within five years. (Ms. Gruwell now heads a foundation.)
I don’t expect to be thought of as a hero for doing my job. I do expect to be respected, supported, trusted and paid. And while I don’t anticipate that Hollywood will stop producing movies about gold-hearted mavericks who play by their own rules and show the suits how to get the job done, I do hope that these movies will be kept in perspective.
While no one believes that hospitals are really like “ER” or that doctors are anything like “House,” no one blames doctors for the failure of the health care system. From No Child Left Behind to City Hall, teachers are accused of being incompetent and underqualified, while their appeals for better and safer workplaces are systematically ignored.
Every day teachers are blamed for what the system they’re just a part of doesn’t provide: safe, adequately staffed schools with the highest expectations for all students. But that’s not something one maverick teacher, no matter how idealistic, perky or self-sacrificing, can accomplish.